“But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.” -Psalm 13:5 (NRSV)

2020 was a really hard year for my mental health. I had to have a hysterectomy in 2019 to fix a chronic issue that was messing with my immune system, and the surgery caused a change in my body that triggered severe depression and anxiety starting in January 2020. It felt like all of my depression medication had stopped working, and my doctor thankfully found a way to even everything out after some trial and error. During this time, my laptop’s keyboard also broke, and sending it to the Geek Squad repair facility meant losing something required for me to get the Lenten devotional book done. I managed to get work done on my phone and various computers in my department’s workroom, but it was one more thing that was messing with me. Add in a student-triggered panic attack, and it was a rough January and February for me. I was finally starting to get my bearings again in March when the pandemic hit, and it felt like I lost everything that was life-giving for me during the week of March 8-14 when campus shut down, church went virtual, and Daniel’s school went to remote learning. My therapist left in June, and I went through two more therapists at their agency before I landed with the one I see now.

So, with all that going on, how exactly have I pulled through? It helped in some ways that I really had no other choice but to push through. While I do live with my parents and my mom does help with Daniel, I did not have the option of pulling the covers over my head and hiding in a dark room like I wanted to at times because I had a kid who needed me to take care of him. I pushed myself to make sure he received the care he needed, and that he was able to do school online. My job helped because I had to earn money somehow. Working with my students gave me a way to use up my anxious energy, and it gave me some purpose. Having been through periods of severe depression before, I also knew that God was present with me even if I couldn’t recognize it at the time.

Gracious God, thank you for the steadfast love you show us, even in periods of anxiety or depression. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

“God is my shield, who saves the upright in heart.” -Psalm 7:10 (NRSV)

I would like to think that I am among the “upright,” but I know better. Oh sure, grading on the curve there are a few I could turn around and sneer at (if I were a sneering sort of person). But God doesn’t grade on the curve. When I was a child, my brother and I would find old bits of wood – lath from plaster and lath construction jobs – and we would “sword-fight” with those sticks. I would often grab a garbage can lid and use it as a shield. It was pretty effective, cutting down the amount of pounding I would otherwise have received from my bigger, older, and fiercer brother. I never think of God saving me because I’m upright. As I said, I know better. But I do like the image of God standing before me – each of us, really – with shield in hand and making sure that “Today, you’ll be OK. I’ve got your back (and your front).” I like to think of the mask I wear when I am out in public as a shield God has given me to protect myself AND others. It isn’t that we are upright in “our” heart, but we’re being upright in God’s heart! I like to think the vaccines we’ve been given are another shield, another layer of protection God has provided, like chain-mail, that protects myself AND others. The world has certainly gone whacky over the past few years, but my strength and comfort during this pandemical season are knowing God has tucked us into a strong, warm, and loving place, protected by ribs and armor and shields. I can’t think of any other place I’d rather be during this Advent season.

We don’t always live up to the status you have for us – upright – and yet you do not call us what we are alone, but what we can be in you. Find us a place to rest easy in your heart that we may tread lightly the journey that yet lies before us. Thank you for your eternal presence. Amen.
– Fr. Keith Axberg

“O Lord my God, in you I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers, and deliver me…” -Psalm 7:1 (NRSV)

What is saving my life now? Now and every day, a simple answer: Writing. Of all the places on Earth, the place I feel the most grounded is at my desk, writing. For others, it might be at the piano or in the art studio or walking in nature. Sailing or skiing. Gardening or golfing. Or lazy Sunday drives. You can feel it, that mantle of calm that settles on your shoulders as you retreat from a sometimes-ugly world. You take refuge there, wherever it is that speaks to you, from pursuers literal and figurative.

What transpired at my desk during the past 21 months during the COVID-19 pandemic was time—and permission—to revisit a very dark period in my life and write about it.

As I worked through a gamut of raw and often unbearable emotions, I finally forgave myself for holding this pain in for so long. And then I wrote a new novel based on this catharsis, with forgiveness and redemption central to the story.

It’s as if the Lord held me in His hand for as long as I needed (40+ years), and then He set me free, like a bird. But I know He is there, for whenever I need Him next.

