The Newest Normal
Last month I drove my husband through the Palisades for the first time since the fires. He wasn’t ready to see it when my son in law took me in March. The landscape still looks achingly bare in comparison to the once thriving community. There is virtually no traffic on Sunset, and the Pacific Ocean and mountains appear boldly on the horizon where they were once hidden behind painstakingly planned homes and gardens. The burned lots have all been cleared and a smattering of wooden construction bravely mark the neighborhoods like first couples on a dance floor eager to get the party started. They are a symbol of hope and progress.
Bob was silent taking it in. The fires are a kind of metaphor for us. Our lives were consumed by the flames of his Leukemia in August 2022 and the subsequent treatment and recovery has been slow and steady like the snail march of remediation and reconstruction. As the city of Los Angeles fights for healing and re-birth so do we.
There is an oddly common bond in our world today as we universally manage the changes in climate and subsequent fall out of natural disasters. We barely adjust from one new normal only to be thrust into the next. There seems to be no time to recenter and acclimate. Mass shootings, politics, opinions, and everchanging worldviews weigh heavy. Our polarized nation feels disturbingly “bipolar” in manic attitudes that cause us to either divide and conquer or divide and hide. I personally seek my faith, friends and family for daily courage and strength to remain on the other side of my protective covers. Life is just so dang overwhelming.
Our Palisades daughter and her family moved across the country for a year commitment to regather and focus on their personal recovery after losing everything. I saw them last in June and reluctantly joined the ranks of Grandparents around the world who depend on Facetime to stay connected with their children. In my last blog published in March I wrote that I had not been able to cry for some time. Well, the loss of those precious grandbabies to another state opened the floodgates and all the buried feelings from the last few years. I can promise you I’m feelin’ the feelings again. That’s the good and the bad news.
Have you ever been ready to make a recipe and realized as you’re pulling things out onto the counter that some of the key ingredients are missing? Your neighbors aren’t answering and there’s no time to run to the grocery store. So, the next step is to put on your thinking cap and search the cupboards and fridge for substitutions. Like it or not you are forced to work with the materials that you have. Oddly enough sometimes this innovation results in a culinary masterpiece better than the original. New and delicious recipes are born every day from forced creativity. Improvement comes from growth. Growth comes from lessons learned and challenges met.
I didn’t choose for my husband to become seriously ill. I didn’t expect that just as he was turning a major corner of health our community and family would be turned upside down and violently shaken to the core. The sadness, confusion, and exhaustion are pervasive at every turn in Los Angeles. Yet amid the trauma and bone-dry resolution, tiny buds of optimism appear like the first signs of green on an early spring branch. We are healing. My grandchildren call and their laughter has not changed. Our church family is stronger than ever with a special resolve that only results from weathering storms. We will return to our campus on Palisades Drive September 7th for our first service on our own property since the fires took their toll exactly eight long months ago.
One of our long-time church friends is a woman who suffered a life altering bicycle accident several years ago. It was such a simple shocking moment when the tire hit a curb in such a way that she fell over and struck her head sustaining serious brain damage. She and her husband are examples of stellar perseverance and strength. I have watched them as they stay together working positively through the challenges as one. They have taken their life and worked with the circumstances presented to them making the best of a situation that would tear many a loving couple apart. They amaze and inspire me like few people can. I thought of them countless times while caring for Bob. Their example girded me in my journey bringing purpose to mutual hardship.
I had shoulder surgery a few weeks ago and another dear friend from church took the time to text, call and check up on me. She sent flowers from the congregation with a shiny balloon to cheer me up. This is a woman who lost everything in the fire and is forced to temporarily live a long drive from her devastated property and all her familiarity and grounding. But her sweet smile and loving demeanor never fade when we connect at service or on the phone. This scenario of extraordinary love and selflessness is repeated a thousand times over in my church home and neighborhood.
Literally every person in my community has been affected in some way by these fires through personal or adjacent loss. If your home survived or not, there is still smoke damage and an extensive “List of Contents” that must be assembled for the Insurance companies that sends me into a nightmare vortex just thinking about it much less executing the demand.
Bob and I go to church on Sunday and meet with our friends. We share meals or time together during the week and the sense of peace coupled with the reality of our suffering oddly comforts us as we share and cry and laugh. As our Pastor quoted one of my favorite films, The Princess Bride, last Sunday, “Life is pain.” If you live on this earth and ever open a page of a history book, including the Bible, you will trust the veracity of this statement. There is no other choice but to accept the facts and work with them. We have been studying Romans. If you would like to hear Pastor Justin Anderson’s beautiful sermon about not just surviving, but brilliantly thriving in our difficulties please click WHAT COMES WITH FAITH. Fast Forward to about 26 minutes to bypass the music and opening and see the trailer for our film regarding the fires, then the teaching.
When I woke us this morning the helium get-well balloon from my friend had finally dropped from the bedroom ceiling and floated eye level into the living room. I was amused by its unexpected welcome and touched by the reality that both Bob and I are indeed more than well and like any balloon suggests there is MUCH to celebrate.
Our lives are more content now than ever in this “newest normal.” Our love and relationship have stood the test. The confidence that comes with knowing we can literally endure whatever comes our way allows us a supernatural kind of calm. Life is simpler, less hectic, and more satisfying.
As I was typing Bob called out to me from the next room. “Look who came to see me?” He said with a grin. The mylar orb had drifted from the living room to his chair in the dining room soft as a ghost landing right next to his ear as if to nudge him into a festive mood. Perhaps another lovely “God thing” to help me end my blog with a little mirth and a guardian wink from above.
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us”.
Romans 5:1-5 NIV