“What does peace look like?” was the question this week at children’s church, a group of kids aged 2 to 13 who meet in the basement “chapel” below the main sanctuary while adults sing and kneel and stand above.
There was a pregnant pause as the children thought this over. Sacred Heart, the church I attend, is in Camden, NJ, one of the poorest cities in the country, so in our group are kids who hear gunshots at night as they try to sleep, and then kids like my own, who live in the relatively safe suburbs, and don’t.
As the pause continued, I wondered if maybe the question was too hard for these kids. Maybe we should just give them the crayons and let them start coloring, a sure crowd pleaser. But then little Denaya spoke up: “A tree, and a river.” That got the other kids going. “A rainbow!” “A donkey!” “My mom!” “Snow!” “Rain!” “Sunshine!” (most weather, apparently) “My family.” “School.” “My grandmom.”
As the ideas wound down, all of the kids got a leaf to color on. They were told to draw what they thought of when they thought of peace. The leaves would then go on a “peace tree” for all to see.
Grace, my five year old, busily got to work. She drew two girls, hands together. “What do you think it is?” she asked me, a favorite game for her and her sister.
“Um, you and Genevieve holding hands?” I ventured.
Grace shook her head, looked at the drawing, and added a few last touches. “Nope. It’s Genevieve and me snuggling!”
Other kids were drawing their rivers, their trees, their gentle donkeys lying down in the stable. I smiled. Children know peace. And now, every night, when Grace and Genevieve end up sleeping side by side in the same bed despite how much they have argued throughout the day (they always do, despite separate bedrooms), I can think that this is what peace looks like to me, too.
Last spring, when flying home to Philadelphia from Atlanta, I missed my 7:30 am flight on a Sunday morning. I arrived only a few minutes late due to a wrong turn on the way to the airport, but my seat had been given away. The next flight, at12:40, was completely booked, and the next flight after that, at 5:30, was full as well.
“So I might be here until tomorrow?” I asked the agent, wanting to cry. I desperately wanted to see my two girls, and I had several hours of work to do, which I didn’t have with me, in order to teach the next day. The agent dealt with people like me all day, though, everyone wanting to get home, and so she had no sympathy. Stress coiled around me like a snake.
When I arrived at the gate, running past bright advertisements for BMWs (“No license required!”), non-profits (“You are powerful!”), and super suitcases (“In your world, only the tough survive”), hope surged in me that I could somehow get on the flight, despite what I had been told.
“Any chance …” I began breathlessly, staring longingly at the plane parked out the window that was going, in just a few minutes, to exactly where I wanted to be. The boarding ramp was still attached and the gate was open.
The woman held her hand up to me and shook her head adamantly. “No.”
Defeated, I sat down on a chair in a row of not entirely comfortable chairs at the gate. Then I got up and went to a more private place to call home, just in case I cried. I checked one more time at the counter if I could get on the flight, or at least be confirmed on the 12:40 flight, just to be sure (No, I couldn’t). Then I watched my plane pull away.
Feeling very sorry for myself, I sat looking at the other passengers. They were all in transit, unlike me. A young looking African American woman and her daughter walked by, her daughter trailing Hannah Montana luggage. Perfectly coiffed airline attendants and pilots passed, with their tiny blue suitcases. A couple said goodbye at the gate across the way. He was the last one on the plane, and they kept hugging. She was crying. Finally, he got on. Wish that were me, I thought (the guy, not the sad girl).
A woman ran by, screaming angrily into her cell phone. “I don’t care what you do! Just get on the elevator or the escalator or something!” A few minutes later she went running by in the other direction, a harried looking man running after her carrying two suitcases. I didn’t see them again. I settled back in my chair and tried to read a magazine from my bag. I imagined what I might eat for lunch and dinner at the airport, and where I would sleep if I couldn’t get on a flight today. Could you sleep in the airport? I watched some more passengers go by. Time dragged.
I noticed a woman across the walkway with a cleaning cart behind her—mop, broom, paper towels—who looked like she was waiting to come over to speak with me. I got nervous. Maybe she had read my mind about sleeping in the airport. I won’t be any trouble, I prepared to say, you won’t even know I’m here. I remembered a miserable night sleeping in the Madrid airport in Spain years before. The woman started walking towards me. She was a short, slightly plump African American woman with her gray-streaked hair pulled high onto her head. She wore a maroon, airport staff shirt, no make-up, and sensible, thick-soled black shoes, I noticed. She was walking right towards me, slowly, methodically. Uh oh, what now? I thought.
