My husband is a teacher in our town, placing us both in active roles interacting with our community. The atmosphere in the education system has certainly been a bumpy ride while navigating this pandemic and political landscape as well. Between our two points of exposure, and immediately after a weekend stay in the city for my husband’s 40th Birthday, we were the first in our subsequent workplaces to contract Covid-19. My husband had a rapid onset and was fever-ridden for five days. I experienced a slower burn with symptoms of sore throat and headache for six days before fever hit, followed by body aches that combined, had me bedridden for eight days.
Prior to contracting Covid-19, I hadn’t claimed a sick day from work in years. This virus took me out like no other sickness has before. Our kids stayed home from school for a month as we respected the isolation process, and I was heartbroken to miss my brother’s wedding. I dealt with a sea of guilt and shame at our lack of caution or for ways we could have been more careful and the potential we had to spread the virus to others. After extensive contact tracing, the health authorities offered that it was most likely my husband contracted Covid-19 at work and passed it to me at home.
This felt like a betrayal from the school community where my husband works, as those families are known to us and include some known to have not taken the pandemic seriously. This is still difficult for me to let go. We regained our health and returned to work and I have struggled greatly with judgement and resentment, particularly as I have watched many in my community continue to choose not to wear masks.
I have lacked a great deal of grace and trust in my fellow human beings and the greater evangelical community that I grew up in. Where is the love for our neighbors?
Why are we not leading the charge to heal our broken world? Wearing a mask is such a simple gesture to signify that one cares about those around them and their well-being. I can testify that it truly accomplishes that. I’m so grateful for the mask-wearers. And yet our community voted against a mask bylaw twice.
I used to believe I was a “people-person,” but this season has me wondering how I ever believed that to be true? Do I even know myself? I have never felt such a lack of love for others than during this time. As a person who struggles with the desire to be in control of myself & of those around me, who holds rules and morality in very high regard, yet has to learn every day that I have no control over those around me, showing up to serve my community has been exhausting.
How does one exhibit grace when they are frequently shown disrespect, simply by placing boundaries on how to accept cash as payment without touching dozens of hands in a day? How do I have empathy for customers wearing hats displaying logos that are on the opposing side of the politics I espouse? Where has all my previous training on managing turbulence gone and how do I apply it here and now? Rather than having a flight attendant extend a response of “A little bit of turbulence is to be expected, it’s nothing to worry about,” I am yearning for tangible actions or steps to take. Once I have learned a truth or have had my eyes opened to a revelation, I cannot unsee it and cannot bear to witness others still in the dark. Jesus, come near, this work is not for the faint of heart and I am weary of failing at it.
Yet, I do believe that I have been planted here for a reason, in this community, in this vocation, for such a time as this. I may have made mostly a mess out of it until now, but I am committed to learn how to serve better. Turbulence in life, I am learning, is to be expected. This storm may not have been on our radar, but we’re in the thick of it now and the only way through is to keep moving forward, together.
I must learn to travel with grace.
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