Our church had Trunk or Treat this week, which was great because I’d been sitting on my costume idea since July. Our family of five went as the five Guardians of the Galaxy and it was a time. The Treat was seeing our kids handout candy to the community and way overdoing it with the enthusiasm every time they saw a costume they loved. THE TRICK was that we asked a beloved member of Gen Z to take a photo of our whole family before the start of the event. A safe bet! Who better to get all our best angles?
READER, THIS IS THE PHOTO THEY TOOK.
I mean… what in God’s green internet IS that mess?
We didn’t check the photos until late that night, so we’re stuck with this selfie where we’re all adorable but you can’t see the costumes and one kid is choking himself for no reason…
…and this shot courtesy of the church photographer where the only child who’s picture ready isn’t looking at the camera, and I look like a frail grandmother trying to take a dump.
Lo, despite these photographic afflictions, a festive time was had by all. Happy Halloween!
Welcome to The Paradox Paper, a monthly newsletter that honors paradox in the every day. If a friend forwarded you this email, click here to subscribe:
In this edition:
Gamora nail polish (and an update on Kroger Grocery Guy)
The most precious masks for any dressing-up occasion
A spooky book duo complete with unreliable narrators, flashbacks, and creepy manor houses
A surprisingly humorous horror series
A classic movie to watch in the dark
Hopeful practices for depression
A prayer for anxious nights
Gamora Nail Polish (plus a Kroger Grocery Guy update)
So last month the guy that put my groceries in my car at Kroger (Kroger Grocery Guy™️) complimented my nail polish and said he’d been looking for a similar shade. I just drove right out of the parking lot like an airhead. Good news! We saw each other again when I picked up my order two weeks later. His name is José, I told him about the polish, we laughed, all was right with the world. Anyways, this blurb is really about the polish I wore the other night. It’s the perfect Gamora shade if you ever need one.
805Masks
I found August’s felt Groot mask from an independent shop and I couldn’t be more pleased with it. It was exactly what we needed it to be—an obvious clue about his costume, and extremely wearable by sensitive 4 year old standards. They offer a wide variety of characters in child and adult sizes for all the dresser uppers in your house.
The Family Upstairs + The Family Remains
Lisa Jewell is my suspense sweet spot. Her novels are just spooky twisty enough to feel like Grown Up Thrillers without giving me Grown Up Insomnia. This set did not disappoint. Libby Jones arrives home from her normal job to news that she’s inherited a multi-million dollar manor house from her birth parents. She only has to see the Chelsea mansion once to realize that her birth parents weren’t what she imagined, and maybe there’s a good reason their house has sat abandoned all these years.
Yellowjackets
Displacing Stranger Things as the scariest thing I’ve watched without regret, this is the story of a high school girls’ soccer team (the Yellowjackets) whose plane crashes in the middle of the Canadian wilderness on their way to the national championship. They’re lost for 19 months. As the timeline shifts back and forth from the teenagers trying to survive, to their grown up selves 25 years later, it’s clear that not every one made it out alive. What’s unclear is how those who did survived. Creepy, not for the gore averse, with surprisingly funny moments.
Wait Until Dark
This was the peak of scary movies in my house growing up. Audrey Hepburn plays Susy, a woman whose husband is out of town on business. All is well until a strange set of visitors begin to arrive asking about a doll. Even this wouldn’t be so terrible, except for one thing. Susy is newly blind. Pop some popcorn and turn out the lights. This one will spook you in all the best ways.
I was depressed the last week of September through the first two of October. Like fog, I never notice depression when it starts, only when it’s so dense I can’t see my surroundings. A combination of grief, anxiety about the home purchase, and the onset of cooler temps made this fog thicker than any I’ve experienced in a few years. In the midst of this dark time I was spending hours writing for my church about how we can respond to depression in healthy ways. WHAT A TIME TO GET DEPRESSED, AMIRIGHT?
Here’s a few helpful things my work annoyingly reminded me of during those dark weeks:
eat nourishing food at regular intervals
sleep (not scroll, not binge. sleep.)
tell another human face that you feel sad
ask your doctor for help
put your body outside under the sunlight
go back to where you’ve experienced God’s presence before
In times of depression these practices help us hold onto hope. They don’t insulate us. They don’t feel easy. But they remind us of our personhood and purpose. They helped me care for myself well last month, even when I didn’t want to. I hope they’ll do the same for you when you need them.
This has been a month (and I’m anticipating the next two will be similar) where all my pondering energy has been taken up with questions like:
Where should we stack moving boxes as we pack them?
Why is the dishwasher on fire? (yes, really. we’re all fine now.)
When can I fit in the laundry?
How will I pack up the apartment, prep four sermons, and keep up with my writing ministry all before closing day on November 30th?
A lot of good things are happening in the next two months. We (friggen finally) signed a contract on a home! Woo! My parents, whom we’ve never lived close to, are moving in with us! Yay! I’m speaking at our high school winter retreat! Huzzah! And, you know, all the normal stuff like Thanksgiving and Christmas, yada yada. All good things that all need plans.
What I am not is a great planner. That means that in extra busy, plan-heavy seasons my existential brain goes quiet while my practical, git-er-done brain groans to life like an old pickup that’s been sitting on the front lawn too long. The usual questions that flit across my mind (What IS hell anyway? Is it weird if I just roll down my window and chat with this unhoused woman about her dog? What can I do now so that later my kids will talk to me about making out?) are replaced with lists and the hum of low grade panic. This is not a time for Thinking Thoughts and Reading Books. It’s a time for fluffy nonsense entertainment to celebrate making it through another to do list.
Congratulations. You’ve just read a segment’s worth of words all trying to say, “there is no pondering segment this month.” Why am I like this?
It is a true joy to write for you each month, and I always love to hear about anything you tried and loved or anything that resonated with you. Simply reply to this email or leave a comment to let me know.
Until next time, hold the paradox, don’t panic. Love you.
-Steph
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