Now she was right in front of me. She nodded towards my empty coffee cup and napkin on the seat next to me. I was going to throw them out! I thought.
Suddenly, she broke into a warm smile. “How you doin’ honey?” she asked.
Her smile warmed me a bit. “Ok,” I replied. She pointed to the coffee cup and napkin again. “You done with that?”
“Yes, I am. Yes.” It took me a second to realize I wasn’t being reprimanded. She was offering to help.
The older woman smiled again as she gathered my trash and walked across to her cart. Suddenly, I noticed the filled-to-the-brim yellow bags on her cart—filled with newspapers, cups, bottles, and who knows what else from all over the airport. That was really nice, I thought. She could have just waited and let me throw that out myself. I felt the snake of stress around me uncoil a bit.
I looked again at the passengers passing by. A mom and a dad with their twin toddlers, both asleep in their arms, children with sleeping faces, soft and shining. The parents looked worried, for some reason. I wondered why. A group of three young men in army uniforms, with enormous backpacks and sturdy brown boots. Were they coming or going? I wondered. Had they been away from home for long? An elderly woman went by in a wheelchair, her pocketbook on her lap, an employee pushing the chair and chatting away to her. She just nodded. I wonder how it would be, I thought, to have to depend on others like that?
Then I noticed the cleaning woman again, the one who had called me “Honey.” She was in the middle of the walkway, bending down slowly to pick up something I couldn’t see. When I looked more closely I could tell it was a miniscule gum wrapper, hardly noticeable. She got it between her fingers and walked over to her cart with the yellow bags, where she stood and looked around for something else to clean.
A wave of –what, shame?- or something like it washed over me then, as I watched this older African American woman take obvious care in her job, such care that she would pick a little, tiny, unnoticeable gum wrapper off a busy floor as passengers rushed by, most not noticing her and certainly nobody thanking her. Was this where she wanted to be today? I thought. In an airport cleaning up after people? I’m sure the answer was no. Yet here she was, flashing me a smile and calling me honey, picking up gum wrappers off the floor. My self-pity from that morning flashed in front of me like a movie. I cringed.
I do want to get home, desperately , I thought but … well, I want to be more like that woman. I took a deep breath.
I began praying for the passengers going by me. The harried-looking parents, children throwing temper tantrums in their arms, the loud, gum-chewing teenagers, the service men and women, walking by so unruffled and stoic, the passengers in wheelchairs. The hundreds and hundreds of people in this airport, just like me.
After a bit I got a book and sat and read quietly, something I always love to do, though not necessarily in a hectic airport. This was nice, though, even relaxing. After that, I wrote in a journal. I wrote about my girls and my husband, and my experience at the conference I had been at that weekend, and the people I was seeing walk by.
Actually, I realized as they announced the eminent boarding of the 12:40 flight to Philadelphia, I was kind of enjoying myself. I had passed a pleasant morning in the airport.
As I stood in the standby line for that 12:40 flight (which, by the way, I did not get on, nor did I get on the 5:30), I prayed for the cleaning lady, too, and for her quiet grace that brought a little bit of peace, and some much needed perspective, to my travels.
Grace likes to stump me with questions throughout the day, though I’m sure that’s not her intention. Who invented words? Where does the water in your mouth come from? Why does glass break?
And then, as we were driving back from ice skating today, Patti Griffin’s honey-like voice singing "House of Gold" in our warm car as Genevieve gazed sleepily out the window: Mom, who is God? Her tone implied that she expected an answer. I mean, if I knew who her Nana’s mom was, wouldn’t I know this as well? I answered as I answer most of her deepest questions, as I’ve found children don’t react well to long theological diatribes: “Well, what do you think?”
She smiled and almost laughed. “I don’t know.” I smiled too and reached back for her hand. We left it at that, the blue sky and bit of sunshine after two days of snow enough of an answer for now. Tonight as I tried to figure out what to do with 20 kids tomorrow at children’s church (a job I somehow said yes to though everything in me wanted to say no), I was reminded of Grace’s question.
The story of tomorrow’s Gospel is of Jesus going up to the mountain to pray with Peter, James, and John. Those three fall asleep as Jesus prays, and they awake to see Jesus “shining in glory,” having a chat with Moses and Elijah. Peter was so confused he didn’t know what he was saying, and he started talking about making three tents. Peter, confused? Shouldn’t he be the one who best understood what was happening, who best understood God? Not so, the story tells us. Peter wasn’t even sure about following Jesus until the voice of God came booming down from the heavens telling him to do so.
