Musing on a Saturday

It is not Monday – it is Saturday morning as I write this reflection for you who so generously give of your time to read what is shared in this space.  Our Monday will be full as my Beloved bids adieu to his knee that was first injured when he was a 15 year old football player.  If you are the praying sort, we welcome your prayers and good thoughts. 

We are very prepared for this surgery, which he has anticipated and planned for for some time.  We have equipment to help with rehabilitation and medications have been picked up at the pharmacy.  We have a plan for where he will sleep and how he will occupy his time as he heals.  We have physical therapy appointments scheduled.  Today I am going to the grocery store for what my children used to call “big grocery shopping”.  Bruce is the main preparer of meals in our home so this will be a shared task between our eldest, who will be a very helpful extra set of hands and feet in these days and me, who will figure out how to best care for my Beloved while moving toward and through Holy Week and Easter.

Of course, for all of our preparation, we don’t really know how this will go.  Bruce is a good patient and he is being tended to by a respected surgeon.  He is in excellent health, for which we are exceedingly grateful.  We have done all of the things we are supposed to do to be as ready as we can be.

I think of how such preparation happens in other areas of our lives.  When we anticipate the arrival of babies or when we are preparing for a storm or when we are taking on a new thing – a new job or degree or relationship.  We prepare as much as we can and then we step into it. 

Last Wednesday the Pacific Northwest was forecast to have stormy weather with a FIVE PERCENT chance of tornados and hail. Here in Olympia, we were in the swath of the state included in this possibility.  So, we prepared as much as we could.  People put blankets and yoga mats on cars and skylights that would be left out in the elements.  We made sure we had flashlights and a way to hear weather warnings.  The large army base just up the interstate evacuated all of its aircraft.  Delivery drivers were pulled from their routes.  The city sent employees home and closed service centers early.  And we, at our congregation, cancelled our Wednesday evening activities. (Note: We will always make these decisions with the most vulnerable and at risk in mind.)

We watched some clouds roll in, we checked the weather app and the radar app.  We even sat on our front porch, anticipating the roll of thunder, which is so rare in this corner of the country.  Other than a hearty rain, we saw none of what we’d been told to anticipate.  None of what we’d prepared and planned for. 

Sometimes, we plan and prepare and make ourselves as ready as possible for a storm or a surgery or a significant event and it still isn’t enough.  We are still swept into the chaos and struggle.  And sometimes we plan and prepare and make ourselves as ready as possible and nothing happens.  And sometimes our planning and preparation and readiness is exactly right. 

In it all, we are wise, indeed, to plan and prepare and make ready.  And we are wise to offer ourselves grace when the unexpected happens and we are wise to rest in gratitude when our preparation was exactly right.  And when the storm blows over, or when it never comes, may we continue to be people who care, support, and love one another.