This morning when checking my email, I found one from my grandmother about Hallmark channel’s “Jingle in July.” For those of you who have not ever enjoyed a Hallmark Christmas film, this is a summer excuse for Christmas lovers around the world to forget that it’s the dead of summer, curl up on the couch, and watch Christmas movies back to back for two weeks.

It hit me as I scrolled through the email, that Hallmark’s biggest “Christmas in July” ever may be about to kickoff. So many people are at home, desperate for normality and escape from the confusion and division our world is facing right now. How easy would it be to turn on the TV and be delightfully distracted by a big time CEO falling in love with the small town girl who happened to be staying in the hotel next to his office over the holidays to visit her grandmother? I’m willing to bet you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who, when given the choice of a Hallmark movie or another press conference, would choose the press conference. (Dad, you’re the exception.)

Every church has the names most often heard from the pulpit in the organization of events. We have the woman known for her teaching abilities, the woman known for her musical gifts, the woman known for her special touch with little ones, and the woman known for her hosting, and the woman known for her counseling skills. But there’s another woman each church has, but few ever hear of, and that’s the woman in the shadows.

Imagine you are a middle aged woman living in Holland on the brink of World War II. Each day, the radio brings news of yet another series a catastrophic political events. Uncertainty is the air people breathe, fear the pillow on which they wake and drift off to sleep on. The world seems as if it is at last unraveling and the predictions, dreams, and guarantees of what lie ahead causes everyone’s stomach to turn.

There is potential that your nephew and niece could be killed for resisting tyrannical leaders. Your father is too old to survive an arrest should it occur, and your sister, whom you love more than any other person, is running headlong into the effort against the evil, putting herself right in harms way.

Horror. Chaos. Sorrow. That’s what seems to lay ahead for Betsie ten Boom.

She doesn’t panic though. She doesn’t hide underneath the watch shop counter and weep for fear of what may come. She cooks meals, she smiles, she makes tea, she folds laundry, she keeps going on with life as the changes swirl around her. She’s not coping with Netflix binges, or alcohol, or fluffy novels, or social media or food. There’s one simple truth that every atom of her body is clinging to that brings a peace and joy–dare we even suggest a happiness–that surpasses all human understanding.

Yesterday, I allowed myself to take a trip with nostalgia back to a day that is now a mere memory.

I could smell the dogwood flowers blooming, feel the creaky wooden swing holding up my frame, and feel the wind rustle through the trees onto the porch and through my hair. I was fifteen years old again, on the front porch of my childhood home, laughing. Old friends were seated around me, and conversation centered on new sunglasses, books we were reading, and things we’d heard about through mutual friends. We were little, though we didn’t think so then, and I wish with all my heart somedays I could just go back, be there, be the girl I once was, with the friends I once knew, in a world that didn’t seem so big and scary.

When I was a little girl and the thunder would crash outside my window rattling the panes and wooden shutters, I would pull my covers up over my head, tightly squeeze my eyes shut and try to imagine that it wasn’t storming. I hated night and I hated storms, and both were closing in around me. No matter how hard I tried, the storms wouldn’t go away with even my most earnest imagining, so I would lay there in the dark listening to the skies bellow and roar, and I’d sing to myself, Jesus loves me, this I know.

I was suppose to be at my Mimi’s house tonight. My Aunt and Momma would be leaning on the counter in the kitchen talking about their kids. My Dad and Uncle would be in the living room with my brothers and sisters and cousin catching up and laughing. My Mimi and Nana would be laying out the final plans for tomorrow, when to put the ham in and take the rolls out, etc. Place cards and table linens would be set aside and ready to lay out before we left for church tomorrow so that when guests started to arrive for lunch, everything would be ready. Poppy would be doing dishes and I’d be drying. We’d be talking about books and theology. He’d say something like, “You sure are pretty” and I’d tell him he was a blind old man. We’d laugh. We’d all be together, and it would be wonderful. It would feel like home. It would feel right.