Although I
didn’t realize it until now, adjusting—or, rather, struggling to adjust—to living
in South America gave me skills and perspective for coping during this coronavirus
pandemic. (It’s always good to look for the silver lining, isn’t it?)
The numbness
I feel during this pandemic reminds me that by the time I got off the plane in our
remote mission center, Lomalinda, I was already numb—optimistic, but a little dazed.
I wouldn’t have remembered that if I weren’t now experiencing the way my body
and mind react to stress, uncertainty, and a new way of doing life.
While the morning and noon of Day One in Lomalinda had gotten off to a great start (click
on that link), I was in for an unwelcome surprise.
Oppressive
tropical heat and immersion in a foreign culture left me off-balance, but it
would get worse. On that first afternoon, I was about to experience alarm and
fright and anger and exhaustion.
Similarly,
today’s pandemic can thrust us into alarm, fright, anger, and exhaustion—emotional
and mental chaos:
- I know and love people who work on the front lines, heroes every one of them. Their lives are in extreme danger day by day by day.
- I know and love people who are hooked up to ventilators, people who might have only hours to live.
- Who else might come down with the coronavirus? My husband? Son? Daughter? My grandkids? My mother-in-law? Brothers? Dear friends?
- I can’t even begin to grasp the economic impact on my family, town, nation, and the world.
Life as my
family and I have known it has changed drastically. And it will probably never
return to our previous “normal.” Similarly, there in that out-of-the-way place
in South America, life offered me little that I'd always known as “normal.”
We humans
do confusing things at such times. Our brains dysfunction, at least partially,
and we must work so hard to think rationally and make decisions.
And the
old adage, “It’ll get worse before it gets better,” is likely as true now as it
ever was.
How do we
cope?
How do we
take care of ourselves
and our
families?
How do we
carry out our duties?
How do we
keep putting one foot in front of the other?
In Lomalinda,
I would eventually discover answers to those questions, but it wasn’t a pretty
process.
For years
I thought about that raw experience and was able to write this in Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:
God knows all
about change and hard things,
about adjusting
and stretching.
He knows the
unfolding, the modifying,
straightening,
widening, flexing, enlarging,
altering, and
polishing.
He sees the big
picture,
His ultimate goal
for each of us.
He knows our
destination and knows we need to change
before we can
arrive there.
In Lomalinda, God
wanted me to learn that
it’s okay to live
life one day at a time,
even one hour at a
time.
And He wanted to
teach me that sometimes
courage wasn’t
what I’d always assumed.
(from Chapter 9, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)
Now I look
back and recognize that the trauma, the unanswered questions and unanswered
prayers, the grief, the confusion, the ongoing battles—all of it prepared me
for the future, including for this coronavirus pandemic.
Let’s talk
about this more next week. For now, I’ll leave you with this benediction:
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)
No comments:
Post a Comment