Wrexham AFC. West Wing on shibboleth. Wisdom from Felicity.

If you’re not following Wrexham AFC see Eric. Because he totally is. It’s Ted Lasso in real life, except Ryan Reynolds is the owner.

2023 has gotten off to an inauspicious start. My pediatrician warned me that the kids would pretty much be sick all year due to post-Covid lack of immunity and he was correct. I might as well set up shop in the pediatrician’s office. And I just want to know – why isn’t there an at home strep test?

When everyone is sick, seemingly all the time, I totally get this tweet:

The kids are alright. MJ told me she had a “stomach egg” last week while EB told his class, on his 4 ½ birthday last month, that he’s 14. Same difference.

Marnie sings her heart out to Psalty and Imagine Dragons these days. She’s also discovered the mini avocado, which helps the “I can’t commit to a full avocado” people among us. People like Gwyneth Paltrow. And Marnie really keeps an eye on our car getting washed, mostly out of concern that mommy just handed off the car keys to some kid in a beanie:

Seb caught an opossum two weeks ago in our backyard and fed him a burger. He also attended his first Bar Mitzvah and ladies, Sebby is extremely cute in a yarmulke.

I’m doing some spring cleaning here, discovered lobster scrambled eggs, said goodbye to my good friend Emily, squeezed in some quality time with my sister Es, and now know what a ruptured eardrum feels like. It hurts.

C.S. Lewis was spot on when he wrote: “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

God def got my attention. Especially now that I can’t hear in my left ear. He’s showing me some stuff in my mind and heart that need to change, something Felicity explores when Greg discovers he has cancer:

Alarm bells are going off. And since it’s Lent I’m reflecting a lot on who I need to become. Mostly through forgiveness, something Tim Keller’s new book Forgive is helping me work through:

I’m also gleaning parenting advice from NCIS:

Speaking of TV, Eric and I try to watch West Wing most evenings. And by “watch” I mean “fall asleep”

If you haven’t watched West Wing you really must. It’s Aaron Sorkin at his best. And this Shibboleth episode is quite moving:

Okay, I have to confess. I had a major parenting fail a few days ago when we got the text from Kenston at 6AM telling us there was no bus that day.

There were mitigating circumstances for my lack of grace – I was up the night before throwing up with EB and Marnie and simultaneously cleaning up after them. So the text came at an inopportune time for my “better nature” to reveal itself.

I was mad.

A minute after revealing my annoyance about this transportation snafu, Seb shared what he read in his Tim Keller wisdom devotional:

Me. Gutted. I felt God saying:

And it was such a good reminder that I am so NOT a good person. That I fall every day and that I need what Sally Lloyd-Jones calls the “never ending, never stopping, ever and forever love” to pick me up and let me start again.

Which is pretty much the Easter story.