WHAT is going ON?

WHAT is going ON? If we were FaceTimin-ing in this crazy quarantine life I would certainly include an expletive. But, alas, not in the written word.

A few people have mentioned my writing to me recently and it got me thinking about why there is so much time between my posts… I hesitate because I question why what I think would really matter to anyone to read. Maybe I don’t want to rock the boat for anyone – read people-pleaser in this conern. Or I’ve hidden from the world for so long… it’s kinda hard to let myself be seen again.

Anyways, I start this post with these musings because there’s something really natural to me about inviting you into this conversation rather than offering some “canned nugget of wisdom” that is often the take on blogging. In fact, it’s the recipe.

There’s an uncomfortable sense of superiority, achievement, or authority in that approach that does not fit my soul at all. I think even moreso than normal in these catawampus, twilight zone-esque days we are living right now.

So, I come to you in all my uncertainties and invite you to think with me about something that has been rolling around in my head for nearly 7 years now.

WHAT is going ON?

I hope I’ll get to snuggle my grandchildren and tell them values rooted deep in me from this experience --- financial conservatism, compassion, contentment, sacrifice, preparedness, generosity, wisdom, free market economy, tradeoffs, government control, prioritizing one thing to the exclusion of everything else, and God’s mighty hand, to name a few. I will explain to them how this feels like the scene in Aladdin when Rug unravels, Abu turns into a toy, and Raja becomes a kitten.

I hope things make more sense then than they do now.

But, right now they don’t. So many conflicting messages. Feelings of being certain you’re not being told the truth. Observations that extremism has overrun everything. Confusion about what this virus is actually doing and what it has the likely potential to do.

It feels the same as life did on 9/11 of 2001. It feels the same as life did in 2014 when my health was dropping like a rock. In these “free-falls” there were more unknowns than knowns. The norms were broken and I didn’t know where the bottom was.

We know the name of the virus, because they named it. We see headlines every day about something new they are learning about this sneaky bug, but we’re not sure yet whether we can believe it. We don’t know how it operates. We don’t know how it moves. We don’t know how it attacks. We don’t know how it lingers. We don’t know if it’s better than they think it is. We don’t know if it’s worse than they think it is.

We want answers. We want a treatment. We want a way to stop it.

WHAT is going ON?

We want normal.

We want to see our people. We want to work. We want to pay our bills. We want to make a regular grocery list. We want to go to our regular, local store and not some far flung store because we heard they stocked their shelves 2 hours ago and we must beat everyone else to get there.

We want to know where the bottom of the economy sits. We want to know when we can send the kids back to the schools we’ve sacrificed so much to afford (if you’re like me and they go to private school). We want to know when we can make plans for our financial future again and get stuck in work hour traffic again. We want to know when we can hug the necks of our friends again and attend a wedding.

We want to stop anticipating the surge. We want GE and Ford to make appliances and trucks, not protective gear for healthcare professionals. We want our loved nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists to be safe, normal, and go home to their families. We want to celebrate what they DID, not what they are DOING.

We want boundaries for this stupid thing.

We want boundaries. We want predictability for our daily life.

We want boundaries. We want predictability. We want confidence about how entities beyond our influence will behave.

We want boundaries. We want predictability. We want confidence. We want to see the bottom.

WHAT is going ON?

If we can see the bottom, we can plan. If we can see the bottom, we can manage our emotions, expectations, and thoughts against something. If we can see the bottom, we can imagine what the other side might look like.

We can’t see the bottom.

We don’t know when we can afford our bills again. We don’t know when we can send our kids to school again. We don’t know when we can sit in rush hour traffic again. We don’t know when we can tear ourselves away from our exhaustion to go to that event we might have skipped out on 3 weeks ago so we can hug a real neck.

We can’t see the bottom.

We don’t know when we can hope for a rising stock market again. We don’t know when we can stop worrying for our nurse and doctor loved ones. We don’t know when we can touch a door knob and not envision every single one of those 3 million germs on it now being on my hand. We don’t know when we can hear our kid cough again and our heart not skip a beat for fear of the big C. We don’t know when we can scratch that itch on our nose again.

We can’t see the bottom.

Some people are really good at stopping the fall of these thoughts and building a cushion for those thoughts to land on - optimists. Some people are really good at seeing every one of the 3 million paths these circumstances could take – anxious-ists. Some people are really good at seeing to the very bottom of this chute and declaring it’s end to our scared souls - pessimists. Thankfully, we are all different and can imagine the bottom in different places. It helps balance out our unbalanced thinking, because none of us are right.

WHAT is going ON?

We can’t see the bottom.

Regardless your disposition, we can’t see the bottom. We can only imagine. When we can’t see the bottom but we imagine it, we tend towards fear. We tend towards grief. We tend towards control… anything to control to combat this sense of smallness and vulnerability.

We can’t see the bottom.

We’re used to our predictability and sense of control leading us to believe we actually manage our lives. Read that again.

We don’t.

The limits, boundaries, predictability, and bottom that surround us lead us to believe the sky is the limit and we can chart our destiny.

We can’t. We can’t see the bottom.

WHAT is going ON?

Without a bottom, it’s impossible to take off in any direction. We’ve lost our control.

So, does that mean everything is out of control then? No.

We may be in a free fall, but God is not. We may not see the bottom, but God does. We may not be able to take off from anywhere, but God can.

He’s holding the bottom at the same time He is falling with us.