Who is God? It’s a question I’ll ask for the rest of my life, too, though I have found a few answers. God is real, and God is good. God may be a booming voice from the heavens at times, but usually God is a quiet whisper in the soul. God is a patch of blue sky and sweet sunshine on a cold day, and, for me, a small, warm hand in mine on a long car ride home.
Singing
My husband Anthony and I began dating in high school. My family actually moved across the street from his when I was in fifth grade, and my first memory of him is seeing him ride up and down his driveway on a two-wheeler, his curly brown hair bouncing as he went over the bumps. My mom had promised that there would be a boy my age in the neighborhood to become friends with when we moved, but I wasn’t sure what I thought of him as I watched from behind the bedroom curtain that day. Fast-forward seven years, to junior year in high school, and that was a different story. Anthony had grown into a good-looking, popular football player who attended the all-boys Catholic school in Philadelphia. When I started to date him that spring, I desperately wanted to impress him and make him think that I was cool, too. So when he called one Wednesday evening to see what I was doing, and I was heading out the door to church choir practice, I hesitated. Church wasn’t really considered cool. I went to choir because I wanted to, but I liked other people to think my parents forced me to go (I’m not proud of this now, but, hey, I was sixteen). “Um, I’m, uh, going to, to … church choir practice,” I said, rushing the last part. “Choir? Really?” Anthony asked in disbelief. Uh oh, here comes the teasing, I thought. “Yes,” I admitted. “Oh, my mom’s really going to love that,” he said nonchalantly. I breathed a sigh of relief, and a little window opened between us.
A year later, when Anthony and I were still dating, and we went to the beach with his parents the weekend after my senior prom (all my friends went for a giant party to a different beach, but his parents were strict and wouldn’t hear of it. They were our close, vigilant chaperones for the weekend), they took us to church on Sunday. I’m sure it’s not what my friends were doing, but I didn’t really mind. During the catholic service, though, I didn’t know when to stand or kneel, or what to do when everyone walked up for communion. I had grown up Presbyterian. The result was a bit embarrassing. I spared myself by mumbling more than singing during the hymns, which I didn’t really know anyway (and, despite my choir years, my voice was really nothing to brag about).
On the car ride to breakfast after the service, Anthony’s mom was quiet for a bit, but then said, clearly speaking to me, “You know, one thing I really love about Stef (Anthony’s older brother Phil’s new wife) is how she belts out the songs during church. It’s just great.” She smiled at me in the rearview mirror and then let it go. That was that.
I’ve thought about that advice many times, though, over the past fifteen years, always laughing a bit over how frank and to the point Anthony’s mom could be. She was right. It doesn’t matter what your voice is like, or whether or not you look “cool,” you should always sing loudly, and with joy, and good things are sure to follow.
On Snow Days and Cemeteries
My husband’s Uncle Mike passed away on January 21st of this year, after 88 years on this earth, 65 of them married to our dear Aunt Antoinette. Aunt Antoinette is the kind of woman who brings homemade chocolate chip pound cake whenever she visits, who gives my children bags of pennies and candies just for stopping by, and who barely left home in the last year because she was too busy caring for the needs of a husband whose health was bad and declining rapidly. She left only to go to church and, occasionally, to go out for dinner with my two wonderful sisters-in-laws, who made it their mission to get her out of the house every now and then. Aunt Antoinette never complained. In fact, when, after the funeral, I took her hands and told her how sorry I was, but how happy I was that Uncle Mike had been home, where he wanted to be, when he passed, she squeezed my hands and told me, though tears, “Oh, Jenn, there just wasn’t enough time.” 65 years, and not enough time. ____________________________________
My mom once told me how her own father, gone now for more than 25 years, expressed this same sentiment to her. “You know, life’s really a short deal,” he used to say.
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And so it is. Uncle Mike and Aunt Antoinette, the youngest sister of my husband’s grandmother (gone now for more than 20 years too), married when he returned from World War II (he was Navy) and settled into a home in Camden, New Jersey, within yelling distance from both their Italian immigrant mothers, both of whom invited them to dinner nearly every night. “I still remember Mike’s mother calling out her window each afternoon, inviting us,” Aunt Antoinette recalled. “What a good woman she was.” After Uncle Mike’s funeral mass, we sat around the kitchen table for hours sharing stories that reached back through the years, all of them folded up neatly now like the American flag presented to Aunt Antoinette before the burial. Beautiful, but too small.
