Unchanging

The past week has been a roller coaster of emotions and within a single day, I went from content to sad, to depressed, then anxious and on to confused but elated to comforted to exhausted. Can you relate?

Covid-19 has left in its wake, in addition to case statistics, a loss of life, loss of jobs, loss of what we knew to be normal existence. It has created a sense, for many of us, of unexpected chaos, unmanaged expectations and a feeling that nothing is as it should seem. We can’t seem to count on anything these days. There is no such thing as normal.

My husband Steve and I found ourselves alone on the 4^th of July, the first time in our 18 year marriage not to go out with friends & family to the city park and celebrate with homemade ice cream, Popeye’s Fried chicken, 100 degree weather, wild-eyed kids and way too many people we don’t know. For the record, I still made my ice cream but we decided to go perch ourselves on the porch of our venue, which overlooks the city lights and see if we could see random fireworks from there.

Surrounded by neighbors evidently taking matters into their own hands, we were indeed privy to lots of firework sounds, and small splashes of color bouncing in the distance for the good part of an hour. But the best part was looking long into the face of a full moon as it rose among the tree branches.

It was there in the midst of a warm July evening, in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, that I found my peace. The moon phases don’t change for pandemics and neither does the One who created it.

The trees over the years have sprung new life in some and lost limbs in many others. The grass struggles in the summer but is lush in the winter rye plantings. The wind changes direction and rains come and go, my emotions riding each wave because I allow myself to attach my joy to something not grounded in certainty. What a mighty test this is, but there is abundant hope.

He is the same yesterday. The same today. The same forever.

Joy is found in the peace, in the constant unchanging nature of, He who brought us to this place.

I Corinthians 14:33 “For God is not a God of disorder, but of peace”. May you and I rest there.

Elaine