Something very weird happened to me earlier this year. I did not realize when I wrote “the weirdest thing happened to me” in last year’s blog post that things were about to get even weirder. Apparently God was not finished answering my prayer to help me “to believe for real, like, really real. For real.”
The weirdest thing happened. I asked God to help me believe. I did not expect an answer.
I got an answer.
Five years ago—and not coincidentally, two years after California legalized recreational marijuana—I accepted an invitation from a Christian friend to attend her son’s baptism and took my younger son with me. Last summer, my younger son decided to get baptized after attending a church camp. I decided if he’s going to do it, I would too.
I’m sitting at my writing desk with my coffee and a couple of “Coppengrath Gewürz Spekulatins” spiced biscuits (cookies) from a package my German mother-in-law gave to my kid. Yes, I am eating his cookies. There are plenty in the bag. He doesn’t need all those cookies. He won’t miss a few.
I come up with a lot of excuses for not writing, which is inexcusable. My latest excuse: my 16-yr old kid came down with COVID.
Okay, not literally. The interval between seconds didn’t actually lengthen. Time didn’t tick by slower than usual. People around me didn’t speak with a drawl or move in slow motion. There were no redshifts or time dilation effects that I noticed. It wasn’t as if I was launched into space at near light speed and returned to Earth to find my husband an old man, hunched over, grasping a walking cane, and my boys with gray hair and grandchildren. Nothing like that.
I can’t believe this is happening. Can you?
Sometime in January, the universe sneezed, our space-time continuum shifted, and our metaverse got switched with another. Somehow we got stuck in someone else’s pandemic novel. Or this is proof we’re all living a simulation, like Neo, and somebody with a warped sense of humor introduced a new glitch in the Matrix. I guess it depends on whether you like getting your stories from books or movies. I’m a writer. I like books. I also like cool sci-fi movies. Don’t make me choose favorites.
Earlier this year in May, I ran across a homework assignment in my son’s state-mandated, eighth grade sex-ed curriculum that infuriated me.