For the wee hours of a Friday…

There’s an odd comfort in the green dots along the right side of my screen – their light says I’m not the only one in my time zone awake at 4:30am. If “never alone” is the core desire of our hearts, then I suppose, for this moment anyway, Facebook has offered solidarity for once, as opposed to its way-too-normal pattern of encouraging us to tear each other apart with half-truths and false outrage.

A friend from high school…another mom from church I know just a little…a few clergy pals…a former youth group member who I know is a new dad and so I can guess why he’s awake. And me. My own head full of all the things parent and professional never mind the zillion other bits of news and moments of worry begging at the edges of my mind for its attention.

Did you know there’s still a war in Ukraine? I wonder how many moms are awake in the middle of the night there, maybe just praying they’ll see sunrise.

I sit curled up on my couch, coffee brewed earlier than usual, my incorrigible-but-darling mutts not even ready to make their morning dash for the backyard, and I marvel at the sweetness of this life I’ve been handed. Nothing perfect about it — it’s shot through with things I wish I had gone different, words I wish I’d said sooner or not at all, dreams shattered on the kitchen floor and a thousand fears that gnaw at the edges of stubborn hope and a real faith that no matter what, God is to be seen and felt and heard.

Whatever it is that you face this Friday, y’all, whatever joys await, whatever sorrows weigh heavy, whatever heartache is threatening to undo you, whatever happiness lurks on the horizon…whatever it is, the only thing I can offer is what I know for sure: You are not alone.

Neither are those mamas praying for an end to bombs and bullets in Ukraine.

And on the days when everything seems just a bit too loud, too much, too…everything…perhaps, “You are not alone,” is just exactly what we need.

And more than enough.