Let the good times roll!

And an important update on what I started for all of us

Laissez les bon temps rouler! Nothing feels like bon temps right now, but happy Mardi Gras; enjoy your sugar while it lasts; Lent is nipping at our heels so let’s go, shall we?

If we can agree that January was 17 years long and February lasted 90 minutes, then please imagine this is the February update for the Compassion Brigade, because that was my intent. For the (later) March edition, we may just have a guest writer whom you know and love, who happens to share my birthday, so stay tuned for that delight.

Terrible selfie from a recent “work meeting” [date] with said secret ghostwriter. Fun fact: we now not only share the same birthday, but the same hair!

But for now, let us pretend it’s still February.

Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the day trying not to fight with strangers on the internet or drown in despair at the latest news, but I have a deep bone sense that we are collectively EXHAUSTED.

Exactly the exhaustion that February (and ok, early March) often brings in colder climes. When you are so dang sick of being so stupid cold, and other people are frolicking in daffodils and sunshine in their far-off-somewhere, but where you live it is always-winter-but-never-Narnia. So you are cranky and EXHAUSTED.

Or maybe you are simply a citizen of these states o’ America which brings its own weary exhaustion, worsening by the hour.

As Christians start Lent this year, I keep thinking about sabbath. Spoiler alert: there’s a chapter in my new book about sabbath, because all my surgeries and recoveries schooled me in sabbath more than I ever expected, even as a person who “liked to take a nap on Sundays” and “forced family fun like hikes and museums” and “tried to do less housework which just made Monday a mess.” No Pinterest board of cutesy ideas compares to what I learned about holy rest once I had a bunch of bloodied tubes and drains poking out of my body.¹

Cancer—and nature—taught me that sabbath is necessary. A body (whether flesh and bones, or a body politic, or the Body of Christ) needs to rest in order to repair. We cannot keep going unless we stop.

Sabbath makes us squirm because it runs counter to nearly everything we were taught: it’s up to me, hard work pays off, pull up your bootstraps, whoever dies with the most money/toys wins. Sabbath whispers instead that the world doesn’t revolve around you and your worth is not based on your ability and hustling is not holy and if God modeled rest and commanded it, you better do it, too.

But until cancer forced me to spend months exhausted (and annoyed that I was exhausted), I truly thought sabbath was just a nice choice, a good idea, a healthy practice, a spiritual wisdom.

No. It is also necessary. We will quite literally die without it.

Which brings us back to right now. I don’t know a single soul who isn’t feeling exhausted about what’s happening in the U.S. We feel like we can do so little—pray like crazy, call our representatives, boycott billionaires, protest injustice, post some snark to stay sane, donate to those devastated by careless decrees from on high. But we have forgotten one necessary piece of the work: rest.

To keep going, we have to keep stopping, too.

This week I got a nasty head cold/sinus injection. I joked with my spouse that my past selves—my cancer self and my sick-in-pregnancy self—took zero pity on me (oh, does poor baby have a man cold?). But being forced back to bed made me reckon for the zillionth time with my own limits and need for rest. Even the good work I have been given to do does not depend on me.

As we launch/lunge/lurch into Lent this year, I wonder what practice of less we might take up. Do we indulge less? Scroll less? Despair less? Criticize less? Numb less? Exhaust ourselves less?

Right now it feels like we always need to do/pray/act/give MORE MORE MORE. But every seven days, the regular reminder comes around that rest is holy. Divinely sanctioned and commanded, gulp. So whatever we want to do, or need to do—or want others to want or need to do!—we must also do the sacred work of stepping back, slowing down, and remembering ourselves back into the right order of creation: in which there is a God, and it ain’t me.²

(For me, further proof of the divine is always God’s sense of humor, so might I add that at this exact point in writing this missive, I received the dreaded call from the youngest’s school. Every parent knows exactly what is going to happen to your day/week once that school number pops up on the phone. So now I am snuggled into a decidedly undone day in which all I want to do is rest but I now need to convince a sick 5 year-old to join me.³)

Back to this faux-February update. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, a great day for anyone who hasn’t had a life-altering brush with death to get ashes smeared on their skin while a stranger reminds them that you came from dust and to dust you shall return. I’d bet exactly 0% of you would be surprised to know that I ADORE Ash Wednesday. I love that we look mortality in the face (literally). I love that it’s not a holy day of obligation but churches are packed. I love that humans are drawn to the simplest, starkest symbols in our religious practices. I love that we read the same readings every year⁴, I love that we sign crosses on babies’ foreheads⁵, I love that we link arms as we step into Lent and say: this is certain to be hard and humbling, but that is how holy goes. Shall we?

After spending months bald or chemo-capped, I know too well what it’s like to have everyone stare at you⁶ and squirm at the reminder of what they’d prefer not to see: their own vulnerability. So when we walk around tomorrow with dirt smudged on our faces, may we take this as a sign of solidarity. With those who are suffering not symbolically, but in body, mind, or spirit. With those who have been devastated by political gamesmanship in recent weeks. With those who have lost everything to natural disaster, war, violence, or oppression. With everyone who is trying to get up in the morning again because they are just plain exhausted.⁷

We need Sabbath.

