Lock Down Week 8: Holding on to Hope

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Week eight was calmer for us, but also we were tired. We are ready to be done with home school, but instead Maryland announced this week that they are extending school until June 16th. Boo fun. The boys seemed to have less energy to do their school work, and I definitely had less energy to drive them on. At least I wan’t panicky though. That’s something to be thankful for. Here are a few things I was up to this week:

Creating

Remember at the beginning of the year, how I talked about baking straight through my Mary Berry cookbook? Well, I am still going strong with that. I bake one thing from that book every one or two weeks. It feels like quite an adventure because British people must eat all different things than Southern Alabama girls do. Many of the things I have baked, I have never heard of. Before this, I didn’t even know what a Simnel Cake or a Battenberg Cake were.

Confession: I was not even sure what marzipan was. And now look. I have used marzipan, aka almond paste, in about four different recipes. I also learned that store-bought marzipan and homemade are worlds apart in taste. Homemade is delicious. Store bought is …eh.

This weeks’ creation was a Battenberg cake, a rectangular checkerboard-pattern cake wrapped in marzipan. Alan, Daniel, and I were the only ones who would eat it. Caleb took one bite and spit it out. The other two boys wouldn’t even try it. Truth be told, it was very good, though as you can see a little messy in my execution. This one would surely win no awards for presentation, but hey, it was my first attempt at a Battenberg, so I was happy.

Missing

There are so many things we are all missing, right? The lock down is surreal. I miss going to the store without a mask on, and I miss going to church and teaching my Sunday school class on Sunday morning. But you know what I miss the most? Teachers. I miss other people handling all this school work for us. People speculate about coronavirus making a vicious comeback in the fall, and I cannot with those thoughts. You guys! We cannot do this lockdown school at home again! No! Some of us will not make it, and I do mean me. I will die. April needs her quiet house from 9-3 back.

Learning to play the piano at almost 40

I had a major breakthrough on the piano this week!! I got the keyboard for my birthday in March and because I could already play trumpet and read music, I only had to learn the skills that are specific to the piano. Already knowing how to read music definitely made this easier. But I have had the hardest time with playing two different things on two different hands at once. At first, just playing chords on the left and melody on the right was hard, but then that became easier. Playing chords on the right hand and melody on the left is still difficult for me. My fingers aren’t in muscle memory with that yet. They get stuck in a position. My left hand used to do that too, and now it doesn’t, so I have hope that my hand muscles will develop.

However, now I am taking on Brahms’ lullaby, and there are two totally different things going on with the left and right hands at the same time. You have eighth notes on one hand and quarter notes on the left with two different rhythms, and it is going to sound awesome if I can master it, but for the past week it has been abysmal.

Until today! I had a breakthrough today!! It still isn’t good, but it is there. The notes are there. I successful played one entire line, both hands at once, correctly. I was so excited! There is hope after all.

Loving

You know what I am loving these days? Being outside and Psalm 37. The air is crisp and cool but sunny. Flowers are in full bloom. The trees are green again, and when you are outside lock down doesn’t feel like such a drag. I love it.

When I was in my junior year of college, I discovered Psalm 37. It just spoke to me. I copied the entire chapter out on paper and taped it to the walls of my dorm room and tried to memorize the entire thing. I failed at long term memory of the entire chapter, but when I stumbled across it today it felt so familiar and comforting. Here is a snippet of it:

“Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb.

Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!

Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil. For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land…”

Psalm 37: 1-9

Reading

I don’t read much for myself these days, other than Psalm 37, Ha! With all four boys home around the clock, what I read is usually with them. I’ve read about polar animals and penguins with Daniel. Caleb and I just finished The Brooklyn Nine. That one was thoroughly enjoyable. The younger boys and I are finishing up By the Shores of Silver Lake tomorrow. I never get tired of that series.

Wait. That’s not true that I didn’t read for myself. I read Facebook every single day, sometimes several times per day. I can tell you that many of my friends seem kind of mad about the lock down. Some of my other friends are mad that those people are mad about the lockdown. I’m just over here eating my popcorn, hoping to send the boys back to school in the fall.

The big thing in my newsfeed the last couple of days is the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. The men who shot him were not even arrested until seventy-four days after the shooting, when public outrage demanded justice. How they got away with murder was quite disturbing.

We must hold on to hope.

The news is pretty much always bad news. It feels like evil runs rampant through the street sometimes. We all worry about recovering from this pandemic, and goodness knows I am ready to be able to take a vacation this summer and send my kids back to school in the fall. We crave the good, the holy, the right. It is still here with us, but finding true righteousness always takes work. Trusting God and showing love are choices we must make. He is still in heaven, and he wants us to seek his face. He wants us to be his hands and feet in this world, helping the orphans and the widows, and taking care of our own families. God doesn’t want us to feel defeated by evil, but to overcome the evil with good.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.¹⁷ For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.¹⁹ Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, ²¹ envy,^[d] drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do^[e] such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:16-21

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. ²⁴ And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

²⁵ If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

Galatians 5:22-26