Month in Review: April 2021

Hey hey! Look at this – I’m back two weeks in a row!

April 2020 – again, a lifetime ago. It was another busy month with some hard things but also a lot to be thankful for. Let’s hit the highlights. (Also, when typing “let’s hit” it’s important to hit the spacebar at the right time. Otherwise, you end up with something very different.)

First off, April gave us Easter celebrations. Easter has long been a weird holiday for me. As a Christian, I feel like it should be the high holiday of the year. But as a person with adult children, I’m not sure what that should look like. I feel like when our girls were little Matt and I were just so very tired, and holiday traditions like Easter (with the bunny and the eggs) and Halloween just were outside our bandwidth so we missed creating traditions then. I do wish we had found the energy to indulge in those days a bit more back then, but we really were doing the best we could. So we are trying to figure those traditions out now, and it can be tricky. This year we went to church together and then got brunch at one of my favorite spots in Lawrence: Merchants on Mass Street. It was fun to be dressed up and to be out with everyone. And then I think naps were had once we got home, which makes any day a win in my book.

It was a busy month at school for the girls, as usual. Chandler and her classmates presented their Good Life speeches, the capstone of their high school careers. Based on their learnings, they must explain “the good life” and how one obtains that. After their presentation, they must defend their points to a panel of faculty and are then graded based on both presentation and defense. It is, understandably, a very nerve-wracking and stressful week for the students, and they were all visibly relieved as their speeches finished.

 The week after Good Life speeches students left for tours, something everyone missed in 2020. Chandler’s class went to Florida, Amania’s class went to Virginia, and Ellie’s class went to the best place on earth – no, not Disney World – Lost Valley Ranch in Colorado. A week of travel, sightseeing, time with friends, and being pushed outside their comfort zones was an amazing way to end the month and head into the last month of the school year.

As I was thumbing back through my journals for this post, April was apparently a time of quote collecting too. I recorded some powerful words in April:

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

– Knox McCoy

Even when all seems lost, dead, buried, grieved, God is still doing something.

– unknown

May we, in this never-ending winter of the world, in these cycles of violence and pain and loss, continue to endure without losing heart. May we find the courage to tend the buds of new creation through our love and peacemaking, watching and waiting for the day they burst into life without end.

- unknown

Until next time, may you know how loved you are and that you are needed here today.