We are living in a time that no one alive on earth has ever experienced before. A pandemic has encircled the globe and our “normal” has been disrupted and dare I say destroyed. Over the last few weeks I have been working hard at taking my own advice that I so often give to others. I am trying to answer the question “How are you feeling?” When talking through this with someone else I usually do check ins for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of their life. I can usually answer three of those four pretty quickly for myself but always struggle with identifying my emotions in any given moment. In the last 7-10 days, as I watched things slow down significantly and stop altogether in some parts of my life, I have been trying to identify what I am feeling. The more I think about it the more I have recognized it as grief.
We are so quick to associate grief with death. Yes, that is a huge part of losing someone you love to physical death. I think we are often afraid of grief because we don’t understand it or feel that it closes a door that can never be opened again. People who are way smarter than me have defined 5 or 7 stages of grief depending on which psychological camp you want to stand in. Everyone agrees that there are certain emotions that every person individually processes in their own way. I am in the 5 stage camp so here are the primary emotions: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I have felt all of these emotions in the past 7-10 days. As any good counselor would tell you, just because you’ve felt all of these emotions doesn’t mean your grieving process is over. Everyone goes through these emotions for a long time. We all encounter things that trigger us from acceptance to another emotion – many, many times. The goal is to be in that place of acceptance for longer periods of time and to return to it faster as you are triggered to other emotions. I wish it was a nice happy circle or cycle so you can follow the exact path as it’s laid out, but it’s not. The image that came to mind for me this morning was a dot-to-dot activity page. Sometimes the numbers are close to each other but sometimes the creator takes you way across the page to some other part of the picture. When the picture is complete it all makes sense but sometimes in the process the next step is inexplicable. I feel the same is true for our emotions in grief. Sometimes it follows the natural, expected path but then other times it goes way across the page to another emotion I wasn’t expecting. I hold onto the fact that every time I go through the emotions of grief, they are making me a little stronger along the way. They are making me a more sympathetic and empathetic person. They are making me a better version of myself.
So Holly has someone died? No. Praise Jesus all of my tribe is still healthy. So then what are you grieving? It has taken me a few days to identify what exactly I am grieving. Everyone in my circles thus far are healthy and safe. In the last 24 hours I’ve been able to identify the object of my grief – my normal life. I love my job. I love my teams. I love my church. I love my tribe that stretches into two countries. Since I’m being honest, I love being busy. I love being needed. I love hugs. I love working hard all day and feeling like I earned my time for mindless activities at the end of the day. I love sharing other people’s burdens, giving advice, hugs and prayers as we share a meal together. I love being a regular part of people’s lives by showing up to support them, coach them and encourage them to become their best selves. I love being able to leave my house any time. I love being able to find simple things like hamburger meat and Clorox wipes at the grocery store. These are the things that make my life feel normal.
Then along comes the Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. My normal has been blown to pieces. I thankfully still have my job. I can still communicate with my teams but it’s through a screen. My church is learning and growing along with churches around the globe how to be the hands and feet of Jesus to our neighbours around us. I have honestly grown closer to so many in my tribe in both countries. The grief comes from not being busy. My schedule used to only have one night a week that wasn’t occupied with something. Now I am home every night of the week. I have been working from home for a couple of years now so that’s not a big change. The change is that I used to try to balance screen time with face-to-face people time. That has been severely limited for the health and well-being of my people and myself. A big part of my job is to plan and run events, which, thanks to this pandemic, have all been cancelled for the next several months. My club volleyball season was officially cancelled yesterday. I have been holding onto a small seed of hope that we would get at least one more match or tournament in eventually. That is what finally closed the coffin and buried my normal into the ground. Thus continues my dot-to-dot picture of grief. As things have changed, been cancelled, closed, quarantined and socially distanced, my grief has processed to the next dot in my picture. The hard part for me is not knowing exactly how many numbers are in my picture. I feel like I’ve been through at least 50 already! How hard and complex is this picture going to be?
Holly, aren’t you an introvert? Isn’t being stuck at home an introvert’s dream? Yes I am and give me a soapbox moment here. Being an introvert means that I recharge by being alone. Extroverts recharge by being around people. Notice the word is REcharge. That implies that energy has been exerted and you need more to continue. I live alone in an apartment complex where I do not have a relationship with anyone else in my building. I am approaching the point of burning out because I have so much “charge” to give. God didn’t create us to do life alone. He created us to be in relationship with Him and other people. My relationship with Him is good but He doesn’t need me to expend any of my energy on Him. He is the one I plug into to get charged while I am alone. I am still maintaining and growing my relationships with people, but it’s just different. Honestly for me, it is less draining when it’s through a screen. Stepping off my soapbox now and returning to my dot-to-dot picture.
As with so many other pages of dot-to-dot pictures that I can look back on in my life, there is hope. Some of those pictures are complete and others still have a few dots left on them that pop up in unexpected ways. In spite of all that, I have hope that the Creator of my current picture, who also knows the final picture, is working to make me my best self who can bring Him glory. I have hope that when things start to become the new normal that myself and the rest of the world will be better people. In so many of my circles, we have been talking for months about how busy we are and how we need real rest. God is giving us that right now. So many discussions these past 7-10 days have involved our returning to basic spiritual practices which we didn’t have time for before. So many people are looking out for their neighbours and reaching out to friends whom they haven’t spoken to in years. The Spirit is leading us to overflow with love and peace while the world is in chaos. The government is forcing us to be the church outside of our Sunday morning gatherings. Although I grieve the things that I have lost, I see a beautiful world finally getting to take a deep breath and us returning to the people the Father wants us to be. This gives me hope as I continue to grieve my normal.
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