Ordinary Days By Lauren Denton: Keeping them close

About a week after the war in Ukraine began, I went away for a weekend on a women’s retreat with my church. I’d hoped to spend the two days away from my phone, but instead I couldn’t stop checking CNN updates as news reports came in.

A family at our church lived in Ukraine as missionaries for about eight years, and hearing my friend talk about their Ukrainian friends and the fear and confusion there in Lviv made the battle seem even closer and scarier.

I found myself looking forward to having all my chicks back in the nest that Sunday night. I wanted to know my people were all safe at home together.

I already appreciated my family before the war in Ukraine, of course, but tragedy always makes us hold our people a little closer, doesn’t it?

September 11, 2001, is probably the first big tragedy of my lifetime that I remember making me scared about the world and finding safety in it. For a while after 9/11, anytime I’d see an airplane in the sky, I’d keep my eye on it, wondering if the pilot was taking it safely to an airport or if he had some other idea in mind.

The country’s unrest and nervousness remained for years after that attack. Soon after I had Sela, while Kate was in preschool, there was the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, which rocked all parents to the core. There were terrorist attacks. More school shootings. More shootings in general. COVID-19. Tornadoes. Ukraine and Russia.

All these events and so many more make us want to gather our loved ones together to assure ourselves it’s all going to be OK.

One thing that’s been on my mind lately is the idea of accepting uncertainty. I’m a girl who likes a plan. I make lists, I like routines, I like predictability.

I like to be in control.

But, maybe now more than ever, we have to be OK with uncertainty and with relinquishing control because so much is uncertain and out of our control these days. In the big picture, this includes things like the state of the world and international security.

On a smaller, but no less important, scale, it includes things like my writing career and not being able to find the one thing I need from the grocery store because the shipment is backed up somewhere in Nebraska.

I can’t control grocery store inventory or the availability of paper to print books. I can’t control what happens with Russia or this summer’s hurricane season or what will happen with the next COVID-19 variant. All I can control is how I react to things that happen in my own life and the lives of the people to whom I’m closest.

I can remind myself that “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. … The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”

On a recent Saturday, both our kids spent most of the day with friends, one up the road at a neighbor’s house and the other with a friend at our house. As a result, I had a rare afternoon to spend reading in the sun on the back porch.

We had a plan to watch a movie together that evening, but the kids played until late, then we ate a late dinner, so we scrapped the movie plan and made a fire in the backyard firepit. We grabbed a couple blankets and a bag of marshmallows and took our seats around the fire.

As the stars popped out overhead and a cool breeze blew, Sela told us about a funny dream she’d had, Kate told us about a stinky cheese she learned about in her FACS class at school, and our dog Ruby contentedly destroyed her tennis ball. It was simple and easy and peaceful, and it was not a small thing to have my people around me, safe and secure.

When I’m not writing about my family and our various shenanigans, I write novels and go to the grocery store. You can reach me by email at lauren@laurenkdenton.com, visit my website, laurenkdenton.com, or find me on Instagram @LaurenKDentonBooks or Facebook ~LaurenKDentonAuthor.