[The following post is a journal entry from April 17, 2023, which also happens to be my three-quarter birthday.]
This past Friday, I said to TJ that I really wished the track meet for Cash and Story hadn’t gotten moved to Saturday. TJ was sitting at the table and started asking me about why I wished that. So I started telling him some of my thoughts, such as not knowing the end time is hard for me, that uncertainty of how long it will go, and not knowing if it will work out for me to make the dinner I planned to make and also really wanting to ski because Saturday was going to be a beautiful day, and Sunday was supposed to rain, and Monday is the golf tournament, and Tuesday TJ is out of town. So I wanted to know I’d get to ski Saturday, and what if the track meet took all day? What if we had to eat dinner later (or not all together)? I reminded TJ of the Southside track meet and how I had planned to make the pulled pork from Jon and the sides I bought and prepared, and how that meet went so long and messed up our family dinner. I told TJ how I expect things to go how I plan them because they usually do (and the more they do, the less practice I get dealing with them not) and because I can control so much. Yet I know I can’t control things all the time. I know the nature of life is that parts are uncertain. Something about TJ asking me a few questions, and just pushing back (yet gently) was so, so good for me. It made me think and say why the Saturday track meet felt hard. I had thought about inviting people to dinner but had chosen not to because of the poetry gathering on Sunday night (save hosting energy for that), and I had been feeling thankful for a family day at home, not a day taking TJ, Cash, and Story away for hours to a track meet. TJ would do that willingly and cheerfully, I knew. I’m thinking now as I write this of Victor Frankl talking about not asking what we demand of life, but rather what does life demand of, or ask of, us? The climax of this story about the conversation with TJ is that at the end, I felt a strong sense of these words, Ginger, you’re not free, come to my mind. It was as if God spoke truth directly to me as a result of me and TJ engaging in this little talk. All day I could not stop thinking about that line: Ginger, you’re not free. Meaning, your schedule, your need for certainty, clinging tightly to the dinner plan, demanding that you get to ski - these things have a hold on you, and you are not living free to receive what comes, enjoy what happens. You can’t live this whole summer of skiing like this. Being free is worth way more than getting to ski. it was such a huge moment of insight and conviction/correction from the Lord in the context of community with TJ (Hannah said in her sermon yesterday that “New creation comes to us individually and corporately, and that our doubts belong to, and are healed in, the context of community.”) I feel extremely grateful to have received this word to me from the Lord, and I just keep thinking ever since that I want to live free. It means something now, that phrase “live free.” I told TJ later that night about the Ginger, you’re not free part and I thanked him for asking me those questions that got me talking and thinking and questioning how I was viewing the track meet, but also so much of life. After the sermon yesterday, where I learned we have 50 days to let the Resurrection become real to us, I felt like that was my Easter yesterday, a new beginning of a new creation. And there are still a lot more days of Easter (till Pentecost) to let it all sink in.
Three more things to add:
1. My kids were done at the track meet by 2:45 on Saturday so I got to ski and make dinner, both of which felt like gifts received, not gifts demanded.
2. My friend Natalie gave me this Live Free bracelet a year and a half ago, I think. I felt I couldn’t wear it until the time was right, and that is now. (Thank you Natalie.)
3. T minus 11 days till T. Swift.