With nearly the entire planet on some form of lockdown, shelter-in-place, social distancing, isolation, or quarantine, life as we know it, has ground to a halt.
For many people and many reasons, this presents incredible challenges. There are literally life and death scenarios being thrown to the forefronts of many peoples’ lives right now, and the gravity of that must be appreciated by everyone whether or not this current disaster affects you in a magnitude of ways, or in ways that are merely more subtle.
Already, I have a sense of “privilege guilt” going on. This is not unusual for me, but it’s particularly intense right now. I have so many stabilizers in place, simply by the grace of God, that many people do not. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and rather than just feeling bad about how good I have it, I’ve been pondering what it looks like to harness these circumstances in a way that is not wasteful.
Over the past several years I’ve been on a journey of soul reformation. This has taken many forms by way of books, therapy, prayer/inner healing ministry, writing, etc. One clear theme throughout all of this has emerged: In order to understand why we do and say the things we do and say, we must understand our own hearts. I think all of us have relationships that could be improved and often the best place to start is with ourselves. When we improve our relationships, we improve our world. Trying harder and doing better to be more kind, more patient, more forgiving, more gracious, does not work. It may work for a short time but eventually it will crack.
What I’m getting at is this: We have a rare opportunity to have all of the layers peeled back and many of the distractions of life momentarily paused; and what will we find when we peer behind the curtain of our own soul?
Now, it is entirely possible to fritter away this opportunity with endless consumption of social media, news, netflix, and the distraction du jour (guilty, as charged!)
OR we can choose to sit with the pain. Sit with the fear, the grief, the angst, the uncertainty and begin to unravel the threads that will lead us back to our core feelings.
For example (and yes, this is a trivial matter, but it illustrates what I'm talking about):
This afternoon I walked through the house and noticed that it was rather messy and I also noticed that I wasn’t that bothered by it (that is NOT my normal response). So, I took a moment to think about why my reaction was different than normal. As it turns out, I wasn’t bothered because I know that tomorrow presents the same opportunity as today: An empty schedule with plenty of time to pick things up and vacuum. Also, I was aware that I have no impending visitors, so there was not the hidden-back-of-the-mind stress of needing to “get ready” for someone to come over, whereupon I will feel self-conscious about my untidy house with peeling wallpaper and too much pet hair. (Sidenote: I love people, so I do often like to invite people over, but I remain painfully self-conscious about my living space. I’m working on it).
Now that I have these two motivations for stress uncovered, I have a clearer picture of what trips me up in the day to day around this particular issue when we are living “normally” (as opposed to apocalyptically. Just kidding, sort of).
I frequently tend to over schedule myself and so then feel short on time, which leads to feeling overwhelmed about everything that has to be done at home, and then feel even more frantic when I realize that so-and-so is coming over on Thursday and I’ve got a LOT to get done by then.
This is helpful for when we re-enter normalcy, if I manage to remember these things and factor them in when I start to re-engage with a more normative schedule and set of expectations.
Then again, what is normal? Maybe we will experience a permanent shift as a society, where we stop expecting so much of ourselves and each other and quit scheduling the heck out of ourselves and our families. Maybe not. But we all get to decide those things for ourselves, which is awesome!
So, in this time I am encouraging you to do these 2 things with me:
- Pay attention to makes you feel stress or sadness or angst
- Pay attention to what makes you feel happy or peaceful or relieved
As we do this, we may discover hidden parts of ourselves that have previously been obscured by a busy schedule and a loud world.
The busy schedule part has been mostly taken care of for us, but we can still allow the world to be really loud right now if we aren’t careful.
Embrace this gift of time. Get down into the weeds of how God created you, and I pray that you would take what you find, and allow yourself the space to be the most fully alive you, and by doing so that you would emerge from this time of rest, ready to bless the world more spectacularly than you ever have before.
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