Best & Worst

The group of young women I teach at church has a tradition at the beginning of their Sunday lesson. They call it Best & Worst, and it involves each person sharing something from their week which fits these categories, respectively.

This week we noticed something counterintuitive about the "bests" and the "worsts." In every single case, the two were connected. Interestingly, the best and worst were usually the very same thing, event, or situation.

It (whatever it was) began badly or unexpectedly, yet somehow managed to become something positive, to the extent that my girls rendered it as the best part of their week.

My experience was no different from theirs. My week has seen a tsunami of laundry and sickness as a contemptible stomach virus ravaged our household.

I bemoaned to Jeff that the universe doesn't give a fig when the mom of four sick kids is also sick herself. Unfortunately, neither do those children care that their caregiver wants to crawl under her electric blanket and shiver herself to sleep, rather than launder their nasty linens and clean the foul bathrooms.

Moms don't get sick days.

In the whirlwind of illness, a couple of points stamped themselves onto my psyche.

First there was this: in the context of a hurricane causing havoc and destruction on the east coast, I gave thanks for my washer and dryer, and for the uninterrupted power supply which kept them humming productively all through the night.

And then there was this: a friend of a friend of mine died last week of an amniotic embolism as she delivered her second child. While I didn't know her, she lived nearby. I had actually met her briefly the day before she gave birth and never regained consciousness.

I thought of her as I slogged through our sick week, and I was glad to be here, sick and caring for my sick ones.

See how it happened? Worst became best.