Lin Manuel Miranda has a gift, so here's some nice listening music for reading this post today.
Silence can be hard to find, but I've been sitting and waiting around a lot thinking about it. I've actually been playing Snow Patrol on repeat all day long for over a week, but it's made me think a lot about the pause I'm in with the chaos and fury that's been blowing around my life the past five months. There's a pause this week as I've spent a lot of time looking at the trees out my window. Yeah, sure, I do that a lot anyways, but there's a different silence as I've finished initial drafts of two more books - a collection of poetry and the first in a series of children's books.
Germany extended their lockdown another two weeks, so it looks like I won't get to meet my new students at the start of February as we'll have strict rules until the 14th at this point. I have very limited human interaction these days (which I still generally very much love), so finding ways to produce good fruit for me means looking at the manuscripts on my computer instead of the standard teaology sessions I've grown to love so much. I know this isn't forever; it's just a season, so I want to make the most of the season in front of me.
This season will have a lot of alone time, but that gives me more attention for my feet and walking. I talked to Brandi last week about how much I share on here about the daily time and frustration that goes into my disability. I don't want to come across as a whiny cripple, nor do I want to be coopted as the good cripple. Disability sucks. I was dealing with a toe oozing pus and a healing blood blister on the bottom of my foot all week, but I don't want to lose readers because I have to order my days around cleaning my toe and calming the spasms that the iodine triggers as it kills bacteria and that isn't as glamorous to read about as me preparing to publish books. The spasms also cut down the time I can put weight on my feet because my right ankle can yank out of control at any second. It's not fun. It's not pleasant. But I still love my life and find it worth living. I still know God loves me and is working good things out in my story. I still want to see good fruit as I take my time caring for my feet. There's a both/and here in my story. I don't live with rose colored glasses; I have the blue light filter to help with my sleep that's often disrupted by leg spasms. On that sleep note, keep praying with me because God is teaching me a lot and giving me better sleep. I'm still given clear prompting to pray for someone else, but I'm learning how to do that intentionally before bed instead of losing hours of sleep in the middle of the night.
I wrote last week about God working in his order, and I want to be sensitive to what is being developed in me now. There was a great season a couple years ago of students streaming through my window, and today a cat hopped through instead. I was participating in my church zoom call, and I freaked out a bit when the beloved BFA cat peeked his head into my living room. He spent the next twenty minutes making himself at home. This season doesn't allow for students to have the same kind of access to my flat, but it does allow for some kids to knock on my window the day they are set free from quarantine because spending ten days with mom and little sis was just too much. One of my seniors came by Thursday to chat in the cold and tell me about his break. It's not the same as inviting kids in to have a cup of tea, but I'm still pretty honored to be the first stop when a kid gets out of quarantine. I also don't take lightly the junior who spent three hours outside my window just so he could be somewhere other than cooped up with his mom and dad. Again, it looks different now than it did before, but I want to be responsive to the needs of those around me (and to my own). There's only so many options we have right now, but it's quiet, and there are eyes on me as I write my way out.
I'm not Hamilton, nor am I Lin Manuel Miranda, but I am aware of the witness I have, and I'm trying to steward that well. I've already gone places I never dreamed I would, and I hope you'll keep following along because we're in the eye of the hurricane, and something big is coming.