In the Face of a Pandemic: A Five-Year Anniversary Like no Other

Five years ago, this weekend, Clay and I were leading our final youth ministry retreat. On Tuesday, the moving pods would arrive and somehow, we would pack our lives into those 4 large shipping containers and embark on our greatest adventure to date. But today was all about seeking to end well with the students we had loved and poured our lives into for the last eight years.

As I sit here on my porch, reflecting on that weekend, it is pretty much a blur. There must have been times of teaching and prayer. There must have been congregational games and worship. But all I remember was the odd and draining dance of meeting one-on-one with students to speak encouragement and hope into their lives and then retreating to a dark room to cry as I nursed our youngest or tried to hold it together with one or both of our boys.

It was in one sense the climax of one of the toughest periods of my life.

After over a year of conversations, prayer, budgeting and re-budgeting, Clay and I had come to the conclusion that we could not continue to support our family on our ministry salaries. But because we also could not afford to support our family on NO salary, we were working out what this looked like and doing what we needed to do in secret. Long, draining days of ministry and parenting three kids 6 and under were followed by long nights of job searching, purging, painting and other “house prep.”

March ended and April started with a bang. Within a week’s time, we told our pastor we were leaving, were asked to announce our departure to the elders and congregation WAY before we were ready, put our house on the market, and traveled to Georgia where Clay’s “sure thing” job opportunity fell through in the most unexpected of ways.

We returned to accept an offer on our house, walk through some of the ugliest negotiations with our buyers, meet with students and families in what felt like a hundred more tiny deaths, and make the decision to step out in faith and go through with the plan to move to Georgia…with no job.

But for me, the feelings were the hardest reality we had to face in that time. I was disappointed that we were being forced to leave, not because we felt called out of ministry, but because that $10,000 that could have sustained us, just couldn’t be made available. I was angry that the voices of people we loved and the community we had sacrificed so much for had been ignored. And most of all, I was just sad that it was all ending this way. This was not the script I would have written.

So, in one sense, this weekend was the climax of all of these things. But in another sense, it was only the beginning of the next journey into a future that was scarier and more unclear than it had ever been.

You see, those pods were going to some holding facility in the state of Pennsylvania while our minivan pulled a small trailer of everything we would need for who knows how long all the way down to Georgia. We would be moving in with my in-laws while Clay worked full-time searching for a job. That we had a roof over our head and another few weeks of income was pretty much all that was certain. So, this was what faith looks like?

It is rather eerie how similar this moment in time feels.

School officially ended yesterday. Summer has officially begun. In one sense it is the climax of nearly two and a half very difficult months. Somehow, we made it through digital learning. Somehow, we have managed to remain healthy and mostly mentally sound. But the carnage is all around, and it is real. You can see it in the short tempers, in the extra pounds from stress eating, in the abandonment of any sense of schedule or rhythm and in the overarching sense of physical exhaustion that no amount of sleep, exercise or healthy eating can seem to touch.

There is a sense in which this is a turning point…and yet there is also a sense in which this is just another stopping point into the unwanted and the unknown.

I will never forget the inner monologue that played over and over in my mind 5 years ago: “So, I am now a full-time stay at home mom, living in Georgia, in the summer, with no pool, with no friends, with no idea when anything is going to change….” And this is where you would enter that emoji with the big eyes and red cheeks.

Today the monologue is similar: “So, now I am STILL a full-time stay at home mom (and I’m still not great at it), living in Georgia, in the summer (and nothing has changed in my relationship with the heat and humidity), with a pool that even if it opens seems unsafe to swim in, with friends that I can’t see because oh yeah, we are LIVING IN A PANDEMIC, with no idea when anything is going to change….” Eerie, right?

I am not going to lie to you: those first couple of months living in the heart of uncertainty 5 years ago were anything but easy. There were fights, there was boredom, there was fear, oh…and did I mention there was lice?! Yup that’s right, LICE! And in the moment, it felt like this would be reality forever. Hope was in short supply more often than I would care to admit. I just did not see the end.

I didn’t see the end, but God did.

It wasn’t THE END, the end. But it was a good culmination to a hard season. It was a moment to catch my breath and remember that there was good air up there outside of the waves of suffering. And it came in the form of a job offer for Clay that neither of us could have dreamed of after an eleven-year hiatus from the business world. It came in the purchase of a house that was actually big enough for the five of us, and a backyard that would ironically and providentially become our oasis and saving grace in the midst of our current waves of uncertainty and suffering.

I have spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks throwing myself a big, long pity party as I have come to terms with the indefinite nature of this season of our family continuing to shelter-in-place. Next weekend, 5 of my best friends are heading to the mountains for our annual retreat. I am staying here. And that makes me sad.

But God has not left me in my sadness.

You see, I have been doing a lot of reading in the past year—probably more than in the five previous years combined. Back in January, I remember finishing a particularly life-changing book and coming to the Lord to ask Him what He wanted me to do with everything I had read. As I sat in God’s Presence, I had a completely unexpected feeling overwhelm my heart:

“Perhaps the greatest gift I have to offer the people around me is to live a quiet, contemplative life. Perhaps me living and loving out of that space is exactly my unique gift to the world.”

In case you haven’t figured out yet from this blog, I am a DOER. I don’t sit still very well and struggle with feeling as though I am somehow failing if I am not doing. I have twisted the concept of “fairness” in a way that flows directly to the well of never-ending guilt.

My inner critic frequently says to me: “If Clay is working as hard as he is at work all day to provide for your family financially, then it is only right that you work just as hard during those hours.” So, when this message stirred my heart, my inner prosecutor immediately got to work telling me all the reasons why what I was thinking was selfish, unrealistic, and downright crazy.

But here’s the thing. In the past year I have been doing a lot of soul work. And one of the best things that has come out of that is me beginning to become much better at differentiating between the voice of my inner critic and the voice of the Holy Spirit. And in that moment, I knew immediately which was which. As much as it defied the very foundation on which I have built my practical theology of doing and being, I knew that the first words were indeed the words of the Holy Spirit. My husband has this amazing job that allows me extreme flexibility. Not many people have that freedom.

What better way to use it than to go as deep with the Lord as possible, so that my cup overflows with love and wisdom, rather than duty and resentment, onto those around me?

So that brings me to today…to this ending and this beginning in this crazy moment we call the Corona Virus Pandemic. In the past couple of weeks, as I have processed missing my retreat and entering into an uncertain summer with my kids, I feel like the chaos in my soul has slowly been settling. And this message keeps coming back to me: “Perhaps the greatest gift I have to offer the people around me is to live a quiet, contemplative life.” And I know it sounds crazy. I mean how in the world can the words “quiet and contemplative” coexist with three kids home all day, every day? It is almost laughable. But then again, so was much of what Jesus said and did in His ministry here on earth.

Just as I had no idea how our “Crazy move to Georgia Adventure” was going to end, so I have no idea how I am going to live the simultaneous life of “Mama Monk” and “Housekeeper, Cook, Entertainer and Tear Wiper Extraordinaire.” And yet, I am learning to trust myself more in the things I hear and believe in a God whose limits go way beyond the earthly categories of “reasonable” and “realistic.”

I don’t know what message there is in this story for you. Maybe you are finding yourself at this same turning point that isn’t really a turning point. Maybe you are trying to make sense of what God is doing. Maybe you are scared. Maybe you are angry. It is all normal. It is all okay.

Wherever you are, my invitation is the same. Step into the mystery. Hold on to the God whose surprises are way better than any script we could write for ourselves. And know that to be in that space is the best place any of us could ask to be.