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All of these thoughts were on my mind Monday when I went sledding with Anthony and the girls. It snowed more than a foot over the weekend, enough to blanket roads and bridges and give me a day off from teaching. All bundled up, we headed to “the cemetery hill” at Friends School in Haddonfield, the place we had both sledded as kids. Somehow back then I had overlooked the fact that in addition to being an amazing sledding hill, this was also the final resting place for many. But Monday, with a few of the gravemarkers peeking through the snow at the top of the hill, I couldn’t ignore it. I wondered if we were being disrespectful, but didn’t have long to spend on that thought, as the girls were laughing and pulling my hand and begging me to jump on a sled with them and slide down the hill. We did, laughing and screaming as we picked up speed and flew over bumps, then collapsing in a pile at the bottom of the hill, our breaths visible in the cold morning air, the snow a blinding white beneath the brilliant blue sky. We ran back up the hill and sledded down again at least twenty times, eventually so tired that we just sat at the top of the hill, under an old, towering Sycamore, watching the other sledders.
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Finally, it was time to go. “Mommy, what does this say?” Grace asked, pointing to one of the gravestones. She was still breathless from her sprint up the hill. We read the name, and the date of birth (1894), and death (1986), and I felt the little tightening I feel in my chest whenever the topic of dying comes up with one of my children. But Grace just nodded her head, as if she got it. Sometimes she has lots of questions, but not this time. This time, she just took my hand as we walked to the car.
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“That was fun,” she said, clearly satisfied with the morning. “I thought so too,” I answer, squeezing her hand. Later I will drop her off at kindergarten, a rare treat for me, and she will give me a big kiss goodbye right on the lips, and then skip away to her teacher.
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There’s a time to be born, and a time to die, but in between there is living. Aunt Antoinette was right—it will always, always be too soon to say goodbye to the ones we love most. And it isn’t the seconds, the minutes, the days, and months that really add up to it all. It’s the love itself, sometimes giddy and light like the snow, sometimes solid and patient like the sycamore, which, at the end of a life, when all wrapped up, is just enough.
Grace's Goodnight Prayer
My daughter Grace’s bedtime prayer tonight (she’s 5): “Thank you God for this world, and for our food today, and for this house, and … and for God. For You, I mean! Thank you God for You. And God, please help make the bad people good. Even if they’re really, really bad, just make them good. Goodnight God. Amen.” Amen!
The Littlest Things
The girls and I watched Charlotte’s Web, the 2006 movie based on E.B. White’s classic tale of friendship between a spider and a pig, this weekend. Our public library has a couple copies of the movie, so this is the third time we’ve watched it this year.
That’s a good thing, for me especially. While a three and a five year old naturally find miracles in every day occurrences (“Look at this dandelion, mom!” “Mom! Mom! There are stars in the sky!” “I want to keep this stick, mom”), I sometimes become busy and harried and forget to find the wonder in even the most wonderful things.
Like Fern’s mom in Charlotte’s Web, who goes to the doctor to ask if he thinks her daughter is crazy for talking to animals, or to see what he thinks about the possibility of a spider actually writing a word in a web, I need to be reminded, as the doctor tells her, that “The web itself is a miracle. Can you or I do that?”
Indeed, the more miracles there are around us, the more we become accustomed to them and forget to be amazed. In Charlotte’s Web, her first words written in the web, “Some Pig!”, attract hundreds of visitors to the farm, but this is not enough to save Wilbur from his fate as a spring pig. People have short attention spans, Charlotte explains to Wilbur. They’ll soon forget. Charlotte’s next word, “Radiant!,” describes Wilbur perfectly as he watches the sunset one evening with all his barnyard friends (he never forgets to find the joy in little things). Still, it is not enough. Only Charlotte’s final word, “Humble,” is enough to win Wilbur the special governor’s prize at the State Fair that saves him from the butcher’s block.
