Wondering Presbyterian

There are moments when things in the universe line up too perfectly for it to mean anything other than God. In this story, it starts and ends with a book.             My husband and I binge-watched “Russian Doll” on Netflix. In the show, two characters keep reliving the same day and have to team up to figure out why and how to break the loop. The main character, Nadia, wants to give a book to her ex-boyfriend’s daughter: Emily of New Moon . As we watched the show, I thought to myself, Self: I have this book somewhere. I bought it at an antique mall in El Paso (IL) years ago. It’s a beautiful hardback copy and as I searched up and down for it, I realized a horrible truth: I probably decided since I hadn’t read the book, it was time to pass it on. Though I can’t remember specifically doing it, I can picture myself putting the book in the box to give to the church yard sale. But because of the show, I want to read the book.  ...

            Winter makes me nesty. I mean, it makes me want to just make a nest and hibernate. Or clean things. The two big projects looming over my husband and me this year are our basement and our garage. We’ve only been in the house for a year, so the unpacking list is still fairly long. It was about 9:30 at night not too long ago when I decided I would go tackle a basement box. At first, I wasn’t even sure the big blue bin was mine. I had to unbury it to even try to peak in it, but as soon as I saw the black graduation gowns, I knew they weren’t my husband’s. Inside this giant bin was a wealth of treasures, from my college and seminary graduation gowns (both black) to the stuffed animals, to a Safari Barbie doll and a smaller plastic bin with a bunch of old papers that my grandmother had saved. My mom found a bin for each of the seven grandchildren stuffed to the gills with the papers of our lives: newspaper clippings featur...