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On Dec. 28th of 2019 I felt a tickle in my throat that turned into a fever and pneumonia. I've had asthma my whole life and chronic lung issues since I got very sick at 14. Colds—for me—turn bad quickly. A cough goes deep, my voice nearly non-existent. This time was no different.
I was sick through the month of January and most of February. I gathered with my church family for the first time on March 8th, then COVID hit. This isn't a pity party. There are folks I love for whom this is a normal occurrence, who can rarely or never gather with the saints.
Add in a cross country move in June (to a place I love but left ten years ago, to a state with the most COVID deaths and the tightest restrictions on gathering), I have felt like a unmoored skiff floating on the open sea: adrift and a bit alone.
We're renovating a house, so that gives me something to *do* but it doesn't abate the deep sense of isolation and aloneness.
Again, I'm not saying any of this for pity. I wanted to share it because while my situation may *heighten* the pulsing sense of strangeness we all feel, we're still all feeling it. Each of our stories carry with them a particular cocktail that heightens our angst in this time.
No two stories alike and no story necessarily better or worse. Everyone has it hard right now. Pastors. Mothers. Business owners. Employees. Children. No matter what your story is, it is both uniquely difficult for you and generally the same as everyone else.
One of the enemy's ploys is to create within us a sense of superiority (thinking our story matters more) or competition (comparing our story to others) or invisibility (thinking our story doesn't matter at all). He does it w/ politics, religion, sexuality, parenting, finances...
And one of the greatest means of combatting that ploy is to see our stories rightly—both in their grisliness and in their beauty. To see the ways we ache particularly and to see the ways we ache corporately. To see the ways we hope particularly and corporately.
The thing is, though, right now most of us are so isolated from the fellowship of others in all the way humans need (not good alone, remember?), that looking inward is both natural and also a survival mechanism. We're *all* doing it. Not a one of us isn't.
Anyway, I just wanted to encourage myself and you with a reminder that we are all a little like unmoored skiffs on open seas, but there are enough of us out there that we can see we're not *truly* alone. It's not the same or sufficient or sustainable, but it's something. Fin.
