A Boring Evening at Home

 8 years ago today, the lives of 3 of my kids changed forever. 8 years ago today, a typhoon that had threatened their country for 5 days made landfall in their province, forever changing their present and their future. 8 years ago today, their perspective of “normal” shifted for good. 8 years ago today, they lost their mom, their dad, and their baby sister, as well as many other family members and friends.

Today, I reread Gerda Weismann Klein’s autobiography, All But My Life, to teach to my Holocaust Literature class. I also showed them her Oscar acceptance speech, linked below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zn-fPM4KS0

There is a very powerful thread that runs through both her book and her acceptance speech, and that is the idea that we don’t realize the beauty of the ordinary when we are living it, and it’s not until we are faced with a terrible diagnosis or a tragic accident or a natural disaster or any such moment when our life changed for good that we can see the “magic of a boring evening at home”. In her book, she has a line that says something to the effect of, “And I could think only one strange thought: that I had not realized how pleasant luncheon had been the day before.” 

Until the world changes, we don’t see the beauty in the mundane. Until we’ve experienced great loss, we don’t fully appreciate great value. Until we’ve been broken, we don’t truly understand whole healing. 

Three years ago today, I got a report from the doctor that “something” they had found over a month earlier that had started an unwanted journey of mammograms and ultrasounds and biopsies (and eventually, even after this, a lumpectomy) was benign. I hadn’t ever had to trust Him over a long period of time with my health and my body the way I had to in October and November of 2018, but with every mammogram since, I have appreciated the “boring evening at home” the night before, the “pleasant luncheon” the week earlier. I now know what it feels like to have everything hang in the balance while you wait to see which way your life is going to go, and due to that, I will never take for granted the easy days of blissful ignorance.

In 8 years, a ton of healing has happened in my kids. The Lord has been good to these three since that day, He has kept them in the palm of His hand. This is the first year since they have been home that they haven’t mentioned the anniversary in the days and weeks leading up to it or on the day. I know that isn’t because they have forgotten, but maybe it’s because they are learning again to trust Him with the future and cherish the present.