Honest is hard. There is nothing like a season of physical distancing to remind me of that truth.

Space is not a word I associated with love for most of my life. I grew up longing for the freedom of stretching further away from the intimacy of my family and small Saskatchewan town. I sat in the farmhouse window sill in my bedroom, staring up at the expansive, prairie sky of stars, full of wonder at all the space in the universe for all of us.

Feelings are constantly swirling in my world — in health care and in my home and in my heart. The myriad of messages coming from every direction are little help in sorting through the emotional tremors.

Staying the course is an ironic metaphor for an asthmatic whose longest race ever was 3,000 metres.

Beauty surprised me last week when I walked out to the car with a small hand in mine: “Mommy, the road is sparkling!” 

Resistance is an old friend of mine. She knows the arc of my back and places a comforting hand on my shoulder to let me know I am not alone. But three times in the same week, I heard familiar words from Deuteronomy: “See, I have set before you life and prosperity, death and adversity. Choose life.” 

I have been thinking a lot over the last couple of years about how God comes to us. In tragedy and grief, in deep joy and hope, in confusion and in waiting. In all these places, I am deeply convinced that He comes. Still, I often struggle to recognize Him.

I got to spend two beautiful evenings with my Grandma in the week before she died in October. While I held her hand and listened to her stories, and then to her breathing when she couldn’t speak anymore, I was flooded with memories. 

For more than 800 days, the Earth has been spinning its way around the sun, shining in spite of my sister’s death, but I struggled to see it. The sun and moon came and went, and I struggled to feel anything other than the sting of injustice at a world without her. 

“Overdrawn,” I thought, as I drove out of the city. “I feel like my whole life is overdrawn.”