Dear Lord, thank you for holding us in the palm of Your hand as we work through past trauma. Amen.
-Ashley Sweeney

“Turn, O Lord, save my life; deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love.” -Psalm 6:4 (NRSV)

I cannot accurately describe the fear that has existed in me regarding the possibility of getting COVID. Having had respiratory problems from a young age and being asthmatic, the idea of a deadly disease that attacks the lungs is terrifying. My parents have been present with me in the emergency room and hospital through asthma exacerbation and pneumonia, so they share that fear. Add in my son Daniel who has spent time in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) on a ventilator with a mysterious respiratory disorder, and you have a perfect storm. Daniel did school by remote learning for a year (which was a horrible but necessary option), I worked only online for 18 months, and the family did not leave the house except for grocery shopping and medical appointments.

What is saving me right now quite literally as I sit at home on a Sunday morning with asthma exacerbation, is the availability of vaccines against COVID. They are not perfect and there are indeed breakthrough COVID cases, but it means that people like me will likely just have cold symptoms instead of ending up on ventilators. The world came together to fund the research for the vaccines, scientists were able to draw on research into other viruses and vaccines for those, and the FDA cut the red tape in the process to get the vaccines approved. The ingenuity of researchers astonishes me as the use of mRNA is quite novel, and we are finding that it does indeed work well in telling the body how to build the spike protein on the outside of the coronavirus so that it knows to destroy it. Praise God for the ways in which scientists can work in changing situations.

Lord, you are the Great Physician and the Healer of our Souls. Thank you for the inspiration You give to scientists and the incredible ways the human body works. Help us to make ethical decisions as we pursue treatments like this and continue to enlighten and inspire researchers as they explore the ways Your creation works. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

“Sing to the Lord, all the earth. Tell of his salvation from day to day.” -1 Chronicles 16:23 (NRSV)

My guilty pleasure is singing along to music in the car. The Beach Boys make Seattle traffic palatable. On my coffee runs to the Starbucks at the George Hopper exit in April 2020, I used to sing along to my praise playlist on my iPod. Eventually, I will make my first Trader Joe’s run since March 2020, and I am trying to decide what music will accompany that trip. Since I don’t get to scratch my musical itch with choir, this has to suffice for the moment.

Being able to sing is a large part of how I engage my faith. God speaks to me more often through hymns and choir anthems than through Scripture or something audible. One of the hardest things for me in the last 18 months has been not being able to sing hymns with the congregation even during Zoom because of the small delay on Zoom that makes it hard for me to be in sync with the music. I missed singing Christmas carols (though I will admit to sitting back and listening to David Sloat sing because of his amazing voice), and there are certain Easter hymns that I missed out on for two Easters straight. While I was able to participate via virtual choir anthems, it is not the same as singing live with a choir because you are recording by yourself and don’t have the benefit of others around you to help you tune and whose energy you feed off of as you sing.

As we are now back in the sanctuary, getting to sing hymns in the choir loft is saving me right now because it is how I am slowly getting back this thing that feeds me so much that the pandemic had taken from me. Until things get completely back to normal and our church choir resumes, however, you will find me in the driver’s seat of my Subaru Impreza singing along to Rend Collective.

Thank you, Lord, for giving us the gift of music and the ability to pray twice through making it. Bring us through this season of limited music opportunities and bring us back together in our choirs soon. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

“The Lord lives! Blessed be my rock, and exalted be my God, the rock of my salvation…” –2 Samuel 22:47 (NRSV)

When we lived in Minnesota our family became close friends with another family in our parish. We had two sons in elementary school; they had two sons in elementary school. We had a lot in common. Together we were active in the parish and we enjoyed camping, canoeing, sharing meals, and spending time together.

Bruce and Penny were “rockhounds” and their favorite rocks were agates. They would find the agates, which were plentiful in our area; Bruce would polish them, and Penny would make lovely jewelry from some of them.

We knew nothing about agates, but they taught us to find them. We spent hours walking rocky beaches and along creek beds looking down for the telltale reddish-brown stones, which when immersed in liquid and held to the light had a slight glow. Ultimately, we had enough stones that Bruce convinced me to buy a small polisher which tumbled the stones together with a grit and then a polisher for days, knocking off the rough edges and exposing the amazing patterns and striations of the polished agate.

One of the things that have saved me during this pandemic has been looking at my jar of polished agates – my rocks! I hold them to the light examining them closely. I feel how smooth (or in some cases not so smooth) they are. Most of all, I fondly remember our friends and the wonderful times we shared.

Thank you, God, for the gift of the wide variety of rocks on this earth. Thank you also for the gift of friendship and fond memories. Most of all, thank you for surrounding us with love. Amen.
-Cathey Frederick