Search

postmodernfamilyblog

Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

Open Search
Category

teaching during covid

When Our Hearts are in Deep… and At Risk

I’m a teacher. I pour my heart into my students. Every Day. From first bell to last, I show them love. I grant them access to my heart and mind and do my best to access theirs. It’s my calling and my job. And I love it.

There’s a movie I used to love called Freedom Writers. It’s the story of a teacher and her students — students society has shunned. Problem students. Rebellious students. Students most likely to be given up on. But this teacher doesn’t. She’s determined to help them see their potential, to find their voice, to show them the power of using it to better themselves and the world around them. What’s not to love, right? It’s what I try to do with my students. It is my number one goal.

So I was telling this fellow teacher how much I love this movie, and she floored me by saying she hated it. Really? She’s a literature and writing teacher too — and her personal story isn’t too far removed from the students’ in the film. She grew up rough, she spent her fair time in alternative schools. She didn’t trust herself, her abilities, or her voice. She was a rebel who found a cause in teaching. She dedicated her life to helping kids find themselves and their voice.

So I wondered, really wondered, why this teacher friend of mine hated this movie so much.

“Because that teacher gave too much of herself,” she said. “She destroyed her marriage, her mental health, her life outside of teaching. She gave TOO much.”

Dang.

My friend wasn’t lying. 

And that made me think about our current situation — teaching in a pandemic. Giving and giving and giving to fit our students’ needs. Because need us, they do. They need to be in school. They need the socialization and they need the quality of an in-person classroom. We saw – and are still seeing – the fallout from not having classes and classmates in person the last year and a half.

And we teachers need to be in school, too. Their faces, their physical presence keeps the fire lit inside us. Its a symbiotic relationship. Physical connections fuel educational connections.

But what does that mean for us as teachers? For the teachers who care passionately and want to give our students our very best so they may have the very best education?

It means we risk destroying ourselves in the process. These days, our hearts are at risk. Literally and figuratively. But more on that in a minute…

While we teachers work, our own children attend school. Many of them are too young to be vaccinated. Still, we send them to school because we believe in the power of in-person education, despite the risks. Right now, the benefits outweigh the risks, so I believe they are where they need to be. But they are not as safe as they could be. The risks could be reduced for them, even without the ability to be vaccinated yet. Masks can help reduce their risk.

But in most places, there are no school mask mandates. And without mask mandates — or at least the autonomony in our classrooms to require them — the virus will spread like wildfire. The Delta variant is hitting kids as fast as adults. It is as contagious as measles.

Wearing a mask does less to help the person wearing it than it does to those around them. So when my children wear masks and no one else does, their masks do little for them. And if I, a vaccinated teacher who poses little to no risk to others, wear one, it does very little to help my students. But if we all wear masks, it does innumerable good. And if we all wear masks, it does zero harm.

Because I’m not saying put a needle in your arm and subject yourself to “poison” or “policing,” or whatever notions you firmly believe in. That’s your right. But I am saying put on a mask to help protect MY CHILDREN. And my immunocompromised friends. And my medical provider friends and family who are exhausting themselves – giving WAY TOO MUCH OF THEMSELVES – for people who don’t believe the virus is a big deal.

And speaking of giving too much of yourself. Let me get back to how we are all — every last one of us — putting our hearts literally at risk. Let me tell you about my baby sister.

She’s 50 years old and she contracted a light case of covid last year. Sniffles, sore throat, fever, body aches, loss of taste and smell. She had zero comorbidities and was presumably fine afterward, but six months later she discovered the long-term effects. The virus had desiccated her heart. Her previously healthy, Peleton-bike-riding, yoga-loving heart. 

She thought she’d developed exercise-induced asthma. She began coughing with exertion. Having trouble breathing during exercise. Things went from bad to worse. She nearly collapsed climbing a flight of stairs.

An x-ray revealed major issues. A cardiologist was consulted. The diagnosis: myocarditis due to Covid. A heart function of 12%. She’s been on medication and a life vest for two months and showing little improvement. So in the next week, she’ll go into the OR for a defibrillator/pacemaker combo and then again later for a valve replacement. If these measures don’t work, she’ll be put on a heart transplant list. 

My previously healthy, vibrant, mask-wearing baby sister, 50 years old.

