Re-entry

The buffet in our dining room housed all of our home school stuff for 14 months. This week, I got to clean it off and put everything back in its place. Another chapter closing and another beginning.

At the end of March, we returned to 4 days of school and this is what I wrote: 

“…Frustration that it has taken this long to return to 4 days. Relief that we finally get to send them. Anger and resentment that those days were ever taken from us in the first place. Withholding of joy because I don’t want to jump into celebration so fast. Grief as I look back on the past year — on how hard it was, on the emotional battleground our house had become on many days, on what was lost. Sadness for my kids and for what they missed and for the friends they hadn’t seen. Thankfulness for how the Lord had used the year to refine me, strip things away, and build deeper things.

This mix of emotions reminds me of how I felt when I finished my first half marathon. I was in pain. I cried tears of joy. I reflected on the sacrifice of the 6 months of training, giving up my Saturday mornings for long runs, eating or not eating certain things … There was so much that went into it. I was hungry after the race, but nothing sounded good. I felt sick after eating lunch as my body was readjusting to and re-entering into normal life. Soreness lingered for several days. 

Recovery. There was a recovery time. And it took a couple of weeks to recover from this re-entry as well.”

As I think about all of us recovering and re-entering into the world, I see a picture of a rocket as it re-enters into the earth’s atmosphere. There is a burning. There is heat. And that’s part of the process.

We have to allow some things to fall away, to burn off. What worked for us in 2019 might not work anymore. The daily rhythms we used to have may no longer serve us. The content we used to ingest with no problem may now be poisonous. We have to reassess. We have to let the things burn away that need to go.

On the flip side, maybe there were some new things we adopted in 2020 that were good and healthy. Maybe we got better at saying “no.” Maybe we discovered addictions and made steps toward healing. Maybe we allowed ourselves to rest more. But as we’ve re-entered to our busy world, maybe we’ve forgotten. Maybe we’ve forgotten what God brought us through and what he spoke to us. Maybe we’ve forgotten our dependence on him.

I sense it for myself that it’s good and necessary to reassess right now, and I encourage you to do the same. What do we let go of? What do we hold on to? What’s working and what’s not?