No More Escapes...

I'm about a week behind in posting this...I know this is coming a little late in the game :-)  ...

I kept waking up each morning after a night of weird and unsettling dreams with the same thought each morning, "whew, it was only a dream." And then reality dawned on me. The reality was actually worse. I felt my stomach drop a little as I trudged out of bed to another day of that familiar stress in my shoulders, wondering what was going to happen in the next 60 minutes. Because life just changes that fast right now. And this was only a couple of weeks ago.

We've been through some stuff lately...my oldest daughter was nearly hit by a car recently in a bike accident. I've wondered from day to day what is next, will I find everything I need? Will people ever calm down? Will life ever return to normal? But nothing could have prepared me for the scene that was about to unfold.

One recent Friday night, at about 5:00am, I sat in the back of an ambulance watching the paramedics hook up an IV to my grayish pale husband as his heart was in A-fibrillation and I watched the monitor constantly changing with every beat between 144-209 bpm. I stepped out when it was time for us to part and watched them drive away, not knowing when or if we would see him again. I slowly walked back into our home, closed the door, sunk into the couch and just stared into space for awhile, trying to process what had just happened. Just hours before he had seemed like he was on the mend from a sinus infection. Hours later, we found out he had pneumonia and his heart still wasn't responding to medication and he had fluid in one lung. Because of the COVID virus, I was unable to see him at all during the entire four day ordeal.

Thankfully, he has since recovered. We found out that he did have the COVID virus. As I write this, we are still under quarantine as we were all sick, though not all of us were able to be tested due to the lack of availability of tests and the rest of us did not specifically have a fever. And I'm not even going to pretend this was any picnic.

Overall, today is a better day, a brighter one, as we have pretty fully recovered, minus a little dip in energy still. But, I remember sitting on the couch that morning, realizing my entire extended family is in any state except this one, and suddenly my mind went blank, and I had no idea who to reach out to. Who in their right mind would watch my kids for me so that I could go to the hospital when we had no idea if we'd been exposed to this illness? Who would watch them when we're under orders to stay home and everyone is going nuts with panic? Who would bring food to us? I sent a quick email to the one mothers group that I could remember in my state of shock, a priest, and a couple of family members whose names I could still remember in my confusion.

Who would help us?

Just about everyone I know.

That's who.

Even people who may not have even wanted to ever talk to me again the day before, because of whatever stupid disagreement or division that life may have created before that day.

That's who.

I have never seen anything like this in my life. I did not realize until all this happened just how many people we know, how connected we are, and how fast news travels from so few contacts. I am still receiving messages from people all over the place that I haven't thought about in ages. People I don't even know personally have called me and offered to help in whatever way they were personally able. People who are willing to put their own families at risk to help ours, if needed. Thankfully, God has been kind to us and none have had to do that yet, minus a couple of grocery drop-offs. But that isn't the point. Our world has been so disconnected in person these days, even before the virus. Everything seems electronic, and life just seemed to need a wake-up call, and I think we've got it. I was reading a post the other day where a friend asked what we plan to do when the restrictions are finally lifted, and so many people said they are going to hug the first person they see. I have actually feared that this distancing will be the new normal, like how the airports are permanently inaccessible to all but travelers these days in the wake of 9-11.

So...when I say what I'm about to say, I know. I mean, I KNOW. This is not a pious sentiment or a platitude. I think God has some work for us to do right now, and maybe it's not the work we want or the way we had hoped it would be right now, but goodness knows, we have the drive to get it done, as evidenced by the outpouring of offers of help recently. We have a God-given ability to change the course of our society and create a better future.

As we are all painfully aware, we live in a society that is programmed to avoid pain, and we are given a plethora of escapes right at our fingertips. We can have anything we want...medications, entertainment, fantasy, too much food, shopping, social media, platitudes, etc. Even things like the ways in which we live our faith can be escapes...bible studies, various forms of serving or helping, and if done without the right disposition of heart, even the sacraments.

We can escape having to face hard discussions. We can escape having to call and apologize. We can escape doing the right thing. Until now...

But right now, we're stuck inside our homes coming face to face with our real selves and our real needs, with much fewer ways of escape. And it's tough. It is HARD to face honest emotions. Hard emotions. In ourselves and in others, maybe especially in others. And to just be present without trying to fix everyone and everything, with either loud opinions, platitudes or judgments, or just a mask saying, "I've got it all together." And to be honest, I do think God's got this, and I think most of you think so, too. I feel very strongly that He has a good plan in mind. But we're still trying to deal with the messy moment at hand, the ups and downs, and God is not afraid of messy emotions or situations during this process. Jesus Himself sweat drops of blood in an agonizing struggle to submit to His Father's will in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knows.

