“What are you guys doing today?”

“Ummm… nothing??? Yes! Nothing!! This is the first Saturday in a long time that we are doing… nothing!!”

That was the conversation we had with Hannah’s parents approximately an hour before our “nothing” turned into disgorging the guest room of its guestroomy-ness and turning it into daily usable space. We also rummaged through the Branch’s dead rat-infested shed (shiver) behind the house to get a bed frame for Gemma. Just generally we turned the house upside down. By the end we were exhausted, but delighted. Gemma’s now in a bed all of her own, and we have a whole new space we call the “Imagination Room”.

Did I inwardly crumble a little at the sight of the guest bed going? Yes. I did. My parents have stayed in that room, my mom several times. People we didn’t know before they visited PNG to help the Branch, we now know much better because they stayed with us in that room. It has memories and it had intended uses for 2020 that did not come to fruition. The all too familiar feelings of isolation, loss, and sorrow washed over me, but only briefly. Because then I zoomed back in on our day and this is what I saw: three sisters ready to embark on many secret adventures in the privacy of their tent castle; three sisters off to join countless other adventurers in their own stories via sisters-only read-aloud times; three sisters ready to build worlds together with their Lego sets; three sisters with dedicated space to write down the stories they tell each other. The transformation was sad because there was a loss of one dream. But the sadness was a passing shadow, and on the other side we found the potential for endless creative and sisterly joy.

It’s hard to think of the immediate darkness as a passing shadow, but it is. There is light indescribable waiting on the other side.