Life Or Something Like It

The hardest times I had living at the Ronald McDonald House were Sunday nights.  If anyone had come to Memphis to visit for the weekend, they typically left Sunday afternoon so they could be home for work the next morning.  Besides this, Sundays at home were always busy days because we went to church on Sunday mornings and Sunday nights, so being there with nothing to do was hard.

Every time Sunday night rolled around I would feel terribly lonely.  Sometimes I thought about going to a local church in Memphis, but Emma's blood counts were too low to go out without wearing a mask (which she hates), and we were there for about a month and a half in the winter months, so it was dark by the evening services, and I didn't feel comfortable driving in a strange city in the dark.

The Window in the Chapel

So Emma and I would walk.  We had an umbrella stroller with us and I'd push her through the halls of the great big Ronald McDonald House of Memphis.  There was a chapel there, with a piano.  I'd always stop in the chapel and play the piano (not well, mind you!).  I'd think about all the people at choir practice at home at that very time.  I'd think about how they might wish they were home, because they had a million things to do.  I'd wish to tell them how lucky they were that they could do something as gloriously normal as go to choir practice on a Sunday evening.

Even typing this post I have tears in my eyes, because those Sunday nights were SO HARD.  Sundays might not have been that hard for everyone--I don't know--but I'm sure there were hard days for everyone there.  Likewise, there are hard days for people everywhere, every day. 

My challenge to you today is to be thankful for the normalacies in life.  You never know when you might not have them!