Today is my Birthday. Appropriate to say,
RIP to the woman I was— the one who existed before this quarantine.
Everything is different now.
What was once a “fit it in” walk around the block with my kids has become a paramount activity for the day. It may take an hour. Or longer. Who knows... it doesn’t matter.
Have you ever stopped and studied a dandelion? Really looked at it. They’re beautiful, really- the brightest yellow, opening to greet the sun, and like magic- tucking their petals in at night. And that whimsical pouf delighting children through the ages- have you ever stopped to consider the brilliancy of design?
Such happenstance for a mere weed...
Everything is different now.
I’ve always been a control freak.
I pretend not to be these days— that I’m recovered from my former ways— the macabre clutches of anorexia. The overwhelming need to commandeer every minute detail of life and exhaustively plan each future moment. But in a moment of abruption, in the flickering twilight between life and death, everything was almost cancelled.
Those future plans laid so painstakingly were threatened-
But somehow, grace won out.
I got a second chance.
What I thought to be my reality crashed and burned- I stopped making plans, for a minute. The steel structured constructs of my life remained. I was still in control, by very loose definition of the word- surviving. Passively surviving- the way you wait for a wound to heal; because I’d worked too hard to construct some of the steel constructs of my life still standing and I refused to let those fall.
Life went on.
Naturally, I spent plenty of time in counseling learning the why’s behind my behavior; my feelings of no voice or control manifesting in a disease about perfectionism and control. All very educational, enlightening.
And life went on.
And college, and degrees, and marriage..
And a couple moves, and kids.
And a pandemic.
Not in the plans.
Never, ever in my plans.
Life cancelled. Plans cancelled.
The future of entire countries at the mercy of a single-strand, enveloped RNA virus.
Total loss of control. Loss of normalcy.
No comfort in some personal steel construct to cling to- I had none built; I was already living in the survival mode of every day motherhood; that alone an assault on personal control, albeit glorious.
But this?
This was a non-consensual abortion of normal life. Of our sense of safety. Security. The ability to hope and plan for tomorrow. For some, faith in country and healthcare system...
Grief. Loss of life. Suffering-
For some, their future senselessly wiped out. They will never take a walk with their children. Pick another dandelion.
And then there’s the quarantine, the isolation- mandated. The solitude.
Have you felt it? Smothered, enveloped by the abyss of your own mind? Facing nothing but the nakedness of your own soul in the mirror- alone with your fears. Anxieties. Past you’ve tried to forget. Tried to forgive.
Uncertainties of tomorrow.
So is survival really passive?
As in this pandemic, if you wait it out, quarantined alone for long enough?
Can you survive?
I did it once; wait it out, survive...
But that’s just it; I only survived. I didn’t thrive. I didn’t I truly face the nakedness of my soul alone in that mirror.
Death threatened me before- I feared it then. This pandemic- the overwhelming threat that anyone could lose their life-
Myself with a shotty immune system, not least of all- the threat of death lurks again somewhere in the recesses of all of our minds, if we are being honest with ourselves.
It’s not death itself I fear this time... no, it doesn’t scare me. There’s a deep seated peace in my soul no virus can shake.
It’s the little souls reliant on me, those two who call me their Momma.
Because of them- I cannot merely survive but choose to thrive.
Acknowledge my fears. Anxieties. Past. Uncertainties of tomorrow.
A God who is bigger than it all.
Holds it all.
Tell Him I’m angry about it- about a lot of it.
And that some days, I feel like I’m barely holding onto sanity.
But I see only a teeny, tiny part of God’s plan; in His grand design this is a blip on the radar in time. It’s true.
When have you last looked at the stars?
This was a favorite activity of mine as a child with my father, and to this day I love looking up at the night sky.
It puts my life in perspective.
The closest star (aside of course from our Sun) to our planet is named Proxima Centauri, about four light years away.
That means that the light you’d see from that star tonight was what that star emitted four years ago.
The well known Big Dipper?
The stars comprising this constellation are showing us light varying in age from 78-101 years old when we are seeing it.
These stars are considered “close.”
On an especially clear night, I remember taking my dad’s high powered binoculars and focusing on a small, fuzzy oval cloud identified by astronomers as “M31”-
The Andromeda Galaxy.
A whole other galaxy- 2.5 million light years away.
Can you wrap your head around that?!
Another galaxy- whose light we are visualizing is 2.5 million years old by the time we see it.
This time, this lockdown, this pandemic?
But a fleeting moment in light of eternity.
To a God who is limitless- 2.5 million years is but a blink of an eye in light of eternity.
You and I, this we cannot comprehend.
In the weeks before the pandemic, God gave me Isaiah 54, in a very literal sense.
I won’t share the whole thing here, but it’s promise has been of comfort to me and my house during this time-
“Afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, I will rebuild you with stones of turquoise, your foundations with lapis lazuli. I will make your battlements of rubies, your gates of sparkling jewels,
and all your walls of precious stones.
All your children will be taught by the Lord,
and great will be their peace.
In righteousness you will be established:
Tyranny will be far from you;
you will have nothing to fear.
Terror will be far removed; it will not come near you.” (V. 11-14)
I will conclude with the anthem and blessing from “The Blessing” that’s become my theme and resolution; that unknowingly my sister and I both had playing on repeat as Covid19 ravaged her body (she is doing well, PTL)—
“May His favor be upon you
And a thousand generations
And your family and your children
And their children, and their children—
May His presence go before you
And behind you and beside you
All around you and within you
He is with you, He is with you
In the morning, in the evening
In your coming and your going
In your weeping and rejoicing
He is for you, He is for you
He is for you, He is for you
He is for you, He is for you
Always for you, He's for you
I know He is for you.”
xo, Ruth