The Gift of Presence
The one thing that still felt reasonable about our staycation was today. Our church is still mostly virtual so we were planning to head to our friend’s house, watch church, and spend the day in their gorgeous swimming pool.
David and I kept looking at the forecast. It was predicted to be super cloudy all day with rainstorms throughout. There was a dark cloud cover predicted over much of central Virginia. What were we going to do? They live an hour away. It’s not like you just watch to see what happens and jump in the car if the sun happens to come out.
David said, “We really don’t want to sit in the house all day.” He was right. Usually we could have found lots of fun things to do; but the heaviness in the house was palpable. There was laughter, too, but it took so.much.work. to attempt normal conversation. We decided to go and pray in faith. I’d set up a facebook page to keep friends and family updated and suddenly hundreds of people were praying with us, too.
We got up and loaded the van under deep grey skies. The closer we got to their house, the lighter the skies got. By the time we arrived, the sun was more present than the clouds. By noon, we were under bright blue skies and gorgeous, warm sunshine! Throughout the afternoon several storms circled around on different sides, but always, the sky above us stayed blue.
The swimming was phenomenal. Trell’s grilled wings should be famous. There’s a startup horse therapy ranch on their farmette and they arranged for the kids to have rides. But the very best gift was the gift of their presence. It’s strange how desperately alone you feel when something like this happens. To have friends who can be with us in fun and in crisis is a gift we will never take for granted.
