Royal’s birthday was the most impressive party we’ve thrown yet. It was hosted at the Chandler-Newberger Center. They gave us a room with tables and half the gym. The gym was pre-configured with two courses and an instructor showed the kids how to stretch and then how run the course.
For the most part the kids didn’t bother to follow a certain path but went to the places that most interested them for the next half-minute. Both Graham and Royal periodically disappeared to get a snack in the other room. After the first hour we moved to the snack room, gorged ourselves on bananas and worms-in-dirt, and watched Royal open gifts. He’d already opened his birthday gifts on his actual birthday - these were just the ones brought by guests and Uncle Mark, Aunt Steph and Viktoria.
There were six children and three times that many adults.
Royal's birthday had a monkey theme. Betcha can't guess why :)Royal's never done a gymnastics class before, but he's a natural.Every kid had a great time, but none more than Graham and Carter.It's a miracle; every child sitting at the same table, at the same time!If you got Royal a card, it was read to him. I can't guarantee he noticed.Where's Royal?There were balls on the parachute just a second ago...Can I make it over that last one? I think so.
I finished Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro yesterday. Ishiguro’s capacity to enflesh an android and perceive through its eyes a complex web of human relationships and the beauty, and fearfulness, of nature is astounding. I shall certainly read more from this exceptional contemporary author and heartily recommend Ishiguro’s work. I have not even begun to absorb the implications of the story for modern humans and their creations or fully appreciated the author’s visual subtleties. It’s not terribly long - go check it out!
The boys have enjoyed visiting Little Beans on Mondays. It’s worked great for Amie too; not only does it occupy our busy munchkins on a day I’m working and they’re not in school, but it’s also been a space to invite other parents to join.
I wonder how life will be different after this season ends?
The closest corollary to this experience in my own life was my year in Afghanistan. But Afghanistan irrevocably changes how I perceive this present season. I suppose it’s impossible to have two identical seasons, since the first will always transform the next.
Like Afghanistan, day-to-day survival is the only available option. Deliberate change requires some margin in the messy transition. Without margin, any change I undergo is the effect of my environment. Change is inevitable in survival, but not deliberate. To this season’s transformation I am more a passive observer than an intentional actor.
Like Afghanistan, a community of shared experience is absent. It’s slightly better than Afghanistan, I’ll admit, but only barely. The battle-worn, apostolic parents of the pandemic are enclosed in their own bunkers, no more available to us than we are to them. Praise God, I still engage in meaningful community with a few who share part of our suffering, but it’s limited by circumstance and nearly constant sickness.
And like Afghanistan, the voice of God is conspicuously absent while the work of the Enemy is unrelenting. Weekly I encounter resistances that, due to their persistence and timing, are certainly demonically inspired. I experience momentary respite when our friends are especially careful to pray, but it’d take a dedicated stream of constant prayers to adequately protect against the onslaught - and for how long?
So I wait. I keep a flicker of hope alive, do what good I can, reject the Deceiver’s accusations, and grip the goodness of God in my teeth like a tenacious bulldog. For I am sure that no thing, though all whom I love be lost, though my bed were agony and my food tears, though my path were darkness and my days cut short; nothing shall separate me from Him in whom my soul delights. I will join my friend Job in the dust until the day of my vindication. I do not know what sort of person I shall be when I rise again, but I shall not be the same man who descended into the pit.
Alright Alex, your waxing a bit poetic don’cha think? Well, sometimes it takes a little poetry. Why don’cha go read a Psalm?
Amie’s still sick. It’s almost more than I can do to sign in and work. This is not the story I thought we’d lead, and I’m angry. Angry and disappointed.
I need a break. Amie and Graham are sick, again, and Royal is daily the worst version of a raging toddler. The days go by in an angry haze, reacting to the latest crisis worse than the last.
