On this, our last full day of stay-at-home orders in our state, it’s easy to anticipate all the amazingness that is coming next.
A little freedom.
The ability to leave the house without having a good reason to.
Real live haircuts from someone other than a soldier with a set of clippers that sounds more like a chainsaw than a grooming tool.
But today, nine weeks and six days after our team started social distancing inside our home, we don’t want to be so excited to move forward with our new normal that we forget to thank God for everything He did looking back.
Or the life-changing lessons that He, in all His grace, taught us during this time.
In Joshua Chapter 4, after the Israelites crossed the Jordan, they erected memorial stones to signify God’s faithfulness and everything, as they crossed from one side of the river to another, that God had done.
The same kind of memorial stones we want to erect as we arrive at the other side of this figurative river today.
These last 10 weeks have revealed so much to us about our family’s weaknesses, worldliness and priorities. They’ve shown us where we’ve placed our joy and hope, and, spoiler alert, it hasn’t always been in Jesus alone.
God used something only He could execute — what can only be compared to a complete stand-still in time (except for those 21 pesky Zoom meetings each week) — to get our attention, return our affections to Jesus and teach us about simpler living — and REAL “abundant life.”
And it turns out, the most abundant life we’ve ever lived wasn’t spent in vehicles running to and from activities, appointments and 500 things we thought we “ought” to be doing.
It was spent right here.
Under one roof.
Relishing Jesus and His wildly beautiful world TOGETHER.
And oh, the treasures He has lavished on us BECAUSE of this shut-down along the way.
Morning devotionals and big boy Bible study and the opportunity to study The Screwtape Letters before middle school and high.
At-home church and weekly worship and family studies in James and John.
Family runs and bedtime yoga, two miles on homemade trails every day.
Work-out challenges and strength training in garages and P90X videos revived from the video grave.
Family book club and family naptime and the rapidly growing stack of completed works.
Dusted off board games and bent up card games and the hours spent negotiating settlements in Catan.
A newspaper subscription, a quiet hour and coffee that gets sipped on the front porch.
Rocking chair dates and nightly dinners and endless help from a soldier at home.
Time to celebrate the small things, time to make the small things into homemade dinners.
A garden planted Week 1 that, Week 9, actually produced FRUIT!
A house purged and painted out of joy instead of duty or dread, a yard maintained by boys who’ve also learned to split, haul and chop.
Covid Cake Club, long-distance cooking classes and the best baklava this girl has ever tasted. (Thank you, teen!)
A new love for and understanding of the culinary miracles that exist (via take-out!) in our town.
Life Skills Saturday and Taco Tuesday and 50 Zoom and Google meetings every day that ends in Y.
Brotherly relationships and mama-son relationships and family relationships sustained by Zoom.
A surgery we wouldn’t have had time for in the real world, a restful recovery that could be done slowly at home.
The time to physically, mentally and emotionally prepare for the impending retirement of the lifelong soldier (and wifey bawling over boxes of ACUs).
The gift of “Covid leave” equal to terminal leave that we now don’t feel robbed by not taking this fall.
More laughter, more patience, more silliness, more JOY.
The physical, emotional and spiritual rejuvenation only a season like this can provide.
Even in the midst of world pandemic, God has been so good.
Even in the midst of national shut-down, God has been so faithful.
And as we reach the other side of this figurative Jordan River trial, we offer this, our memorial stone tower, so that, as we begin our journey on the other side, these anchors will never, ever let us forget.
