Growth, Trust, and Care
At the risk of making one of the most preposterous understatements of all time, I’m going to begin by saying that COVID-19 has had a major impact on almost all areas of our lives and our society. It has brought to light many things that we don’t normally think about. For example, it has reminded us that heroes are not necessarily famous people like athletes, movie stars, politicians, etc. Many true heroes are in the medical community ranging from physicians to janitors. Others work in the various service industries. This has been a good observation.
Another good reminder is we don’t control as much as we thought we did. We see who we are in the grand scheme of things.
However, COVID-19 has also exposed some troubling things such as shortages of necessary medical supplies and inadequacy of delivery systems. In the long run this will also be a good lesson because you can’t fix a problem until you discover there is a problem.
Years ago, I heard a saying that “Crisis makes the man.” In other words, crisis situations help us grow. One can’t disagree with that, but there is another aspect: “Crisis also shows what the person already is.” With that in mind, what have the virus and quarantine exposed in us that we weren’t aware of? Here are two questions we might ask ourselves in that regard:
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Stay the Course
As people who know me will attest, one thing I am very good at is nagging. It’s a skill that been finely crafted down through the years. I mention this because what I am getting ready to write could across as nagging because I have mentioned it so frequently over the past weeks. It is an encouragement to stay in the battle. Take good care of yourselves. As time has passed, it is easy to become weary about this whole situation. For example, I find myself being tempted to not wash my hands as much or slip into this store or that store without a mask, etc. I don’t know what precautions you are taking, but don’t stop. We need to complete the race. We need to “relax” without being “lax” and that’s no easy task. So the question becomes “how do we do that?” Should we just keep plodding onward? That type of discipline might be a part of it, but I would like to suggest something much more meaningful.
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The Messy Middle
As a general rule the majority of us don’t like “messy”. Some of us can tolerate it better than others, but overall even those in that category eventually need some clarity. This is difficult because much of normal life is lived in what I call the “messy middle”. That is, In many situations, we simply do not have clear cut, black white, yes-no types of options. We are all in some sort of messy combination. We do some things well and some things not so well. Some things we do are healthy and some aren’t. Some of our behaviors and thoughts are Godly and some aren’t. Paul talked about this on a very personal level in Romans 7 when he said something to the effect that he found himself doing some things he didn’t want to do and not doing some things he wanted to do. It was “messy”, not clear cut. He found it very distressing and described it by saying “what a wretched man I am”.
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This Is A Marathon
We are now in week 4 of the Quarantine of 2020 and it looks like it’s going to be an emotional, physical, and spiritual marathon. Marathons are long and grueling races. This one is particularly difficult because there is so much uncertainty. We don’t even know where the finish line is. Some of us (especially if we don’t have kids in school) can even become a bit uncertain about what day it is. Margie received a text from a friend that pointed out that traditional names for days of the week have been exchanged for “this day, that day, the other day, someday, yesterday, today, and next day”. Obviously a bit of an overstatement, but there is some truth in it.
Margie and I participated in a marathon many years ago (it wasn’t pretty but we made it). One of the things I learned during that whole process was that you have to monitor how are doing all during the race. Are you going the right pace, how is your body holding up, etc.? With that in mind, it seemed a good time to check in with ourselves. How am I doing in this COVID-19 marathon?
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Our Thought Life
Another tough week. The situation appears to be becoming more complex and not a little frightening. It would only seem logical we are all beginning to experience increasing levels of anxiety. There are a variety of ways people deal with anxiety-some are healthy and some are very unhealthy. Here are some thoughts about what I believe is ultimately the best way to deal with anxiety. However, before doing that, I want to encourage you to check with your physician if it seems like things are “getting out of hand” (i.e. sleep disturbance, trouble eating, general agitation, heart rate changes, etc.)
One of the consistent admonitions in the Bible concerns our thought life. (See Roman 12:1-2, Philippians 4:8-10, Colossians 1:1-2) Although we might not realize it, most—and probably all—anxiety begins with our thoughts. Basically, we are responding to our thoughts about a situation rather than the situation itself. We might not be aware of it because “brain time” is so much faster than “clock time”. In other words, our brains can process and respond to more information in a second than big time computers can. We are truly wonderfully made.
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