A little over a year ago, on March 16th, 2020, I was passing out Chromebooks to students and having a little bit of an emotional breakdown. That unprecedented (word of the year, anyone?) day seems like ages ago, and yet it remains perfectly clear in my memory. This was the day that the spring of virtual learning began. One Thursday we were having a staff meeting about the “potential” of having to put some material online and the following weekend we learned that that would indeed be our reality. It all felt so overwhelming. I remember only having a couple hours that Monday to throw together something that might resemble a virtual lesson plan before students arrived to pick up their materials. I remember meeting with my 5th/6th grade team to figure out how to set up a Google Classroom on the fly. I remember trying to keep calm and rational, only to rush out of the room in a puddle of embarrassing tears. But it’ll only be for a couple weeks, they said…
What a year it’s been. What a bizarre timestamp that has marked the story of our lives. Since passing the one-year anniversary of the start of it all, I’ve found it necessary to take the past few weeks to reflect.
I was originally going to call this post “10 Things I’ve Learned After a Year or Pandemic Living.” But “learned” connotes too much mastery for some of these. “Learned” assumes a defined ending, a closed loop, a neat bow on top. The reality, however, is that some of these ideas are still getting ingrained in my mind and fleshed out in my life. The pandemic has seemingly just been acting as my preschool teacher.
So when I think back on the past year, here are 10 things that I’m learning about God, about myself, and about life, some significantly deeper than others:
- Our God is near to us. I can’t tell you how much I’ve come back to this idea. In social distancing, our God is close. Seeing Jesus as Immanuel during the Advent season has never felt timelier. Just like Paul taught the people in Athens, God designates our times in history so that we will reach out for Him and find that He’s always been right there (Acts 17:26-27). COVID has made me reach, made me seek, and as a result, shown me His presence.
- I love lipstick way more than I thought I did. Wearing a mask so often has made using it essentially pointless. My quality of life has suffered tremendously.
- Creation reminds us of truth if we would only look. I wrote about this extensively last year when the pandemic first started (What If: Questions for a Global Pandemic). But I still can’t quit Jesus’ words in Matthew 6. The season of spring, with its birds and flowers, is a constant reminder of God’s faithfulness.
- I don’t have the capacity for boredom. This one’s probably weird and maybe just for me, but this statement actually brought a lot of clarity to my life once I named it. The whole bored-at-home-during-quarantine narrative never resonated with me. I think my to-do lists, both productive and pleasurable, are limitless. And that’s ok.
- We need grace-filled, face-to-face conversations. Pandemic plus politics has inevitably equaled polarization. I think giving people the benefit of the doubt goes a long way. But I also think that a real sit-down conversation is best when you don’t see eye-to-eye with someone; I frankly don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Facebook debate thread, no matter how civil, that ever truly benefited anyone.
- If it takes a pandemic for people to learn how to wash their hands and for Chipotle to get a mobile order drive-through window, then, dare I say, we’ve found our silver lining. Enough said.
- Sovereignty belongs to God alone. Seems obvious, right? But it’s funny how I can know that conceptually and still act like I have total control over my own life. This year has been nothing short of a liturgy of surrendering my own plans.
- Our souls are “community-sized.” I read John Eldredge’s book Get Your Life Back a few months ago and he makes this point super well. The Internet and social media have the sometimes-wonderful ability to make the whole world accessible. But you and I are not designed to bear the grief and celebrate the joys of everyone everywhere. No wonder we’re overwhelmed. We’re made to share life in community, real community, with the people in our physical proximity.
- Baking is therapeutic. And all God’s people said “Amen.” But seriously, as someone who works more with her brain than with her hands, I’ve found the practice of something more tactile to be ridiculously restorative. And delicious.
- Hope is worth the risk. I’m a cynic by default. I often plan for the worst to spare myself the sting of disappointment, or at least lessen the pain. Too many times this past year I’ve rolled my eyes at the notion of a timeline of returning to a world without restrictions. Don’t get your hopes up, I quietly remind myself. But there’s a beauty, and even a necessity, of being confident of the good to come. So I’m learning to say with King David, “I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13).
So what about you? What have you been learning during this past year of pandemic living? Maybe today’s the perfect time to stop and reflect.
Cultivate. 