Today a memory popped up. Four years ago we were in Colorado and the world was unraveling around us. For some reason, likely because 2022 and 2023 were extra hard for our family, this is the first year that feels like the pandemic is in the past. We were staying with close family friends and were starting to hear the rumblings of a virus that was beginning to take hold of the country. We had no idea what was unfolding. We planned to meet college friends for frozen yogurt, but the yogurt place completely closed down hours before we went. We ended up at Chick-fil-a with no playground to play on because they closed it… I think it took over 3 years for most to open back up. We drove to Colorado, and my mom was informing us of the state of groceries and toilet paper back in Texas. We decided it may be smart to stock up with a few things in Colorado and ice them down for the way home. So we ended up outside of Natural Grocers processing with an older woman who was comparing what was coming to what she remembered about wartime decades ago. I had no framework for what was going down. We drove all over town looking for styrofoam coolers and ended up at the liquor store. We packed up our car and naively drove home hearing that school was canceled for the next week. Quickly the decision to not see other people was in place, our children were aching to go back to school and see their friends – Spring Break was already a stretch for my girls. While everyone else had to stay home, Ross and I had to go to work and that brought a whole new set of challenges. Weeks turned to months that turned to semesters and things were far from how they are supposed to be. Isolation and fear ruled everything.
I think that I could spend years upon years of counseling trying to process the pandemic. I don’t even think I’ve scratched the surface of the undoing it had on me, our kids, our family, our friends, the country and our world. It touched every single place in our lives and there was something to process at every turn – work, friends, church, family. Every sphere of influence of was impacted.
When you are in the middle, you don’t believe that there is another side. When you cannot see shore, you start to believe that there is no shore. The storm and the distance to the next shore are just too much. Hope of anything but a ship in the middle of no where seems futile. So you become a part of the ship and all the mayhem. You take on the fear and the pettiness, and the chaos of the ship seems like the only place that there could be any comfort. But – truth be told – what I’ve learned in the last several years is that I want to be the girl that in the middle of the chaos is still standing at the bow of the ship looking for shore believing that it is there. I want to be the one with steadfast hope that there is another side. I don’t want the chaos to overtake me or my people.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13 It is clear that this kind of hope is only a gift of the Holy Spirit. In my surrender and trust in my God, I will continually have hope in the midst of these middle-of-nowhere experiences. It is active surrender and active belief that there is a not only a shore, but a God that created the waters and the storms and the land. He knows all of it – He made it. And He is the same God today that He was when He calmed the seas and storms and walked on water. Same God. So pandemic or brain tumor or death or any other undoing, He is the same God. And He is good.