And the same thing is now happening to 20-40 somethings at high, high rates. They are coding in ERs every night. They are filling up hospital floors and ICUs faster than they were last January. And the morgues are getting there. And the cardiologists, they’re busier than they’ve ever been.

Can we ALL please just wear our masks?

And I know while I’m writing this that I won’t change anybody’s minds. That those who hate masks and rage against vaccines won’t read what I write. Or if they do, it’ll be to lash out at me. Or troll me. Or laugh behind my back. I know that. I’m not writing it for them.

I’m writing to the people who will read my words because they believe, because their hearts are in this and they know we’re in deep. They believe if we don’t do something, the outcomes will be tragic. They believe in the power of prevention. They believe in protecting our loved ones, keeping our kids in school, and our economy afloat.

I’m begging friends like these to please pick up their masks and pick up their phones and to use their voices and help change the world.

Help us keep from sacrificing way too much: our children, our medical professionals, and our economy. Please.

(And if you have similar personal stories or concerns and want to reach out, please feel free to send me an email at hhester05@gmail.com.)

1

This Teacher & Mama is Worried about this School Year

I’d been feeling so good, so hopeful about having a classroom full of consistently present students this year. That there would be no more masks at school. No more social distancing. No more diligent seating chart documentation. Hopeful there would be no more quarantines. 

I was feeling good about devoting my mind and energy to educating my students, not keeping them disinfected.About sending my boys back to school where the focus would be back on schooling.

I’ve been vaccinated. Many of my fellow faculty members have as well. Even some of my high school students have been. These vaccines, plus Covid19 cases subsiding due to a variety of factors, had me feeling hopeful. 

But then July hit. And the delta variant began wreaking havoc. Cases are rising again.. as rapidly as November of last year. But this time, a new fear comes with the rise. This time, kids are getting really, really sick. 

Last year, the severe coronavirus cases – and/or severe aftereffects — were more likely to occur in adults. And even mild cases left some adults with severe aftereffects – my baby sister being one. Covid19 saddled her with viral myocarditis and only 15% of a functioning heart.

She tells anyone and everyone she can to get vaccinated. I agree. My physician daughter does too. I trust my daughter who knows and trusts the science.

But our kids… the little ones… they can’t get vaccinated yet. And that scares me. 

Last year, our children, our students, were fairly safe. Our school system had only one student hospitalized – with Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome — due to Covid19. Thankfully, that student pulled through. 

But this year, things could be very different. 

This year, with this delta variant, children are being more heavily impacted. This past week, here in Georgia, a five-year-old with zero preexisting conditions died of Covid19.  In Mississippi, seven children under twelve are in the ICU with Covid19. Two on ventillators.

Y’all. That’s scary. As a parent, it’s terrifying. As a teacher, it’s terrifying. This year is terrifying on a whole different level. And while some would argue the odds are minimal, tell that to the parents of these children. 

Our middle and high school students have the option to be vaccinated. And some have been. I am thankful for that. But not all of them have been. Likely, not many.

And none of the elementary school age kids have been. No children under twelve. No children my boys’s age. They haven’t because they can’t yet. But rest assured, as soon as they can be, my boys will be. I want to protect them. And I want to protect others. 

But until then… I’m hopeful that masks will be back. And social distancing. And diligent seating chart documentation. And while I’m prayerful that there will be no more quarantines, I’m worried.

This teacher is worried, yes. 

But mostly, this Mama is worried. 

1

Time to Tuck in this School Year and Lay it to Rest

It’s time to put this school year to bed.

We’ve got three more weeks with kids and then one more for post-planning, and I’m ready. This year nearly convinced me I didn’t want to ever teach again. 

It’s just been so hard. To keep going. To make connections. To smile.

Nobody could see them anyway, hidden behind our masks. And for me, Miss Far-from-Dynamic-or-Charismatic-or-Entertaining… smiles are how I form connections with my kids. How I build relationships with them. One reassuring, genuine smile at a time. (But after the loss of two of the most important people in my life, the few smiles I had weren’t always even genuine.)

Some folks have a presence that commands, an energy that radiates off their entire being like they swallowed the sun and breathe its fire through their pores. 

That’s not me. 

I’m quiet and unassuming, and I easily blend into the background. But I am warm and I am safe. I’m steady and exacting. And so is my classroom. And smiles are how I convince students to take risks inside its walls, under my warm, watchful eye… and smile. 

