Dad is all of these things and yet not really – not anymore. He has Alzheimer’s Disease. I write to remember him, though he hasn’t yet departed from this world. I catch his glance and see a light of recognition and love for me in his smile, yet it’s challenging to recognize him there; the dad that I remember and expect is leaving us, steadily.

This week has been the kind of week where you just want to curl up under the covers and escape from the world. As I write we are experiencing cold, rainy weather, the kind that feels more like March than late October. Autumn has been wonderfully warm and long and the foliage is peaking. But it has to end sooner or later I suppose. As a friend observed, during the course of this week we’ll have experienced the residual effects of Hurricane Zeta, Mischief Night, a blue full moon on Halloween, Daylight Saving Time, and just to add insult to injury, the 2020 presidential election.

Our son also just moved into his university apartment for freshman year. Yesterday I sang lullabies and tucked him into his crib with his favorite stuffed toy. Today he’s at least a foot taller than me, shaves, drives and helps me with electronics. One day he was small, I blinked, and now he is grown. It happened so fast and is strange, wonderful and bittersweet.It’s so hard to let your kids out into the world when they were once all yours to nurture and protect. Hard not to worry while praying continuously that they’ll adjust and thrive.

Our cat has a hashtag. It all started when we noticed him laying flat on his back, completely relaxed, in all sorts of random and odd places: the middle of the kitchen floor, at the foot of the stairs, up against a hallway wall, next to the freestanding oven range, under the dining room table…just about anywhere.

Someone posed this provocative question in a social media post recently: “What if we took sin as seriously as we take COVID-19?” I can’t stop thinking about the irony here. What if sin took hold of the world’s conscience and provoked an international reaction on par with COVID-19?

As we turn the corner on 2019 and begin another new year, I find myself in a sober mood. It’s early on New Year’s Eve as I write, and fitting to reflect on the previous 12 months. The holidays have always been a time of happy reunions and celebrations for my crew and 2019 was no different. But for many it’s a profoundly difficult time.