Belgium is big on comic books. When I saw this BOOM sweatshirt a few weeks before we moved here, I thought, “That looks comic-ish! I will buy it for my upcoming move to Comics Land. Now I am prepared.”
This was ridiculous, it turns out, because it is actually perfectly suited to wear to an exhibit featuring the extremely AMERICAN artist Roy Lichtenstein’s exhibit in Mons, “Visions Multiples.” Maybe not too ridiculous, since the shirt got to live its best life with me there that day IN BELGIUM.
Mons is the same city I visited with Chris and the kids just a few weeks ago as it was raining, windy, and starting to snow. What a difference it makes to go on a sunny market day, enjoy a museum with friends, and eat fries and run from pigeons. We went to the aforementioned exhibit, touched the brass monkey outside town hall that brings good luck, and ate frites in the Grand Place.
I find it interesting that this is yet another art exhibit where the artist says something to the effect of, “This doesn’t have any meaning at all! It’s just exactly what it looks like! You want a point? There is no point!” If there’s no point, why is the artist making it? If there’s no point, why are we looking at it? Why did I? Well, someone invited me, so I went for the company. But there should always be a point, even if it’s “I had this picture in my head, so I kept working until it was out.” That is what Eloise says about her drawings. Maybe she should have an exhibition.
BAM! BOOM! 
This is good luck, unless you get coronavirus from touching it 
culture is here 
GOOD LUCK!
The artist’s rendering of the Oval Office made me think about how Americans see the US, and how Europeans see the US. For one thing, apparently it annoys Europeans when Americans say they’re American instead of “from the United States.” I’d heard this and found it somewhat amusing when someone asked me my nationality, and I said American. He corrected me: “You are from the United States.” Yes… that’s what I said. I didn’t say I was from America—clearly that would be confusing, because the Americas includes the entirety of North and South American continents. I can’t say I’m a United Statesian. That makes no sense.
My landlady asked me the other day if I knew what was going on in the United States. I wasn’t sure how to answer, so I asked, “Do you mean something specific? The stimulus bill? The Capitol riot?” She said, “Everything! The election! The riot! The bill! You have to DO something! What is going on? The rest of the world, we look to you, and now we think, there is no hope! If they can’t make it work, what do we try for? You have to DO something!”
“Yes!” I agreed. “We have to do something! Everything is a mess!”
A few days later Chris, the kids and I were driving around Flanders, past cemetery after cemetery. Isaac is reading a kids’ book about WWI, and here, 100 years later, it’s inescapable. Seeing all the graves kind of makes you think… we DID do something, and what was the point?! I think everyone is struggling with this question a year after the lockdown started. Really, it’s a take on the age-old questions: Why is this happening? Why do bad things happen to good people? What’s the meaning of life?
I relentlessly struggle with the pointlessness of it all, especially with the short and long term futures stretching away in a gaping, unknown void. As I prayed about it, I felt like God reminded me of many times the seeming pointlessness was shattered.
Moving back to Pensacola felt pointless; God used that time to save Isaac’s life from a life-threatening heart condition. Months of quarantining with baby Isaac felt both important and also pointless; that time gave me the experience I needed to volunteer with the Children’s Heart Project. Having our original orders to Germany cancelled and moving here felt pointless; we recently heard from someone in the department Chris would have been in that he spent seven months of each year away on business during their shore tour there. Whoa. After all the deployments of the previous two tours, that would have been devastating.
God has given me many many reasons to trust that this time will not be wasted, that it’s not all pointless. And I choose to trust him in the struggle, because what else is there? If we don’t try to love the Lord your God with all our heart, mind and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves, if we don’t trust that he is working these things into something that will be eternally beautiful, then yeah, there’s no point to anything. Everything would be pointless… pointless like this art exhibit. Boom!
frite forks in Belgian colors 
No point?! I’ll give you the point! 
you have to DO something! 
me, in life 
stay at your place…we are still mostly doing this. But then how would the pigeons get frites?! (different artist) 
Hot and Cold
Friday Night Rome
The American Cemetery in Luxembourg
Provence in the Sun