Lockdown is like a swing we're forced to sit on for an indeterminate length of time. It might be fun if we knew when we could get off. Instead we swing nowhere - for those of us fortunate enough to be at home - with life in suspended animation.
Entering week five, as for so many my sleep has been disrupted. I find in the small hours my thoughts gather around three categories:
Present Challenges
Past Memories
Future Anxieties
What to do with these thoughts? Well for what it's worth, here is what I've been doing:
re. Present Challenges:
I have chosen (perforce) to see this as an opportunity to test my trust that the Lord is greater than me. If I drop the ball, will He catch it? Being ill for several weeks, I have had to drop everything. Has our world fallen apart? It has not. My trust is not misplaced.
When I see the gap where I should be, God has given me time to see that space filled in by other things. I hear my two teenagers laughing over lunch in the garden while I lie in bed. In regular life, they barely see each other. At chore time while it's obvious I'm not there, I hear the two of them getting into a rhythm. There is now less shouting, we've been given time to "settle in" to a different sort of life.
The challenges of the present pay no mind to my "shoulds, woulds and coulds." I must bend to the challenges, not them to me. So maybe I must let go before I can discover what I might receive instead. Maybe so.
So be it then.
re. Memories of the past:
One of the less pleasant effects of so much time to think is that griefs from my past wash up on my shore like foul-smelling flotsam. Up they come again just as I think I have washed them away. Relentless and hard to ignore, hurts I thought I'd forgiven/regrets I thought I'd shaken/disappointed hopes I thought I'd laid to rest wash up with the inevitability of the tide.
Perhaps God is giving me one more opportunity to write them down, get them out, and hand them over to Him. Maybe with some of them I will be doing that for the rest of my life. Maybe so.
So be it then.
re. Anxieties for the future:
"How will I...?" "What will I...?" "When will I...?" Round and round my battered head. The unknown is like rocket fuel to fear, and anxiety thrives on it. In lockdown, there are so many things I cannot know, I cannot control, I cannot fix. So logic tells me my energy would be better spent on those things which I can do something about.
I can remind myself what I know: God is good, God is kind, God is sovereign, God is faithful. God is bigger than my circumstances so, as I plan my future, He will guide my footsteps when I'm able to go.
I can control my focus and what I put in my head and my heart. Can I expect a good result? If not, my diet must change.
I can fix my attitude and how I handle our situation. Maybe I will need to course correct several times a day! Maybe so, maybe so.
So be it then.
I read a great quote from Victor Hugo this week:
'Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.'
God is awake.
God is awake.
God is awake.
Perhaps that is all I really need to focus on as I lie here at night.
I can go to sleep: God is awake.
jsg/April 2020