When I was eleven years old, I was standing in the kitchen with my sister and a friend, dipping homemade cookies into Nutella. The phone rang, and in the next five minutes, my world changed forever.
The day was September 11, 2001. My family was in Belarus on a short-term mission trip. The phone call was for our land-lady, and I will never forget yelling, "Ena, telephone!" into the back of the house. I was back to dipping cookies when she came into the kitchen, picked up the phone, and started yelling. "America has been bombed!" came the translation.
A lot of things were supposed to happen. My family was supposed to stay in the country longer. We were supposed to travel by train to Germany where my little brother was supposed to be born. We were supposed to spend Christmas with my grandfather's brother. We were supposed to move to Germany to be full-time missionaries.
What really happened was the world stopped. And plans changed.
I've been thinking a lot about that day, lately. I remember being so terrified after I had watched the planes crash into the Twin Towers over and over and over and over on Russian television. My dad was out in another village and didn't get home to hear the news until well after dark. I cried as they put us to bed, and begged for them to take us to the church compound where several of our friends were. I just wanted to go "home." Yet what my mom said to me is something that I will never forget.
"We are safer on our little hill in Ratomka, Belarus, than we would be at home in the US, or even at the church."
Now, nearly twenty years later, I wish more and more that I were back at "home" on our little hill in that little village in the middle of a foreign country. Although Belarus is making international headlines this month due to political unrest with their elections, it still feels like Ena's garden was a world away from all that was bad in the world. Surely, a visit to the banya could cure anything.
In 2020, the world has stopped. And plans changed.
I don't think any of us foresaw the way that COVID-19 would change our lives. March feels like a lifetime ago, back when they told us we would all be in quarantine for two weeks. Here it is mid-August, and some states haven't moved past Phase 1, cities have already their mask ordnance into January, and nobody knows what's happening with schools. It's mind-blowing to sit here and think about all the things that have happened in the last five months, all the new words in our vocabularies, and the ways that the world has changed.
My youngest starts preschool next week, and my bigger three go back to school the following week. They'll be required to wear masks all day (among other things,) which, trust me, gave me a really big pause. I haven't worn one for more than an hour or so, are my kids going to be able to handle it for six? The choice to go back to school though, was fairly easy for us. For the same reasons I have sent them to school in the first place, I knew they needed to go back. We can always change our minds ("Pivot!" almost isn't funny anymore, is it?) but the kids need to get back to some kind of normal again. They need to know that even in the face of something scary, life moves on. "Controlling what we can when things are out of control" is how children have been able to adapt to life's worst moments throughout history.
Of course, the choice still comes with anxieties. Oh, the hours I have lost stressing about those masks! I felt so strongly that I had to have a certain kind, and let's just say that they were not initially easy to come by. Not to mention all of the peer pressure. So many of my friends have chosen to homeschool, and I love that- yet it's to the point that I feel like the odd-man-out, so I begin to fret and wonder if I made the wrong choice. And then you get the comments...
"It's such a shame that we have to teach these kids to get used to masks."
Well, yeah! Of course, it is! But my opinions aren't going to change the realities of what the world is right now. We could all idly sit here for days and talk about the effectiveness of masks and the actual numbers of infection rates and death rates. BUT! That's not what I am called to do. My job as their mom is to show them how to get through it. My job is to set the tone for my kids. My job is to lead the way.
She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.
- Proverbs 31: 27-28
It isn't about going back to school vs. homeschooling. It isn't about wearing masks vs. defying the mandates. It isn't about your opinion, your experts, your idea of patriotism. I get it- it's so easy to get caught up in. But quite simply, it isn't about YOU.
I go back to twenty years ago, on that little hillside... Do you know what happened on September 12th? We held a special service to pray, and for the next two days, the teams went back out into the villages to continue spreading the gospel. On her last night in the country, one older woman packed her bags and said, "There, I'm finished." The next morning, she woke up in Glory.
Now as a mother in a new time of uncertainty, I take those lessons, and strive to pass them on. My job here on earth is to bring glory to God Almighty! Am I living a glorified life? Am I telling others about salvation? Or am I caught up in the cares of this world while people around me are dying and going to hell?
Wow, that's convicting!
This world is not my home, I'm just a-passin' through...
When fears, and stress, and strife, and oppression come, when plans change... I remember that quiet house on a hill. Not the one in Belarus, but the one God has prepared for me. One where I will always be secure. One where the phone will never ring with bad news. One where I will never have to leave. One where I will never be afraid. One with a garden even more beautiful than Ena's. One where the SON will cure everything.
What a glorious hope we hold!
So when my children come to me, afraid, I will tell them,
"We will be safe, in a house on a hill..."
