These Are the Better Than Zero Days

I was playing a game with some of the members of my extended family at my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary getaway celebration a few years ago when my baby sister had her turn. The objective of the game was to accumulate points, and on my sister’s go-around, she got a single-digit score.

“Better than zero,” she declared triumphantly...and a new approach to life was born.

"Better than zero” has become our benchmark and our scorecard and our measuring stick.

Walked for 15 minutes? Great. Better than zero.

Kid ate three carrot sticks? Fabulous. Better than zero.

Got one load of laundry washed, dried, and put away? Well done. Better than zero.

Tackled the most dreaded chore on a ten-item to-do list? Check. Better than zero.

Bought a single Christmas present ahead of the holiday shopping rush? Fa la la la la. Better than zero.

It’s not that we don’t want to do our best at the things that matter most. It's not that we're always settling for just enough. It's not that we never pursue excellence.

It’s just that sometimes, any score is a win. Sometimes, a single hash mark is a victory.

Friends, we are squarely in the better than zero days.

We are trying to figure out how to live life in a way we’ve never lived it before, with no intro course and no clear end date. This is NOT THE TIME to be trying to score 100 on very many of life's tests.

Of course, everybody has to figure out how to live this surreal existence in the way that’s best for their family and their needs and their particular situation. But we are all, in the big picture, trying to do some version of the same huge thing: keep our people safe and emerge on the other side of this with our closest relationships intact. Battered and bruised, maybe, but still viable.

So I'm going to go on the record and say that anything we have to let go of to hold onto that goal is a candidate for the chopping block.

Teenagers up at a time that still ends with any kind of a.m.? Better than zero.

Someone knocked out a few pages of their homework packet before they had any screen time? Better than zero.

Dinner is frozen pizza on paper plates? Better than zero.

Baked a cake and called it math class? Way better than zero.

Because here’s the thing: where doing love and showing uncommon grace to our families are concerned, right now is probably not the time to be aiming for a Scrabble word where you use all your letters including an "x" and a "q" and throw a triple-word score into the bargain.

No, when life has handed you the letter-rack equivalent of six vowels and a single one-point consonant, it's time to spell “our” and call it a resounding win.

Our faith.
Our families.
Our health.
Our relationships.
Our peace.
Our future.
Our hope.

If this ends up being our prize package, it will be so much better than zero.

It will be the best thing we've ever won.

Oh, Easter, How We Need You

I'm not sure I'm going to need a new Easter dress this year. 

I ordered a bunch of candidates, but I don't know if I'm going to keep any of them, not only because I'm not in love with them but, so much more, because I'm not sure I'm going to have an occasion to wear them.

But I am very, very sure of this: I need Easter. In fact, I'm sure we all need it, maybe more than we've ever needed it at any other time in history, save one.

I'm not talking about needing the reopening of businesses, as President Trump recently put forth.

I'm not even talking about needing to be able to gather in sanctuaries together, though that surely is a longing of so many aching souls.

I'm talking about needing the pieces of Easter that are not in question, because they've already been answered. I'm talking about needing the details of Easter that are not TBD, because they've already been determined.

We desperately need Easter, no matter what it ends up looking like. If it looks different than other years, it will follow in good stead, because the first Easter also looked entirely unlike anyone expected it to.

Jesus’ followers expected that first Easter Sunday to look dark.

They expected it to reek of death.

They expected it to be shrouded in fear and uncertainty. 

They expected it to be heavy with disappointment.

Close to 2,000 years later, we know about these things.

But that first Easter, eleven words changed everything.

“He is not here. He is risen, just as He said.”

These words and the truth behind them turned the expected on its heel. 

Dark went to light.

Death went to life.

Fear went to hope. 

Uncertainty went to blessed assurance. 

Disappointment went to fulfillment.

Defeat went to victory. 

We need these gifts and maybe we need them with an urgency we've never known before. These riches are ours to take hold of, held out to us by the Giver of every good gift, Who is not waiting around to see if Easter will happen this year.

No matter what we end up wearing or where we end up wearing it or who might be near us to compliment us on a new dress, this Easter can blow our expectations out of the water. 

No matter what we’ll be wearing, our certain celebration is based on what Jesus WASN’T wearing that Easter: His grave clothes. 

This is the only thing we need to know to look forward, full-on, to Easter this year. 

Let’s give the anticipation its due. Let’s put more weight on what we know than what we don’t. Let’s wait with eager hope. Let's look forward in confident expectation that our deepest needs will be met. And then let's watch God do, again, the glorious unexpected.

Maybe Getting Back To Normal Shouldn't Be What We Want Most

 Normal is officially on hiatus. 

Whatever normal might ever have been, it isn’t right now. 

We are still doing some "normal" things, of course. We are eating and sleeping and laughing and crying and working and learning.

But even these most basic elements of "normal” we are doing in new ways. 

We are eating, but more at home and possibly using ingredients we've stocked up on more than usual.

We are sleeping, but some of us more fitfully and some of us just more.

We are laughing, but maybe feeling a little guilty about it.

We are crying, but maybe more often and about things we aren't even sure we understand.

We are working (some of us, and we're thankful for it), but from home or on a reduced schedule or at a different job we've hastily gotten to fill in the gaps.

We are learning, but in different ways and places and at different paces. Some learning is much slower, and some is so fast we can't keep up with it.

And then there are the normal things we are not doing and the abnormal things we are doing. 

We are not shaking hands or eating in restaurants or getting together. We are not, some of us, going to work or church.

We are staying home and washing our hands A LOT and canceling plans and seeing a great many posts about toilet paper.

We are, frankly, already tired of all of it: the erased normal and the altered normal and the abnormal. We have not actually been living on this normalcy hiatus for very long, but it already feels like a lifetime, and we are DONE.

Life called, and it wants its normal back.

But maybe getting back to normal shouldn't be what we want most.

Some of the not-as-normal things we are doing are things we needed—and need—to do. Things like working out our patience muscles. Things like checking on the vulnerable and asking, "Does anybody need anything I can provide?" Things like seeking out opportunities to help and serve. Things like spending extended time with our families and not just at the holidays. Things like realizing what matters most. 

Things like stripping away some busyness. Things like making sure the people we love know it. Things like breathing and going outside and taking walks and soaking up sunshine. Things like figuring out what we can do without. Things like appreciating a lot of pieces of normal life we take for granted.

Some of these not-so-normal things are the byproducts of not being able to do a lot of usual life. We've had space and wide margins opened up, and we've filled them with some things that might be good to keep around when normal—or a new version of it, anyway—returns.

Instead of getting back to normal, maybe what we should want more is to get forward to something better. 

To a place where we recognize that there were some good things missing from our old normal and so we decide, gratefully, to make them part of our new.