I’m a firm believer in rigor. I challenge. I set a high bar and watch my students struggle to meet it, with smiles of encouragement and with applause and constructive criticism, and the warm assurance that they are in a safe place.

But not this year.

This year, the rigor was softened — the only soft spot in the entire year.

It had to be. This year, the rigor couldn’t come from the classroom because the rigor was coming at them hard from life. For them. And for me. These are some of the toughest tests we’ve ever endured.

So the smiles were lost. From them. From me.

And we all feel lost. We all feel like we lost.

And we did. We have.

We lost loved ones. I lost my dad. I lost my aunt.

We lost our edge and gained a few edges we’re not proud of — edges formed from resentment and anger. And we nearly lost our motivation. (Some of us, sadly, did.) And our lights were nearly snuffed out.

Remember that old Sunday School song about hiding your light under a bushel? Well, with our smiles hidden under a bushel, the Satan in the form of Covid almost stole our light.

Me, I’ve tried faking it till I make it. Since my smiles are invisible, I’ve tried slipping them inside my voice. Packing my vocal chords as tight with tinkling, prismatic light as I possibly can and then practically singing each student’s name as they come down the hall. But the muffler slung ear to ear on my face acts as a soft pedal, tamping down my smile and energy. They meet me with their own, soft, tamped down greetings behind their own, soft, tamped down smiles.

And the connections have been slow. Or not at all. With almost all of them. Except, thankfully, for my study hall kids. My study hall kids make for an ideal case study on the importance and value of smiles.

Those kids, they get to see me smile. And I get to see them smile. And for an hour each day during lunch, they eat in my room, and I eat in my room, and none of us wear masks. It’s a small group of eighteen. And they’re all spaced out – each to their own five foot desk.

So no masks, and lots of smiles. And the relationships I have with them are flourishing.

But with my six other classes? Well.

We are not well and good. We are far from it. And we are all so thankful this year is drawing to a close.

No, this year has not been my best. And it sounds silly to say because I know no teacher thinks this year was their best. Nobody at all thinks this year was their best.

But I guess sometimes saying it helps. Sometimes saying it helps us move on. And I need to move on. I’m ready.

I’m ready to put this school year to bed and wake up and unleash my smile.

2

Carpe Diem and the Soggy Bits

I woke up this morning at 4:14. I didn’t want to. I wanted to sleep. I’m beyond exhausted. I feel like the soggy bits at the bottom of a garbage disposal… all churned up and left to be washed away. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there tossing and turning, trying to quiet my mind. My mushy, damp, mushroom filled mind. 

It wallows in darkness all the time now. After all, this is the year of living with mortality. From the five hundred thousand and counting deaths due to Covid, to the traumatic cardiac event that cost my father his life, to the long-suffering, slow loss of  my aunt, it has been a tough year. 

I was going try to fight through the wakefulness this morning. Try to lie there, mind churning, stirring and slicing my thoughts, leaving me anxious and exasperated. But then I remembered the article I read this week… about how we need quiet time, Me Time. Time with no interruptions, no pressing obligations (well, they’re there… but nothing can really be done about them at 4 AM), and how those simple solitary hours can be some of the most important, and most difficult, to find. Especially for a 54 year- old grieving daughter and niece, who is also the mother of twin soon-to-be-seven year old sons, as well as adult daughters, who still pull at the strings of my heart and the thoughts in my mind, no matter how grown they get. Plus, I’m the wife of a coach getting geared up for spring ball, and the teacher of 160-plus students. In a pandemic year. All of this. In a pandemic year. 

Let me say, this year has shown me why teachers retire after 30 years. I get how if you start your career straight out of college, a dew-skinned, wide-eyed, tenderfoot, that by the time you hit 52, you’re spent. You’ve developed thick skin, side-eyes, and calloused heart. (Let it be known I work hard every single day not to let my heart grow hard. My conscience is a pumice stone, grinding away the calcium deposits and thick skin. But also let it be known that tenderness makes my job way harder. It leaves me wide open to wounds and weeping.) 

But alas for me, I was never a 22 year old teacher. I am a product of a nontraditional trajectory: back to school at 32, graduated at 34, 20 years a teacher, and way beyond spent. Emotionally and mentally. 

And I know it’s not all teaching that’s done it to me — because my nontraditional trajectory didn’t stop at my late-blooming career path. I also decided to have a second set of children, twin boys no less, at 48. Boys who didn’t sleep for sixteen months – which may be partly why (nearly seven years later) I still can’t seem to catch up… and why waking this morning at the ass crack of day’s beginnings was so incredibly insulting.

