Sometimes a recovering drama queen can benefit from a few real life lessons that a real queen learned in dangerous, uncertain times.
The quiet of tonight’s walk was broken by the sound of an airplane making its approach to BWI. Do you know how many weeks it has been since I was deaf to jet engines?
Then an angry voice cut through the silence; we retraced our steps to avoid meeting a young man whose loud soliloquy unsettled Doug and me.
Some of us are contending with thoughts, emotions, rumors, and facts that do not get easier to dismiss or accept as the days go by. We just might have a heated soliloquy we’d like to deliver!
” We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Nor do I have a pair of ruby slippers to click together three times and wish for home.
A little congestion or slight fever can send me into a tailspin — talking crazy things to myself! (Well, as a recovering Drama Queen, it really doesn’t take much.)
Short and to the POINT
So, it was a good thing I watched a program about a real queen. The Queen at War is a PBS recap of how Elizabeth II grew up through WWII. Enduring the bombing, separation, the fear of invasion, and V-1 bombs, she also mastered a useful mechanical skill and got her hands dirty; she served five years in a war of grave loss.
It reminded me to cancel this afternoon’s pity party.
Historians and biographers describe Queen Elizabeth II as a woman of faith – faith in God through Christ. (The Faith Behind The Crown — CT) In times of testing, sorrow, joy, and loss, she has kept calm and carried on — a lesson worth learning!
While bombs aren’t dropping, our lives have changed because of an invader who can rain death and disaster. For now, we can’t defeat it. Recovery from COVID-19’s devastations may be as hard-fought as Great Britain’s recovery from the war. We may well pass through times of deprivation and uncertainty that our parents and grand parents knew.
As our life before COVID-19 recedes into the rearview mirror of my memory, I am sad. I grieve for the losses. I am afraid for what might come; mad that we were so poorly prepared, and exasperated at the crippling polarization.
However, I am certain God’s hand is still on the tiller.
The Queen at War described how one woman’s strong character came from enduring, learning and doing. Queen Elizabeth II’s early years showed me a life-long pattern worth imitating and adapting:
So, for today, and maybe tomorrow, Lord willing, let me
Breathe and pray – trust and do – rest.
Repeat.
And paint.
A wise woman builds her home,
but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands. ~ Proverbs 14:1
PS: Don’t forget to sing! Sing with me: How Many Times Must I prove to You I Love You? (The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir)
Makes me chuckle every time I see it
* Who is TobyMac?