Weariness: Navigating the pandemic wilderness
Do you feel it?
Maybe not you personally, but those around you.
Or maybe exactly you.
There is a weariness in the air. Weariness not just of parents and teachers trying to figure out school, but the weariness that comes with no longer being able to dodge the fact that school won’t be “normal” for a long while yet. Weariness that comes from having to reinvent our work, our worship, our lives. Weariness because we just don’t know. Weariness with the changes that come too often and weariness with the things that stay too much the same.
Back in 2008 I fractured my pelvis in three places. (Technically, it was the car that hit me while I was biking that fractured my pelvis.) As hard as that was, the thing that made it all easier was that I was not the first patient they’d seen with a fractured pelvis. They knew exactly how the journey was going to progress, and they were exactly right.
But nobody knows the timeline now. Events scheduled for the spring were pushed back to the fall because surely by then it’d be safe to gather… but here we are.
More than once this has made me think about the desert times in scripture. The children of Israel didn’t have a road map or timetable either. Elijah wound up there because he was too scared and too exhausted to be anywhere else.
When we’re in the desert, we have a choice. We can hunker down and shut down, and the children of Israel did a lot of that, even when their feet were moving. Life used to be so much better. Well, we were slaves, but at least we knew what tomorrow would bring.
Or, we can own our thirst, shout our frustration, and open ourselves to a grace that may yet feed us… but may just as likely transform us. The testimony of Christian spirituality is that we don’t come out of a wilderness the same as when we went in.
In the meantime, if the angels invite you to have a snack and take a nap, as they did with Elijah, listen. If you are wearied by the cacophony of voices around you, turn them off, whether it’s TV news or social media or your cousin who absolutely knows what should be done.
It may sound counterproductive but lean into the weary. Put your hand upon it, as you do when your stomach growls. Grab onto it with both fists like Jacob, refusing to let it go until you receive or recognize the blessing.
Not because God sends such a time as this to make us all shine even more like sunbeams for Jesus. But because God insists on barging in, even into such a time. Even now when all we can see are the shattered pieces of our days, God is picking up one and then another, mumbling about what it might look like if we put this piece with that, which isn’t where it used to go at all. Because God has a way of doing that.
These are hard days.
Hard times.
For some of you more than others.
Claim where you are and take one more step, one more breath.