And I know it’s not all parenting primary-school twin boys that’s exhausted me.  Because the pandemic has saddled me with all sorts of extra weight too… the five-to-ten pounds worth of stress eating because, hell, carpe diem, for tomorrow we may… well, you know. I mean, after all, 500,000 have, plus my father and aunt. And then there’s the return of teenaged acne from the fabric masks I wear faithfully, and the lack of smiles from my students (maybe just because I can’t see them under their own faithfully-worn masks or maybe because they aren’t smiling either). And the continual waves of students leaving for quarantine and returning from quarantine. And my asynchronous classroom adaptations so hopefully they don’t feel as lost and forlorn as I do. But they do…

And I know it’s not all pandemic. Because I’m also executor to my father’s estate. Which means I haven’t had time to truly mourn because I’m dealing with the load and stress and anxiety of dealing with finances and legal matters that are completely alien to my being. It’s like handing a toddler a buzzing chainsaw and telling her to clean out the underbrush. It’s too heavy. There’s way too much room for error. There’ so much I could do wrong. Chop down the ancient oak or the beautiful dogwoods, get tangled up in poison ivy, raze my legs right out from under me.

I need supervision every step of the way. And thank heavens I’ve had it. I have a family of experts in various arenas and they’ve all lent a hand. Me, all I’m good at is the grunt work. The clearing of the debris. I guess that’s why I have the chainsaw, after all. But, have mercy!

So here I am, typing away my innermost thoughts on my computer (at now, 6 AM), the warm glow of a lamp next to me, warm coffee in my favorite mug,and nothing to keep me company but the quiet hum of the boys’ white noise machines and the keyboard recording my inner-most thoughts. 

And not gonna lie, it’s kinda nice. (Not saying nice enough to attempt on a daily basis because, by GOD, I’m running on dregs.) But still, kinda nice. Like the distinct pleasure of low tide. There are tiny, sparkling bits of peace unearthed or deposited there in the newborn damp.

I guess there are gems to be found in the soggy bits once the churning has paused after all. 

So, right now, I’m actively searching for them. I’m using these newborn, wet moments of my day to write my memoir, to chase my future. To birth yet another nontraditional career inside the trajectory of my nontraditional life. 

I’m believing in myself. For at least a hot minute — before the sun comes up and the boys wake up and the day’s demands start rising again… leaving me fighting for life. Not just my life, but all life. My boys’, husbands’, girls’, students’, society’s. 

It makes for an exhausted life. But a worthy one. So carpe diem it is.

2

When Life Gives you the Bird x 3

We found a dead bird under my father’s mattress. It’s the second dead bird since he’s been gone.

The first was the week following his death. It lay in swirls of peach blush and red feathers, sprawled on the outdoor sectional’s cream cushions like a puffy Renaissance nude — an Audubon Society pinup — anticipating a quick nap. Only the nap was prolonged due to a picture window kamikaze mishap.

And then last weekend, the second one. Also red, no blush this time, all sleek and secret under my father’s upstairs master bed mattress. We unearthed it while diving for dumpster deposits in preparation for an estate sale. The mattresses had to go. No one wants to sleep on a dead man’s mattress. Especially a decades-old one. The mattress, that is, but so too, was the man.

And then a third bird — a robin this time — flew headlong into our screened door on Sunday and knocked itself senseless. It hung out for a while on our porch, ruffled and pouring shat like a cement mixer, before finding the wherewithal to fly away.

I’m a big believer in signs. And birds… they’re symbolic. And things in threes — they’re like the Holy Grail of signs and should never be ignored. But what do they mean?

Well, birds are symbolic of souls. Of souls ready to fly. They can be souls bound for glory or souls bound for freedom. Sometimes those things are one and the same. Sometimes they’re not. Here’s hoping they’re not — at least not in terms of that third bird.

Pretty sure the first two are representative of my father’s soul — a soul flown to glory. Especially considering when and where each was found. A bird in a house symbolizes a trapped soul. And when that bird doesn’t make it, it symbolizes death. So, too, does a bird hitting a window.

So here we are… three birds: two dead, one dazed and confused and shitting on my back porch. In a year already swollen and battered by anxiety, I can’t help but worry.

