Rap Music in the Kitchen
We’ve been living slow and steady Corona-speed for months. We settled into it and started to love it. But yesterday, life hit the pedal to the metal! Chris left at 6:30am for a 10-mile run. By the time he came home, I had Lifa in school and was simultaneously brewing coffee, setting up for a video, prepping dinner and getting Benjamin ready for a nap. We had computers set up on opposite ends of the house, and Chris has a Zoom staff meeting while I recorded a live teaching for Help Club for Moms. By the time I was done, Chris was already gone to the next meeting and then went straight to church. I took Benjamin to the park for the first time since the lockdown began, and then we picked Lifa up from school. Lifa played with Benjamin while I put my headphones to work to do laundry and my last phone meeting at the same time. Chris was at church all evening setting up and recording for Sunday’s service. He whirled in and out on a 15 minute break to hug everyone and help me fix the garage door, and then he was off again - only to arrive home at 9:30pm. Very different than our last 3 months! Even Lifa was a bit shell-shocked. As I prayed over him at bedtime he said, “Shouldn’t Dad be home by now!?!”
When Chris isn’t home, the whole house feels and acts differently. He’s our glue. He’s almost always around for dinner, but when he’s not, I change the pace to make it feel like a different kind of evening instead of an evening without Dad. While I cooked and got ready for dinner, Lifa used his iPod touch and Apple Music to look up rapper profiles and read to me about their lives. I went with it. I even made a few jokes at Drake’s expense, but I loved being let into Lifa’s world and joining in what he’s into. He can’t access any explicit music, so he doesn’t get to hear much of it, but he was shocked when his mom knew about Snoop Dogg, Tu-pac and Dr. Dre! We laughed and had a very light-hearted night, and I broke my own rules at dinner by turning on the TV. I looked up a Christian rap performance by some of his favorite artists from the Passion 2020 Conference and played it while we ate. Both of the boys LOVED it and danced their way through bowls of rice and beans. We talked about the music, thought about what it would be like to be a performer in front of so many, and then compared how some secular rappers are seeking fame for themselves while the guys on our screen were seeking fame for God. (That came up when Lifa commented on them having no gold rings or teeth- haha!)
It was a rare, random and really fun night with the boys. We always prefer to sit around a dinner table together and talk about highs and lows. But, to tell the truth, Benjamin the food-flinger and super-whiner has made dinner quite exhausting lately. And there was something really exciting for all of us to see Chris thriving in what he was made to do for the church. It was fun to add a beat to the rice and beans, and even to miss our man for a few hours.
You know you’ve got something good when it feels absolutely absurd to change it - even for one night. And it’s extra good when, even after you’ve been “stuck” together for months, you miss each other extra when you’re apart.