The Weekend

Saturday: We walked to a nearby garden to see the beginnings of spring, then coffee shop with the family, a little bit of the baseball game, an arcade we found in the basement of the library, a little bit of the volleyball game (purchased with chips and popcorn--the boys ran around the field house). Francisco took Q out for Mexican and then we all watched some Harry Potter. 

At one point, Q asked, when I mentioned that I'm workshopping my book next week: "Do you think next year we'll get into the thinking-about-publishers part of your book?" I love the "we." He suggested Penguin Random House and offered to research others. 

When we were eating our lenten Friday fried fish at the Sunoco the other week, we noticed an advertisement for a "Festival of Miracles" posted on the soda machine. As I walked home Friday after the Stations of the Cross, I passed a blue church on the side of the road with people lined up outside. A young girl in a hat held a sign alerting those who drive by to the festival. Men in yellow vests directed traffic as people parked up a field. The young girl's fedora blew into the road and without looking at the oncoming traffic, she went after it. My parental panic button, over-pressed, constricted my chest. The truck slowed and stopped. My initial feeling was sadness for the people so desperate, so miracle-chasing. But then I thought about Flannery, who I've been thinking about a lot since it's her hundredth birthday. I think she would have attended the Festival. And I thought about the Stations that I was coming from--the greatest miracle, the miracle that secured the possibility of heaven for us, the miracle that becomes present to us over and over--comes not from an escape from suffering (though Jesus asked that this cup pass from Him), but through the suffering, in the process redeeming all our suffering. So with Christ I often ask that this cup of anxiety, of fatigue, be taken from us. And then I am trying to figure out how to pick up the cross and follow Him. My faith is not that the way will be easy, but that the way to heaven has been opened.