But that third bird… that robin (the species itself a harbinger of spring and new life)… I want to believe that bird symbolizes freedom. Freedom from this pandemic. Freedom from the ungodly stress and hit after hit this year has delivered to me and mine: my kids, husband, extended family, students, school.

This week has been particularly awful. We’ve had upheaval after upheaval. Our boys have croupy colds. My daughter’s boys have croupy colds. My other daughter endured a traumatic patient loss. And then there’s my husband’s and my work week (and it’s only Wednesday).

We have students sitting social distanced in hallways watching class from computer screens, and students sitting quarantined at home watching class from computer screens, and students sitting in class watching class from behind masks. And none are eager to participate. It’s all just too overwhelming.

And then there’s us. The teachers. We have teachers teaching their own students — in a myriad of ways — and teachers teaching other teachers’ students — for a myriad of reasons. We have teachers getting their temperatures taken twice daily because of exposure risk, and teachers taking anti-anxiety meds twice daily because of exposure risk, and teachers getting sick because of exposure risk, and teachers taking early retirement because of exposure risk. It’s all just too overwhelming.

And then there’s my father’s estate. I’m executor. And road blocks and delays are waiting at every turn. None of it’s been easy. Then multiply the “not easy” times a thousand because I am not a financially-inclined, legally-minded sort of individual. Not in the least. So it all keeps me forever off balance. And honest-to-God exhausted.

And any way you look at it, we are all, all of us, taking punches right and left, and the universe just keeps swinging.

It all feels so overwhelming and so honest-to-God impossible.

So here I sit, dazed and confused in a pile of shit not of my making, as the blows rain down upon me, and I pray there is another way. That there are indeed, better days coming.

That robin on my back porch regrouping while the wind whipped around it — I really need it to symbolize me. All of us. My family. My students. My school. My community. My country. All of us struggling under the whiplash of all the screen doors slamming us sideways right now — but still fighting our way toward freedom. Toward rebirth.

Bruised, battered, and split stem to stern, though we may be, I need to know we can rise above the monumental, excremental existence we’ve been living for far too long now and learn to soar. Again.

Amen.

2

2020 Won: now to find myself again

The holidays felt so very different this year. Not like the holidays at all.

Like so many, I lost a loved one in 2020. My father. And I nearly lost an aunt, an aunt who is still not out of the woods. And while neither were victims of Covid19, we’re still theoretically victims: my dad’s siblings couldn’t come to his funeral, my aunt’s wife and family are isolated from her, and I didn’t see my daughters at Christmas.

Nor did I see my husband on New Year’s Eve — or for the dawn of this rainy new year. He’s quarantined in the basement and has been for a week now. No kiss for me from him on New Year’s Eve — for the first time since the calendar turned from 07 to 08.

Christmas just didn’t feel like Christmas — even with the Christmas star. Even with the conjoined energy of shimmering planets sending out hope for the first time in 800 years. And boy, this year has felt like eight hundred. And we desperately need to see — and feel — more beacons of light in this darkness.

And we had one — one we were going to not just see on the horizon, but actually be a part of. Our high school football team — in this most-hazardous and unprecedented of years, achieved the near-impossible: they made it to the state championship.

My husband coaches on this team. The season was longer, more exhaustive (and exhausting), and anxiety-riddled than any other. And our team made it all the way to the pinnacle. The coaches, players and families dedicated more time and energy, and made more sacrifices this year than in any other. But while the team made it to the ship, we didn’t.

We were separated from that, too. By Covid19. So my husband and I watched on television, separated from each other and from the rest of our team.

And to add insult to injury, the other team won. Big time.

And now its New Year’s Day. 2021. And I saw a meme about how when you say it out loud, it’s “2020 won.”

And that’s pretty much how I feel.

Defeated and depressed and about as far from who I am as I’ve ever been.

Isolated. From my loved ones and myself.

Divided by walls. Walls I’ve put up to insulate my heart against more hurt. And walls I’m relying on to insulate my body from a virus. I feel like I’m living in a steel bunker and trying to ride out the storm. Alone.

Well, not quite alone. I have twin six-year-old boys with me. Two six-year-old, stir-crazy boys doing their best to stir their mama up. To push my buttons and release a raging inferno of wrath. And the one thing that’s saving them is I don’t have much spark left.

