Dear friend,
My soul rests in God alone. My salvation is from him. He alone is my rock, my salvation, and my fortress. I will never be greatly shaken.
I got laid off once, in my late twenties, before you knew me. I remember the specific humiliation of updating my resume at the kitchen table while my husband was still at work, like I needed to fix it before he got home and saw the wreckage. I didn't tell my own sister for two weeks. I kept thinking there was a version of the news that would sound less like failure, and I never found it because there isn't one. It just is what it is. Being out of work is a strange kind of quiet. The day still has all its hours in it, but the shape is gone.
I'm not going to tell you what to do with the hours. I don't think that's the point today. I keep thinking about how it shows up first as a schedule problem and only later as something closer to the chest. Both are real. Neither one needs fixing by tonight.
What does the quiet part of your day actually feel like right now?
A prayer
God, the schedule is gone and the quiet is loud in its own way. Be near to her in the ordinary hours today, the ones that used to have a shape. Amen.