Your Super Bowl Weekend

I feel like I’ve been living in an episode of “This is Us” the past two weeks. If you don’t watch the show, you need to.

Super Bowl weekend. For the sake of not spoiling the show, I’ll leave it at that. For me, I have so many scenes playing through my head the past few days— nostalgic scenes of growing up and rooting for the Eagles with my dad. We dreamed and talked often in his latter years of having—with my son, Landon—three generations watching the Eagles win a Super Bowl. I’m not sure if we talked like this because we held onto the hope that Dad would live that long or because we held onto the hope that Philadelphia would actually bring home a Super Bowl victory. Either way, we held onto hope.

Super Bowl weekend. Rarely does this weekend evoke such deep emotion within me. As I said, we’re Eagles fans. 😀 But here we are, only the second Super Bowl without my dad, and the Eagles are flying high. Since Landon is still too young to pay attention for long, I’ll no doubt be watching the game with my dad. I know full well he’ll be watching it with me too.

Super Bowl weekend. Though you may not be a football fan, you have a Super Bowl weekend. We all do. The nostalgic moments and memories that manifest within us the deepest emotions—grief and heartache; joy and hope. One of the cruelest things we can do to ourselves as humans is to ignore, repress, or fail to press into our “Super Bowl weekends.” Go there. It’s only through the tears that we can discover the hope. Besides, it’s also the way of the cross. The cross my dad held onto every day in his latter years.

Super Bowl weekend. Tonight, I’m hopeful we’ll win. But regardless of the outcome of the game, our family has already won.

This is us.

Update: The Eagles won the Super Bowl!