As we have settled into my hometown and the city where we met and fell in love, there have been waves of nostalgia and deja vu. These reminders that life loops back around were at first overwhelming having been taught by our culture that life is a hierarchy; a pursuit of climbing a ladder to get to a goal. How can you get to your goal when you are looping back around?
Now as we approach the season of Lent, I realize that these moments are really moments that are drawing our attention not to how far we have come, but rather what is most important in life. It’s in these moments that the Divine can whisper into our hearts and mind, “See that?”
Just a few weeks ago, our six-year-old and nineteen-month-old wore the matching dresses that our oldest girls wore in our wedding. When we ordered those dresses, I never even imagined that twelve years later we would be here in the same town with two other sisters wearing those dresses. So much of my adult life has been a reflection of, “I never thought I would be here,” in the most miraculous and surprising way.
As we look at the world around us and all the change and uncertainty that lies ahead, I know there is so much fear and worry. I wonder what it would be like instead to look around us and find those moments where life is coming back around reminding us that the Divine is still working and among us in a pair of matching dresses and a Saturday morning bagel. Maybe it’s these simple, seemingly ordinary moments that will ground us in the certainty that hope and love abound, no matter how the world shifts and changes.
