I Peter 2:4-10
One morning, in the midst of this COVID-19 shut-down, Daniel Stewart-Morales woke up with an earache. It happens fairly often, but this time around, for his dads, it was frightening. “What if we have to take him to the Emergency Department?” they worried. The potential for COVID infection changed a typical childhood occurrence into a source of anxiety.
Rachel worries about her kids–Robert, Anita, Manny and Bonita–a middle schooler, a college student, a graduate student and a young nurse, at home together for the first time in years. She worries about the one who stays up all night and sleeps all day but won’t talk about her feelings. She worries about the one who has nightmares about being choked by a mask. She worries about the teenage and young adult instinct to think they know it all. “I know it’s hard for them,” she says, so I try to give in as much as I can and still be tough. Sometimes I have to be the bad guy. I even took away the car keys.”
Jim worries about the impact this will have on four-year-old Olive’s social development if it goes on a long time. “With masks and not being able to touch other people, that’s a big bummer. If it becomes her life,” Jim continues, “that changes you.”
Amy shares a similar concern for Myka and Asher. “I worry that this comes at a time in their development when social interactions are really important. You don’t get to go back and do six years old again.”
Terri has been thinking more broadly about school. “My biggest concern is that the school system doesn’t have nearly enough comprehension of the level of trauma that is there. There seems to be an expectation that we will just go back to normal.”
Wow. There is a lot for parents to worry about these days.
This week I had the privilege of talking with six of our moms and dads about what it is like to be parents in this strange time. I am grateful to Jeff and Cesar Stewart-Morales, Rachel Mitchell, Jim Tanner, Amy Plackowski, and Terri Taylor for their willingness to share both their struggles and their wisdom.
Throughout our conversations, I had in the back of my mind our reading from I Peter, this vivid metaphor of living stones being built into a spiritual house. As the parents told me about the ways their lives were turned upside down almost overnight, I found myself envisioning this time as an earthquake with an endless series of after-shocks. Before COVID-19, each of these households had settled into their own way of being family. They had pieced together schedules that balanced–if sometimes precariously–work and school and play, structure and relaxation, time apart and time together. Practically overnight, it seems, the ground shook and structures fell apart.
“Suddenly,” Amy comments, “we have to be everything for our kids–parents, teachers, playmates.” Jeff and Cesar have struggled to tag-team working from home while trying to help the boys with school. David’s second-grade virtual school involves maneuvering a google sheet grid filled with links. Rachel has picked up extra hours at work since expenses are higher. She comes home exhausted and tries to oversee school work. “It’s too much work,” she admits. “I try not to show them I’m tired or in pain. I just do what I have to do, then I go in my bed at night and cry, and then I pray.”
As we talked, I pictured these beautiful, resilience, fragile homes built of living stones, suddenly shaken by the reverberations of a deadly virus. Some of the stones remain intact; others have shaken loose as those carefully-crafted structures collapse. The rebuilding has to begin right away, because children need security, but the aftershocks continue. The builders–the parents and their now physically-distanced support systems–struggle to know how to rebuild. The future is unpredictable: how do you build a strong, stable home when you don’t know what will be needed?
Still they build. They check to make sure the foundation is strong. They stop to pick up stones that have fallen and ask whether they are still life-giving. They repurpose some and seek out new building materials as well.
I asked the parents what they are discovering about the foundation stones that undergird their parenting in this time. Rachel’s foundation is gratitude for having grown up in church. “If I didn’t have that,” she says, “I wouldn’t have been able to be this strong.” As a child, she learned the psalms. Now, whenever she is stressed and overwhelmed, a psalm comes to her.
Jim talked a lot about his Grandma, realizing the wisdom she imparted to him during her life. She held on tightly to her family, even when they resisted. “Now,” he says, “I see that you have to hold the place and hold it tight.” As someone who traveled often for work, he has rediscovered the gift of being home. “The world has started spinning much slower, and that feels pretty good.”
Terri’s foundation includes trying to keep a calm presence, recognizing that there are times emotions well up and need to be expressed, in order to be able to return to that calm.
Amy and Jake have focused on staying connected with extended family, using cards and phone calls and Zooms to claim that firm foundation. They have also worked to create a sense of normalcy–making sure Easter dinner felt special, for example.
Jeff and Cesar have built a strong foundation in their shared family prayer life. Each night, as they say prayers with David and Daniel, they have an opportunity to talk about what’s happening and to put fears in a broader frame of God’s love. “It helps to pray for the world and the people in our lives,” Jeff says. “The act of prayer is soothing.”
In the midst of uncertainty and loss and on-going aftershocks, there is a powerful opportunity to claim and strengthen the foundations on which our lives are built. The Psalms, family ties, cultivating calm, reclaiming Grandma’s wisdom, shared prayers–these living stones make a firm foundation.
I was struck by the creative ways these five families are building on their foundations. They are taking advantage of disrupted schedules to develop new family traditions, new experiences that will lead to a resilient scaffolding of memories.
When I spoke with Terri, she was outside watching Meghan and Conor play softball. I could hear the crack of the bat in the background. She told me that Conor and his dad Tim have begun hiking together on the conservation land behind their home.
Amy and her family have also discovered hiking, using the All-Trails app to try new places. Every place they go, they select a stone to bring home with them, and use it to create a border for the new perennial garden Amy has been planting in their front yard.
Amy and Jake weren’t sure the twins would take to the hiking, but they love it. Amy comments that over the years, she and Myka have cultivated a shared love of art museums. She hadn’t yet found that “special thing” to do with Asher. Now she has.
Jeff and Cesar are enjoying helping the boys connect with their family heritage. They had a Guatemalan cookout in their backyard. Betsy–Abuela, Grandma–made pineapple juice the way her family made it in Guatemala. Rachel and her grown and almost-grown children are having fun taking on household projects. They painted the living room. And sometimes the weekend begins with Karaoke night. Oh, how I’d love to be a fly on that newly-painted wall listening in on that talented bunch.
Jim, Danielle and Olive are doing a lot of cooking together. Olive loves to cut and mix and stir. Making waffles is a new favorite. “Now I get how cooking for us made my Grandma so happy,” Jim says.
While the constructing of these newly-renovated spiritual homes happens amidst physical distancing, it doesn’t happen in isolation. Grandparents–at home, via Zoom and alive through memories–help in the construction. Church community and the resources of our faith help. Knowing that there are other household in the neighborhood and even all over the world who are wrestling with similar challenges helps as well.
This is a hard time–filled with disruption and stress. It is also a creative time, as hope for a new future emerges. Terri hopes we will claim our human capacity for empathy, and refuse to buy into the narrative that we are selfish. Jim is grateful for the pause that is turning out to be longer than a pause; as choices return he wants to choose to stay home more. Amy is aware that her children are living through a significant moment in history: what will be the stories they will tell from this time, hikes and stones and gardens and more? Jeff hopes we come out of this with a better awareness and appreciation for the struggles of others. And I wonder how those karaoke nights will shape Rachel’s family’s bonds in the years to come.
What about for you? Whatever our home or family configurations, every one of us is experiencing an earthquake-like disruption of our lives. What are you discovering about the foundation stones that ground your life? How might they be shored up in this time? What has fallen away that may no longer be life-giving? What living stones are you using to rebuild and restore and make new?
May your foundation rest on the assurance that God’s love is with you always. May your reshaping and rebuilding be blessed with God’s creative spirit. May you know that you are not alone. We are in this together, ready to help each other, eager to admire the beautiful new spiritual homes that are taking shape. Thanks be to God. Amen.