Friday Freestyle - 005
Decking the halls with Sudafed, finding someone to read bedtime stories to me, and our house is a very, very, very fine house.
What a crazy month and a half it’s been, friends. As you may recall, I took a scheduled break from writing for a couple of weeks during Christmastide. I had every intention of enjoying the Christmas season and getting right back into the swing of things and filling your inbox with bits of joy and wonder from my life.
Then, Covid.
That's right, folks. It was the Twelve days of Covid at the Rogers Neighborhood. By Christmas Day, the whole household had come down with it. This meant that our plans for things like Christmas dinner, spending time with family and friends, and the three day trip to the retreat center we had been planning for months all had to be canceled. It was a miserable time.
I will freely admit to you that I was angry–and later depressed–about having to spend half of my yearly allotted paid time off, stuck at home, feeling miserable, and that my anger and depression were more severe and lasted longer than I would have expected. And yet, the joy of Christmas was not snuffed out. It was, in fact, a comfort to all of us that we were all sick at the same time and no one had to sequester themselves into a bedroom or wear a mask to keep from infecting anyone else. We did what we always do when we're sick: watch TV and movies, take naps, and, when we started to feel a little bit better, do lots of reading–some of the very things we planned to do anyway.
And then, just as things were settling down, we found a house.
You see, we had a house which we sold in mid-2020, and then moved into an apartment. We only planned to stay in the apartment for a year while we had a new house built for us. But if you know anything about the skyrocketing prices of building materials in North America during 2021, you can probably guess that we decided not to build after all and began looking for an existing home to buy. The area where we live (southeast Tennessee) has a booming and bustling real estate market, however, and people from all over the country have been selling their homes and buying houses in our area, sight unseen, for prices well above the sellers’ asking price. On top of that, mortgage rates are a lot higher than they were just a few years ago. Mix all that together, and it has been a discouraging experience.
But about a month ago, God helped us find a good home to purchase, at a price more reasonable than most comparable homes in our area. We closed on the house yesterday, and this weekend begins the weeks-long adventure of painting the entire house, replacing all of the flooring, taking care of some previously neglected maintenance and repair needs, and getting moved in, all by two weeks from tomorrow! 😬
I told some folks earlier this week that I was living with that feeling a person gets as they're standing on a cliff, getting ready to jump off into the water below. Yes, this is something my pre-middle-aged self did on several occasions. (I've never gone bungee jumping, but I can imagine that it’s the same.) When you’re standing at the top of the cliff, staring down at the water so far below you, it can be easy to feel paralyzed and overwhelmed with how much is about to happen in such a short amount of time–jumping, falling, the impact of the water, plunging far below the surface, struggling to come back up for air, then laughing and whooping with your friends and swimming back to shore so you can get on top of the cliff and do it all over again.
But when you're still at the top of the cliff, there's this feeling in your gut that isn't something you typically experience throughout the course of a normal day. It's the first date, the job interview, or the wedding day. I'm quite excited about one month from now, when we have finished moving and unpacking and have already started settling into our new home. But that plunge between now and then? It's a doozy.
Let me share one more thing with you, something that's helping me get through all of this.
I was enjoying a few minutes of quiet, asking Jesus to say something to me. All of the hustle and bustle I've described above made me a little desperate to hear from him. He took my mind back to the cliff analogy. I saw myself standing at the top of the cliff, looking down at the water, just like before. And I felt that same feeling in the pit of my stomach, like there was only 1 degree of separation between me and throwing up. Then I saw Jesus walk up beside me on my right side. He held out his left hand as an invitation for me to grasp it with my right, and he said, with a huge smile and a nod of his head toward the water below us, “Let’s go together.”
This was exactly what I needed to see and hear, a perfect invitation to abide with Him, to rest in Him, to trust Him, and the perfect reminder that God is with us, always, no matter how difficult or unmanageable life may seem.
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Recommended reading…
Rabbit Room Poetry has been sending excellence stuff to my inbox as of late (including a new favorite poet of mine, which you can read about just below). I've read this poem by Luke Harvey quite a few times now, and I'm enjoying it more and more as I read it. It is a beautifully layered mix of the "already" and "not yet."
My heart and mind are regularly being expanded and enriched by the poetry of
. Her ongoing Poet Jesus series is a fresh and vivid imagining of what it might be like for Jesus Christ to put pen to paper and compose contemporary verse. I’m also reading What Will Soon Take Place1, a collection of poetic calls and responses to the spirit of prophecy and the person of Christ as revealed in the last book of the Bible. Coming from a church tradition that may have been just a tad obsessed with the end times when I was young, I can relate to the perspective she's writing from.
Jonathan Rogers shares another delightful exploration into a few more words from the English language, including [helico] + [pter]’s and [Hamburg] + [er]’s.
If you’ve ever thought about board games as just a fun way to pass the time, this article might change your perspective. It explores how games like Wingspan aren’t just entertaining but can actually be a form of art—blending strategy, theme, and mechanics in a way that makes us engage more deeply with the world around us. Definitely worth a read if you love games, good storytelling, or just thinking about how everyday things can be more artistic than we realize!
You may have missed…
I’m reading, watching, listening to…
Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages, by Grace Hamman
Season 3 of The West Wing
Esmé Partridge & Paul Kingsnorth: How the West fell for pseudo religions
About two months ago now,
started recording longer videos on his YouTube channel that are only available to people who have paid memberships. So far in these videos, he's read through all of Dickens' Christmas Carol, as well as the first several chapters of The Wind In the Willows. Both of those stories are favorites of mine from way back, so I was begging to plug down my money as soon as I learned about the membership. Not only is he reading, however, but in his typical fashion, he is pausing from time to time to talk about the extraordinary nature of what's going on in the story, the language being used, or some bit of trivia related to the author or subject matter that is fascinating to learn but also pleasant to listen to coming from him, particularly. It is by far the most enjoyable digital media experience I have in my life right now.
My new playlist, Quieting In Winter, available here on Apple Music and here on Spotify.
It's time for me to go pull up old carpet and get walls ready to be painted. I hope you have a great weekend, and I'll see you again soon.
The Lord be with you!
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Also, I'm going to listen to your playlist whilst writing today!
Thank you so much for the shout out, Jason!