Humble. Just hearing it reminds me of some of the best human beings I know: hard-working, selfless individuals who, like Wilbur, always find laughter, joy, and miracles in every day. They are not fancy people; they do not make the headlines or win grand awards. But they, like Wilbur, are close enough to the earth that they can find all the delight in it. The dandelions, the stars, the sticks … the leaves turning with the crisp Fall air, the crickets outside my kitchen window tonight, the geese flying south in formation, the beating of my heart. It’s all there, always there, when I remember to be humble and pay attention. That’s the trick. Not being distracted by all the flashing lights and ringing bells. Life this is not.
Humble. It was enough to save Wilbur, even when other miracles couldn’t, and it just might be enough to save us all.
We didn’t know what had happened to the bird, but we found it lifeless by our front steps as we returned from the Fourth of July parade on Saturday. “What’s wrong with it, Mommy?” asked Genevieve, my three year old. Grace, the all-knowing five year old, answered before I could, “It got dead, Genevieve.” She didn’t have the answer for Genevieve’s next question, though, a simple “Why?” Neither did I.
We had a brief but lovely burial for the tiny bird, complete with a prayer and an original song by Grace. Genevieve looked concerned throughout, especially as I buried the bird. When we finished, she stared at the smooth earth above the bird for a few moments without saying anything.
Grace saw her concern. “Genevieve, I think that bird was old. It was his time to go,” she said, echoing what I had told her earlier. “Don’t worry.”
Genevieve thought a moment more, and then she took Grace’s advice. “Sure,” she said with a smile, a bit breathlessly, “And when he wakes up, he can fly away again!”
Oh, my sweet Genevieve. This is not the way the world works. Death is much crueler.
This cruelty hit me later when, at a neighborhood picnic, I learned that the nineteen year old daughter of a family in our town had been in a car crash with her friend the night before. She died instantly. The friend had a broken leg. I imagined never seeing one of my daughters again. I tried to imagine this family’s pain. Their daughter had just finished her freshman year in college. She was a pitch perfect soprano who worked as a lifeguard at the township pool. She had everything ahead of her. What an enormous, heart-breaking loss—for the family, for the town … for everyone.
Later, as Anthony and I watched the fireworks from our neighbor’s lawn (our county fireworks display is at the park right by our house every year) while holding our two girls, Anthony brought up his mom, who had died six years before. “Remember that time we all went to the fireworks together?” he asked, a burst of gold shimmer drifting to the ground as the next display, green and blue, exploded above it. I did. It was about ten years ago, before she was sick. The sky lit up again, pink light falling fast. “You realize why she wanted to go to the park to watch them,” Anthony continued, his eyes still on the sky, “I understand now … why she wanted to be right underneath the fireworks. It really is different.” Then, after a moment, “What an awful disease cancer is. I mean, to have to be pushed around in a wheelchair at age sixty.”
The grand finale began, illuminating the summer sky. The girls held their ears while older kids clapped. Heads tilted back, we all took it in. Anthony looked over at me and smiled a sad smile.
The smile of all those who miss someone they love, someone irreplaceable. Death does sting, even for those with the deepest faith. Sometimes you just miss someone—a mother, a daughter, a sister … You want to hold them close one more time. And what God has promised, through Jesus, is difficult to wrap your arms around. Or maybe it sounds naïve, like something a child would say. “And when he wakes up, he can fly away again!” Sure.
But many wise men and women have believed it, and in the quiet, honest moments of my life I have found it to be true, too. “So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22). I like that line, "NO ONE will take your joy from you." Indeed, may all those hurting tonight find joy again, and faith as beautiful and simple as a child’s.
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” –Genesis 2:15
I’ve always loved a well-kept garden, both for what it is and what it symbolizes: the beauty that is possible when human hands and human will shape what God has made. Really, what is more satisfying than a lovely garden? As the Bible and so many classic works of literature have shown, gardens are Paradise.
That’s why my own garden (or lack thereof) is such a cause of chagrin. I know what I would like it to be: hydrangeas, azaleas, and rhododendrons lining the fence in the back, petunias and impatiens brilliant in weed-free beds of dark mulch … the grass edged and cut … perhaps some tomatoes and basil growing next to the patio. I have none of that. Instead, I have a front garden clogged with weeds and bushes that are either overgrown or dead, and back gardens still cluttered with leaves from last fall. Besides the clover flowers (actually weeds) and perennials that bloom in my back yard every spring, there are no flowers. There are remnants of my past attempts at growing flowers: an empty basket where impatiens withered and died last year after I forgot to water them, a clay pot with a jumble of weeds (“Look! Something’s growing!” Grace announced excitedly when we walked by the other day), but these remnants are even more depressing than having nothing at all. I tried, I failed, they announce.
