What I have in a time of pandemic

A saw this post on Facebook: “I didn’t intend to give up quite so much for Lent this year.”

Yeah. I admit I hadn’t planned to really give up anything this year, except that I was going to do some decluttering to engage in our Lenten simplicity theme, and I had a devotional I was planning to read. And then God said, “Nah, step aside. I’ll show you what I want you to give up.” And there it was:

·      Gathering in the flesh. Obviously. For me, gathering in the flesh is an essential part of my work, whether it is a one-on-one visit to a homebound member, or gathering for corporate worship, or using my body to hand Christ’s body to another body – all of it is essential in my understanding of this inherently incarnational faith, and the God I proclaim. Can I limp along without for a while? Sure. But it is not sustainable.

·      My village, at least as I knew it. No daycare or preschool, no babysitters, no physical shoulders to cry on, no choir rehearsal (a time that has served as my emotional and spiritual release). As much as I know people want to help (and have, by bringing food and checking in), I want to keep the circle of exposure small, and so can’t even take care of my basic needs without my kids tagging along. (Here’s to peeing with audience!)

·      Time with my husband. He’s been deployed to help with this crisis, which is at once awesome, and horrible. I adore my kids, but an adult to talk to would sure be nice, not to mention that stuff before about not having a village. “Military spouses always show up for each other,” they say, but oh wait… not this time.

·      A general sense of safety and security. Yeah, that’s a big one. Everything I touch makes me feel dirty and worried, every person I pass I look at with some skepticism (“could you be carrying the dreaded virus?”).

·      Time off. Lent is always a crazy time for pastors, but this is a different level. In addition to all the extra services I’m planning, I’m also figuring out a completely different way to do my job (so there is very little I can fall back on from previous years’ work), trying to care for people with a uniquely heightened need for hope and comfort, and doing all this while my children are in some cases literally crawling all over me. From 6:45am to 7:30pm, I am Mommy, and from 7:30-11:30pm I am trying to do all the pastor things. Who is catching up on house projects, binging Netflix, reading that stack of books?? Not this lady!

All of this, I notice, I have framed from a place of scarcity. I have been forced to give these things up. I am lacking these things. I do not have. But that’s not what fasting is about, whether a Lenten fast or any other kind of fast. The purpose of a fast is to drive us to God, even to see God more clearly. Here is a line from my own sermon, which I preached March 1^st of this year, before most of us had any idea that this is what we would be facing one month later: “One of the traditional disciplines of Lent is to fast, to remove whatever comes between us and God, so that we would stop relying on that, and instead learn to rely on and trust in God’s proven providence.”

Whoa, Nelly. Could this time, instead of being about what we don’t have, be about what we do? Just three weeks later, our 2^nd Sunday worshiping online, the Psalm was the beloved 23^rd: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” I shall not want, you say? Ok, message received. So then, what is it that our forced Lenten fasts (which will take us well into Easter as well) are giving to us?  

·      Deeper trust. We all want a silver lining in times like this, and while I’m hesitant to pose one, I do truly trust that God is using this somehow. This is a refrain that was oft-repeated by my grandmother, but never has it felt quite so big and important. When my heart starts down the path to anxiety, the possibility that God is using this evil for some ultimate good points me back in the direction of trust.

·      Gratitude. In the most difficult times of my life, gratitude has been my lifeline, and this experience is no exception. In the early days of #stayhome, when my husband was anticipating deployment and right after he left, I was a wreck. I remember saying, “I’m a resilient person, I’m strong, I’ve been thought a lot of crap, but I do not think I can do this.” Thinking back to how I’d gotten through other difficult times, I knew I would need to start a gratitude practice. The worse the day, the more things I force myself to be grateful for. I try not to repeat (I’m grateful for technology these days, like most people, but I can only use that once!), which forces me to think more deeply about gratitude and thus internalize it more. It didn’t take long before, by God, I knew I’d be okay after all.

·      Perspective. A major disruption always serves as a sort of “reset.” When I think of resetting something, I feel anxious. What if I lose something important? What if I never recover it? What if I don’t ever get back to normal? But author Dave Hollis said it well: “Before we rush to return to normal, use this time to consider what parts of normal are worth rushing back to.” This is a real gift of fasting: without our regular patterns and habits to fall back on, we start to realize what of those patterns and habits were giving us life, and which were dragging us down (even if we perhaps thought they were neutral, at worst, or even providing us with something useful). There are many things I would never think to give up on my own, but now in their forced absence from my life, I am discovering what I am antsy to get back (and given space to reflect upon why I’m so antsy), and what of those things I don’t really miss, or at least needed a break from.

The five things I mentioned above that I lack are not bad things, not one of them. My faith is incarnational and the day I can look in people’s eyes and place the Body of Christ in their hand again will be a joyful day indeed. Though I love spending time with my incredible children and am cherishing this front row seat to their daily development, I will be so glad to expand their circle of love once again to include the many, many people in this world who rejoice in being a part of their life and mine. The couple of days Michael had off last weekend, when we could just be together and make dumb jokes and bounce things around without devices as the intermediary were a true gift. Encountering the world with joy and trust once again will be a relief, and Lord knows I could use a real day off! (Here’s looking at you, Easter Monday!)

But until then, I will try, during this involuntary fast, to look for the ways in which I have, rather than dwell on the ways in which I want.