We need each other.

We need to be exceedingly gentle and generous with each other during this difficult Lent.

“Laura, get to the point! Why are you always rambling?”⁸

Let’s get down to the monthly work of the Compassion Brigade. This is what we are about, and you can read this reminder if you’re new here and are scratching your head.

If Alicia Keys hadn’t already belted out so beautifully that we’re livin in a world and it’s on fire, one of us could coin the phrase because good glory, is it true.⁹

So here is what we are going to do. Help each other out as best we can. We give, we pray, we support, we encourage, we lift up.

Apologies for not running this by everyone in advance, but I started a giant fundraiser in our name. Good news: it’s going strong! After certain recent RIDICULOUS events in the Oval Office, I was reminded of the fundraiser that we started in support of the people of Ukraine right after they were invaded by Russia in 2022.¹⁰ Back then, I was gathering support nearly every year for a different fundraiser in honor of my daughters Maggie and Abby, who died in 2016 after complications from twin-to-twin-transfusion syndrome. In 2022, we raised nearly $35,000 for Catholic Relief Services that went directly to people in Ukraine, and it was an incredible moment to see people of good will rally together for a clear cause.¹¹

This week, I decided I’d had enough doomscrolling/snark-texting/despair-sinking. So I put out the call to friends on social media who were speaking out against the Widespread Injustices Of The Present Moment (Honestly Too Many To Name). I pulled together a fundraiser page, sent it out widely, and as of this morning, we have raised over $27,000 for Catholic Relief Services, whose humanitarian relief efforts around the world have been devastated by the loss of USAID funding.

I would love for you to join us in this collective effort. (I did it in our name!) Because I am a wild dreamer, I set a goal of $50K and will leave the fundraiser up for all of Lent so that folks can make it part of their practice of almsgiving. Thank you for giving, for sharing, for praying, and for supporting the work of those who serve our sisters and brothers in places of unfathomable suffering, poverty, violence, and disease.

If you would like to donate in honor of a loved one, it would be my honor to pray for them by name.

Other ways to give

As we will always do here, I invite you in the comments to share your people and places that need our support.¹² Or if you yourself need prayers or support, please let us know. Last month’s community sharing was so beautiful and generous, and I can’t wait to see what we do together this time.

To get the ball rolling, I’ll share a few more places to spark your compassion.

A GoFundMe for a beloved teacher who just died from brain cancer, leaving behind a wife and young son.

A local doula service that’s trying to help a mother of three in desperate need.

If you’ve enjoyed visiting national parks, you can donate to one of the many fundraisers for park rangers who were recently fired.

Hand-to-Hold is a non-profit that supports parents before, during, and after NICU stays. My friend Kathryn Whitaker hosts their podcast (and I got to chat with her about losing our babies in the NICU, an episode that was filled with joy and laughter) and I want to support her good work in our daughters’ names.

Thank you, friends. It’s a joy growing in compassion alongside you.

1. If I were Jim Gaffigan, this would be when I’d shift into his breathy critic voice: Geesh, Laura, why are you still talking about the drains? Disgusting! (Check out this clip of him describing the genius behind this technique of giving voice to his critics in the audience.)

2. Pretty sure I have linked this clip from Rudy 100 times already in my writing, but today won’t be the last!

3. Translation: he is watching Octonauts while I finish this.

4. I wrote an essay on precisely this that will be published tomorrow morning on The Holy Labor for your Ash Wednesday reading enjoyment, free for all.

5. Once wrote an essay about how jarring—but necessary—it is to see ashes on babies’ foreheads.

6. My mom has a classic Ash Wednesday story. One year she went shopping after going to morning Mass, and the shop clerk tried to politely point out that she had dirt on her forehead. My mom thanked her kindly but explained instead that it was ashes for Lent, a sign of Jesus on the cross, etc. etc. beautiful moment of evangelization. To which the perky clerk responded, “Oh, that’s so cute!”

(Verdict is out on whether Jesus would facepalm or absolutely chortle with delight as he drew a new one into his arms, but my theology can make space for both.)

7. Also, if you have any extra goodwill to share, you might also send a prayer of compassion for cancer survivors who start to google stuff like is long cold cough congestion sign of cancer recurrence because trauma is real and the body keeps the score, but more like that cousin who always cheated at Monopoly and stole from the bank when no one was looking.

8. Another example of the brilliant inside voice from Jim Gaffigan, where he has a schtick between multiple voices in his head/audience. I don’t know why he just hollers for the first 25 seconds, but stick it out.

9. Unrelated Alicia Keys news for Minnesota residents: she and her husband just donated a massive collection to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and it opens ON MY BIRTHDAY. Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys.

10. Because they were INVADED.

11. Because it was a CLEAR CAUSE.

Requisite Disclaimers Because The Internet Gets Mad Faster Than An Irritated Mom Who Asked 10 Times Already

12. This is an open mic. I am not vetting our monthly opportunities to give. I am trusting that we can practice wisdom and be adults who discern what to support and where to give our time/energy/attention/money/prayers. We can also practice compassion in comments, unlike a number of people on my Instagram this week COUGH COUGH.