Wear the Nice Shoes: How to find joy in the everyday
I have waited a full year, almost to the day, for my normal life to resume since we all locked our doors hoping to flatten the curve. This year was a struggle between waiting to pick up where we left off under normal circumstances and a dawning realization that time does not stop.
For many people the passage of these 366 days (we had a leap year) went by without much actually happening to directly affect us or to mark its passage. In March, watched the cool air turn warm. Then, spring turned to summer and, somehow, we made it to Thanksgiving and Christmas. But in our minds, we’re still back in early March when we believed the shutdown was only temporary.
We’re still sitting in our living rooms, reading the news of the pandemic, panic-stricken grocery shoppers claiming all the toilet paper allowed to one person, and the unheard-of call for a lockdown. Time is clearly moving on ahead of us, steady and slow, but we can’t quite catch up to it.
For others, there are daily reminders of the time passing by on the breeze. Mothers of young children can watch the year go by on the faces of their little ones, turned big. Wives can see the time go by in months as their husband’s hair grow shaggy over their ears. Women who work can mark the days by their meeting schedule.
9 – 10 a.m. on Tuesday
1 – 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday
10:30 – 11 a.m. on Thursday
Time keeps marching forward, unbroken by our brokenness.
Time Waits for No One
As I’ve mentioned before on the blog, our son was born exactly two weeks before the national, global lockdown went into effect. Just a few months before our little boy came into the world, I had lunch with a friend whose own baby was 8 months old. She talked about those early weeks and months of motherhood.
“The first three months are just survival mode.”
I remember scoffing a little bit at this statement on the inside when I heard it. I thought, survival mode? I won’t be in survival mode. That’s ridiculous. I can do this. To say I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into is a massive understatement.
Because of the pandemic and our new baby boy at home only one of us went to the grocery store, and usually, that was me. I’d wake up Sunday morning, cook breakfast, and change out of my pajamas to hit the grocery store before our online church service started streaming. I chose shoes that would get me in and out of the store as quickly and as unnoticed as possible.
My goal was to spend the least amount of time in the store as I could. For a whole year I chose the sensible, comfortable, shoes that would do their job and help me do mine more efficiently. I couldn’t waste time with idle chit-chat or waiting for the older woman in front of me to choose her bag of trail mix. I didn’t have time to smile at the cashier, who wouldn’t see my face behind the mask anyway.
Missing the Forest for the Trees
What I couldn’t see in the moment hurrying down the aisles of the grocery store in my comfortable, efficient shoes was my joy had been replaced with fear.
Every Sunday I went to a place Ryan and I used to go together to pick up our food for the week. A place we actually enjoyed going together where, now, it was full of nervous eyes, glancing left and right to make sure there were six feet of separation in between them and the next jumpy-eyed person. I entered into survival mode without realizing I was there, but it encompassed much more than just early motherhood.
Survival mode looked like living day-to-day, waiting for news of a change in the global COVID crisis. It looked like going diaper change to diaper change, wondering when, if ever, we’d get to take our new baby to meet his family back in our West Tennessee hometown. It looked like being so emotional and scared and anxious about the pandemic that the milk ran dry. It looked like a deep longing to share the joy of your new baby without the barrier of a glass storm door between you.
In my naivete, I didn’t expect to be in motherhood survival mode when our son was born. But the whole globe never expected to be in another kind of survival mode either at the start of COVID-19. The hesitant, darting eyes behind masks choosing apples and penne pasta were just as afraid as I was, just as worried for the health of loved ones as I was for my new son.
Wear the Nice Shoes
Last weekend my son and I had our first ever playdate with a writer friend, who has a son close in age to mine. We planned to meet at her house just after lunch, between nap times. I gathered up all our things. Diapers, a change of clothes, extra snacks. I loaded it all into the diaper bag backpack, grabbed the keys, and we were out the door.
When I stepped through the doorway into her home our eyes locked. A million thoughts lay just out of reach in the heartbeat before she asked if she could hug me, my son still resting on my hip. Smiles grew broad, stretching across our faces as I said, “Yes.”
We’ve spent a year letting fear evolve from house guest to permanent resident, and it’s time we hand over his eviction notice. Even though the pandemic is still happening, people are still getting sick, and I’m still a little nervous to take the shopping cart a kind stranger offers me in the parking lot of Aldi, I can’t live in fear anymore.
When it was time to change out of my pajamas and put on my comfortable, efficient shoes to go to the grocery store, I chose my nice shoes instead. I chose the shoes that make a clicking sound when my heel strikes the ground. I chose the shoes that made me feel confident in the before. I chose the shoes that brought joy instead of fear.
What shoes will you choose?