Oh, how I would love to have a lovely garden to write about! I would write about how gardens must be tended to daily. About how roses and azaleas need to be pruned to remain beautiful, and about how nothing is possible without sunshine and rain. Like so many other writers before me, writers much greater than myself, I would find comfort in the marriage of nature and civilization that gardens represent. My garden would be a metaphor for my spiritual life itself (I’m in trouble if this is true now). Flowers, nurtured by my loving gardener’s hands, would bloom much to my joy and the joy of others. Butterflies and hummingbirds would be breakfast visitors.
Alas, I can only write about my poor, unkempt garden, a garden in need of some serious loving care. Past experience has shown that I am not capable of making it any better on my own. Sure, I’ve tried. But with two girls to care for who like to run off down the block when they’re outside, a budget that limits me to the most basic of flowers, and what seems to be an inherent lack of gardening skill, I have not succeeded in the least. My garden is not a Paradise, or anything close to it. I need help.
So I said a little prayer, and God answered my prayer in the way that God answers so many prayers … through moms. “How about I come over next week and help you with your garden?” my mother said this morning, unsolicited, “I know the perfect flowers to plant in that sunny patch out front.”
Maybe by the end of the summer I’ll have my lovely garden to write about after all. No matter what, I’ll have my ugly garden (or the memory of it) to remind me that we’re all a little East of Eden and in need of God’s grace.
For my daughter Grace’s birthday a few weeks ago, my parents gave her a refurbished two-wheel bike complete with streamers, a basket, and an “I love my bike” bell. Now one of Grace’s favorite activities is riding around the four mile trail that begins right at the end of our block. I follow behind, pushing her younger sister Genevieve in a jog stroller (Genevieve inevitably hates this and screams to get out and run the whole time, but what can you do?). The trail runs along the Cooper River, popular among rowers, sailors, and kayakers, and it has a great view of the Philadelphia skyline. In the spring and summer, the park is packed with families celebrating birthdays, baby showers, and, well, their families. On the far side of the river there’s a playground, where we often stop for a few turns on the slides and swings. The park smells like honeysuckle and barbecue, and it sounds like salsa music and laughter. I’ve always loved it.
Grace must have inherited this love, because as we made our way around the park last weekend, she let out a little whoop of joy and a “Woohoo!” It was a beautiful evening, with the sun low in the sky over the city, and little wisps of white clouds scattered across a pale blue sky. The air was cool, and tons of people were out for an evening stroll. Even better for Grace, she was able to ride so fast on her new bike that I could barely keep up.
Suddenly, just as she reached the bridge to cross to the other side of Cooper River, Grace brought her bike to a screeching halt. As I caught up to her, huffing and puffing, she looked at me seriously. “Mommy,” she asked, “How long do I get to be five?” She was clearly in her five year old glory and wanted the answer to be “forever” or “as long as you want.” I told her the truth.
“You get to be five for one year, just like every other age.”
“Only one year?” Grace exclaimed, truly shocked and dismayed, “Oh, man!” She thought for a moment more, still straddling her bike (Genevieve had fallen asleep in the stroller).
“How many months do I get to be five for?”
“Twelve,” I answered.
Grace opened her mouth in amazement (obviously they haven’t covered this in-depth in the pre-school curriculum!). “Twelve whole months!” she shouted. “Yes!”
She thought for a moment more. “How many days?”
At this answer, 365, Grace was back in her glory. She sat on her bike again and started pedaling, a huge smile on her face. 365 days to be five! Could life be any better?
As we made our way around the rest of the river, I smiled, too. Life can seem really short, and life can seem really long, but it is always best, as Grace reminded me, when we live it day by day.
“What does peace look like?” was the question this week at children’s church, a group of kids aged 2 to 13 who meet in the basement “chapel” below the main sanctuary while adults sing and kneel and stand above.
Grace likes to stump me with questions throughout the day, though I’m sure that’s not her intention. Who invented words? Where does the water in your mouth come from? Why does glass break?
We didn’t know what had happened to the bird, but we found it lifeless by our front steps as we returned from the Fourth of July parade on Saturday. “What’s wrong with it, Mommy?” asked Genevieve, my three year old. Grace, the all-knowing five year old, answered before I could, “It got dead, Genevieve.” She didn’t have the answer for Genevieve’s next question, though, a simple “Why?” Neither did I.