normalcy in a realm of relativity

8:30 AM: I'm on the phone with my parents, doing my best not to audibly hyperventilate in a Starbucks bathroom.  Change, unknowns, current and future stressors feel like a typhoon crashing against the bamboo shelter of my soul.

Moments, minutes, hours later, my premeditated typhoon is nothing more than a ripple in otherwise calm waters.  You'd think that I would learn.  You would think that the next ripple wouldn't fill me with dread at its approach, but it does.  Because what if this is the one that packs enough punch to knock me over?

Fast-forward exactly one week.  I'm blogging these thoughts from a quarantined apartment.  Fragility is the front page of every newspaper, the headlining comment of every conversation.  It is the topic of my internal monologue on the potential rebirth of a planet after a cataclysmic event while I walk around the block for fresh air, and for the first time in a long time, I see no one - no cars, no children on the playground across the train tracks, no one.  Just me and the late flakes of spring break snow.

And yet, in the fragility, there is an iron-wrought spine holding my shoulders straight and head high. In a day, free from the script of work and imagined social responsibility, there is still quiet prayer, loud prayer, laughing prayer, singing, questioning, wondering...moments, minutes, hours alone with the Creator God of the universe.  That is security, a sense of normalcy, in a world that would love to break her neck in an attempt to twist upside-down in slow motion.

7:30 PM: I'm on the floor of my kitchen, doing my best to remember today has been a day.  Not a week.  Everything on the quarantine checklist doesn't need to be marked off yet.  Today has been a day.  Tomorrow will hopefully be another one.  And maybe, after a while, this, like so many things, will be something we all move forward from.

when your right eye twitches

Did you know that even if you've convinced yourself that everything is fine, your body still has ways of telling you that everything is not fine?  Like, say for example, making your right eye twitch for weeks.  A week ago, my eye and emotional well-being were in a state.  Planning a wedding felt like too much, going to a missionary training center seemed impossible, work was too much to think about, and my mind was still in New York with my family.  I was crying a couple times a day, no problem.

Fast-forward to this week.  My bestest friend flew out to Wisconsin despite the corona apocalypse, and the first thing she said when she saw me was, "I'm taking you grocery shopping.  Not for me, for you." We got groceries, and with them, we hatched the hair-brained idea to make the flower arrangements for my wedding arch ourselves.  (Spoiler: they look SO much better than I was afraid they would!)  We've eaten a lot food, talked about the wedding weekend, organized, planned, and purchased.  She's had the chance to spend time with my fiance.  We've slept in.

My eye hasn't twitched in 36 hours.

And I think that's the reminder or lesson or moral.  Not many parts of life, particularly wedding planning, were designed to be handled by one person in isolation. While I know in my head that God designed people for community, to be balanced and supported and encouraged, I forget that I am not an exception even though I have enough stubbornness and pride for an army.  Asking for help is hard.  Asking for help figuring out what I need help with is...confusing.  The small seed of panic in my chest knows that not everything is figured out, but that is why I have a small army of God-fearing women around me, for planning wedding to marriage and beyond.