I was reading an article recently on the stages of grief, and as I perused it, while I am very familiar with those stages from personal experience, it was interesting to take a step back and look at my own reactions over the past few weeks, and that is exactly what I was experiencing. But it's not easy to face. It doesn't feel good to feel grief. It doesn't feel good to lose freedoms or to feel out of control or to watch your beloved spouse, father of your children, and sole provider of your family drive away in an ambulance. It doesn't feel good to see others struggle.

We're all facing something we have never faced before. Something that is entirely and completely outside of our control. I don't know why. I don't have any more answers than the next person. But I do see a huge opportunity before us today. No matter what the reason, we are given an incredible opportunity to say "yes" to God's work within, and to let true love grow and root itself more deeply within our hearts. In this extreme slow down, we are given the opportunity to learn to truly connect, to both God and others. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to waste a minute of this. If I'm going to go through this, I want to come out on the other side a different person...a person with a heart a little more like Christ, that is willing to step up and sacrifice whenever God calls. But that might be a long, hard, and painful process. Everything in me wants to rebel at times.

Some days I can rock along and sing a joyful tune, and other days, I feel intense emotions of grief welling up within and maybe even anger as I struggle to accept that I truly can not control even one little thing about this situation. Maybe I will feel all of those emotions at the same time, in quick succession.

And that's when God shows up. He doesn't tell me how I "should" feel. He doesn't give me a list of platitudes or quick fixes. He just listens, and He is present to my struggles. He just asks me to trust, even when I can't see or understand what is coming next or what is happening around me, regardless of how I feel in any given moment. And in those times when I can really lean into Him, I feel peace. Peace that this world can not give me.

And that's about the time when God showed up, yet again, in the recent weekly readings. We celebrated the feast of the Annunciation a couple of weeks ago, in which Mary gives her wholehearted yes to God's will for her life...without conditions. We also saw in the reading about Lazarus, how Martha questioned the wisdom of opening the tomb of Lazarus after four days. God didn't spell out all the directions of how He was going to help them through those situations ahead of time, He just asked them for simple obedience to the next step right in front of them. A step leading to life. 

While I know it wasn't one of our readings, as I was contemplating those readings, a third one came to mind also. Please follow me a moment into the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 8:

"Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. A scribe then approached and said, 'Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.' And Jesus said to him, 'Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.' Another of his disciples said to him, 'Lord, first let me go and bury my father.' But Jesus said to him, 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.'" (Matthew 8:18-22 NRSVCE)

This disciple was looking for an escape clause in his path to discipleship. What he was really saying was, "I really want to follow you, but let me go back to my family where it's more comfortable until my father dies, and then I'll follow you." But our lives are short, and Jesus knew this. There were other people to help attend to this man's father, but the kingdom of heaven was at hand and there was a lot of work to do in a short period of time. And in our own lives, most of our excuses and escapes just dried up. We are now faced with a really hard question within our own lives. Will we pick up our own crosses and follow Jesus, wherever He leads, and humbly give to Him whatever He asks, or will we hang onto the things of this world a little longer, out of a desire for comfort and control? Do we really trust that when it all hits the fan, God will really come through and provide?

Are we really ready to let go and give God absolutely everything or is there something, some comfort, that we just can't let go of? Are we willing to love others right where they are, really hearing them, and let that Love guide us to just the right moment to issue a small challenge to a new way of thinking? I invite you to humbly submit all that you are to God in this moment and in all the moments to come, for the duration of this current struggle. It is in times like these that God creates Saints. And He's calling each one of us to that very thing. Sometimes, He just wants to know that we love Him for Himself alone, and not for all the gifts that He bestows. Will you let Him in? Will you just let Him love you when all else is stripped away and there is nothing left to cling to? I invite you to take this to prayer in the coming week and to ask Him to reveal to you any areas that you may still be clinging to as a means of escape and to trust Him to provide all that you need.

And truly, I hope we don't entirely go back to normal. I hope that this time period prunes us and strips away all that needs to go, the sin that divides us either from God or from each other, and that we can keep these deeper connections we have developed during our times of isolation. But in the time between now and then, no matter what we may have to sacrifice to follow Jesus, in the end, He will never, ever disappoint.



Photo Credit: Osman Rana, StockSnap.io