Anxiety holds us in place. Love gives us movement.
Take heart.
Sigh. It’s been a couple days since Coronavirus really took foothold here in Michigan. While there aren’t that many confirmed cases yet, a lot of businesses are closing/school is cancelled…in many ways, life feels like it has pressed pause.
In spaces of uncharted territory, it’s so easy to become overwhelmed. Include me in that count, particularly this weekend. I kept finding myself ping-pong-ing from emotion to emotion (poor Doug). The constant barrage of information felt unhealthy but I also didn’t want to be uniformed. I would read one story about the panic we need to be feeling for the world/economy/our communities, followed by one that states how we just need to wash our hands more diligently. Again, sigh.
My confusion bottled up into anxiousness about the ‘what’s next.’ I am self admittedly someone who likes to stay busy and be social so this halt of activity has brought out some of my restlessness. At one point, I shut off the phone, closed the laptop, turned off the Netflix, and just sat. With my thoughts (see previous sentence and you will sense how very ancy this made me). However in my quiet, I feel like God whispered some peace to me:
Anxiety holds us in place…love gives us movement.
Ahhh. All this time I was blaming my want to help, my need for solutions when in reality, it was my anxiousness that was holding me stationary.
So, what does that movement look like?
Go support a small business. buy, share, promote (live local as if your community’s personality depended on it)
As we practice social distancing, check in on that friend who lives alone
Shape conversation in a non-anxious, calm way
Look out for each other
Send a message to the mama who unexpectedly has her kiddos home for the next few weeks
Slow the scroll, turn off the devices, and allow yourself to breathe
Say prayers for the exhausted, working overtime health professionals
Connect with a local nursing home; their residents aren’t allowed business at this time so see if they would accept cards from your kiddos (art class anyone?)
Wash those hands
Be informed, brave, present....
Look for the bright spots because everyday, no matter how bleak, has one
Friends, even in the most uncertain of times, the heart stuff isn’t cancelled. Family (in all forms) isn’t cancelled. Hope isn’t cancelled. Laughter isn’t cancelled. Doing good isn’t cancelled. Love isn’t cancelled. In the face of rising panic, may we set aside the ‘i’ and replace with a hearty ‘all of us.'
Saturday morning, I read this in a book of prayers from my sister-in-law and it quieted my wandering heart:
In a world so wired and interconnected,
our anxious hearts are pummeled by
an endless barrage of troubling news.
We are daily aware of more grief, O Lord,
than we can rightly consider,
of more suffering and scandal
than we can respond to, of more
hostility, hatred, horror, and injustice
than we can engage with compassion.
But you, O Jesus, are not disquieted
by such news of cruelty and terror and war.
You are neither anxious or overwhelmed.
You carried the full weight of the suffering
of a broken world when you hung upon
the cross, and you carry it still.
When the cacophony of universal distress
unsettles us, remind us that we are but small
and finite creatures, never designed to carry
the vast abstractions of great burdens,
for our arms are too short and our strength
is too small. Justice and mercy, healing and
redemption, are your great labors.
And yes, it is your good pleasure to accomplish such works through your people,
but you have never asked any one of us
to undertake more than your grace
will enable us to fulfill.
Guard us then from shutting down our empathy
or walling off our hearts because of the glut of
unactionable misery that floods our awareness.
You have many children in many places
around this globe. Move each of our hearts
to compassionately respond to those needs
that intersect our actual lives, that in all places
your body might be actively addressing
the pain and brokenness of this world,
each of us liberated and empowered by
your Spirit to fulfill the small part
of your redemptive work assigned to us.
Give us discernment
in the face of troubling news reports.
Give us discernment
to know when to pray,
when to speak out,
when to act,
and when to simply
shut off our screens
and our devices,
and to sit quietly
in your presence,
casting the burdens of this world
upon the strong shoulders
of the one who
alone
is able to bear them up.
-Every Moment Holy
”In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Sincerely,
Ashley