"How are you?"
It’s a common question to be asked and even more right now because everyone is wondering how everyone else is doing. Right now, who knows how to answer this question? Let’s be real, no one is doing great, but we will be ok. That is the only way I know how to answer the question. You know why because we have never lived through a world-wide pandemic before.
Somedays I wake up and feel like I am going to able to handle this and everything will be fine. Somedays I wake up and feel like something is crushing my chest, I can’t breathe, and it feels like this will never end. Reality currently lives somewhere in-between. There are very real concerns and very real worries that my family is facing that I do not have answers for. There are real worries that people I love are facing. No one can really tell you when this will end and what the end actually looks like. If you get on Facebook everyone has an opinion and everyone feels that their answers are the best. It can be overwhelming and not exactly comforting.
How do we handle it then? When everything in our normal lives has been turned upside down. We don’t know. We don’t know how to feel and process it and it’s ok. It’s ok to not know and do our best. To help others as we can and to set limits, on ourselves and on our giving. It’s ok to ask someone how they are and accept that they don’t know anymore than you do. It is ok to miss our schools and classrooms and co-ops. It is ok to be happy with the extra time at home. It is ok to feel differently day to day and hour to hour. It is ok to sit and cry and to laugh. We will get through and we be ok in the end.
My hope does not sit on the shoulders of anything but the cross. All my fears and worries can go there to die. I can find the greatest comfort there. My hope cannot survive with the news, or Facebook, or my own thoughts. I have to look outside myself and search in the truest place I have to find it.
“For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Romans 8:24-25