Rachel Platt may sing it only takes one match, but my match is nearly snuffed out. It’s barely flickering. It’s spitting and hissing under the weight of all the darkness. Darkness that descended in March, but got really, really oppressive on November 17th and hasn’t let up yet.

And in just three days time, I have to emerge from this bunker and back into the perils of my parallel universe… the one with more people surrounding me, but where I feel equally alone. And much more vulnerable.

Next week, I will go back into a classroom, where I will hunker down with over 160 rotating currents of students. Eight times a day, students will flow in and out of the halls and classrooms, bringing and leaving tide pools of contagion that teachers hopefully can contain and curtail with Clorox wipes and seating charts.

But the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks made it abundantly clear that those weapons were not nearly enough.

And right now, I don’t know that I am enough — that I have enough. Enough of what it takes to face more obstacles, difficulties, and darkness.

2020 won. I hope 2021 is a bit kinder and gentler, and I pray it will give me some time to get up, dust off, and find myself again.

2

Teaching inside Covid’s Inferno

While teaching Dante to my honors sophomores, I can’t help but reflect on the parallels between his epic journey and the year 2020.

We should’ve known when we lost Kobe that this year did not bode well. Then March happened. And schools took a “two week break” to flatten the curve, and there was no turning back.

The year should’ve borne a warning label: “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.”

Two weeks trying to flatten the curve turned into two months, then two seasons, and now three. It seems there’s no flattening this curve. The bell swells bigger and bigger — but in reverse — as down we go, sagging lower and lower into this hell curve.

We’ve been plunged into Covid’s Inferno. A continuous downward spiral. Concentric circles of darkness and despair.

My students are suffering. My fellow teachers. My family. Me. We’re all suffering. Schedules and structure have been harrowed, relationships strained, connectivity disrupted, disjointed, destroyed. Time lost. Joy lost. Lives lost. Adolescent angst is at an all time high. Adult spirits are at an all-time low.

For a brief while — at the end of September — things finally seemed to be looking up. Turns out, we were just climbing one of the rocky walls that separate some of the more wretched ditches of the depths of hell.

Things began crumbling beneath us again. We rode a rockslide of new outbreaks, new quarantines, huge empty sections of classes as students became At-Home-Learners — a new, benign term for a much-maligned state in this 2020 school year. So… we went on hybrid again.

There are lots of hybrid creatures in Dante’s version of hell, half human, half beast. And now there are hybrid schedules in our version. Half our students here for half a week while the other half are at home, then switch.

The hybrid schedule is likewise half beast. Students really struggle with it. Still, at least kids are meeting with teachers in person. At least we can see their faces — half of them, anyway. Half-faced students, all foreheads and eyes, the rest hidden beneath masks.

Some say eyes are the windows to the soul. If that’s true, these kids still feel hopeless, despite our best efforts. Lost in a hell swamp. Drowning in an abyss of strangeness, angst, and isolation. And we are too… we teachers are drowning too.

We’re all fighting so hard. To stay afloat. To stay positive. To do good work. But we’re exhausted. It‘s an exhaustion like we’ve never known before.

And now, watching the news and seeing the headlines, the pictures — the miles and miles of cars waiting for COVID tests outside Dodger stadium, the pop up morgues constructed in El Paso, the renewed lockdowns in New York City — I feel like we’re waiting for a tidal wave to hit us and we’re armed with nothing more than a mask for safe passage across the swirling torrents of infection. Masks and wishful thinking.

…and so often kids let the masks slide down their noses and mouths while talking to each other and to me, sending droplets circulating into 2nd circle whirlwinds waiting to sweep us all up in their contagion. Droplets poised like microscopic 7th circle centaurs, arrows pointed at our chests.

It’s hard to guard ourselves from infection. If we haven’t been impacted physically, we’ve been impacted emotionally. Our hearts are feeling defeated. Covid has threatened every piece of refuge we have — school, home, church, and now, in this season, holiday gatherings. It threatens our every peace, this snapping, vicious multi-headed beast.

We’re in the ninth month of this journey. Surely we’re nearly done. I want so desperately to believe it… that Satan’s about to show his ass one final time so we can crawl down the hairy hank and emerge from this Hell hole of a year and into the shining light again.

I don’t know when it will be over, but I know it will. One day, good Lord willing –and hopefully soon — we will emerge, better for the journey. Wiser. More compassionate and understanding and thankful.

Good Lord Willing.

God, I hope it’s soon.

.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