I didn’t want to sit down to write this article. I pushed it as far back to my 5 pm Friday deadline as I could manage, until only my own idealistic tendencies as a writer caused me to succumb to the page. I was holding myself to a deadline: to build my writing practice, to create content, but perhaps more importantly, to enter the space of vulnerability which leads to healing for both myself and others. It is often said that the hardest part about writing is just the sitting down. In my experience, once I sit and open myself up to Creativity, the words descend as if carried in by the wind. The writing is the easy part.
What is harder to face than the page is the reality many of us have had to face while in quarantine, that are not quite where we would like to be in our lives right now. We would rather be back in our college dorm, kicking it with friends on the quad or celebrating at happy hour after cramming for finals. We would rather be at the beach, where we can breathe in the sea-salty air and feel liberated, as if the world was once again a place full of opportunity and space we could freely navigate. We would rather be at the apex of this thing called COVID-19, knowing that society (and the world as we knew it) is on the absolute mend from that which, in one fell swoop, liberated us from many of our freedoms. We would rather.
What many of us find ourselves faced with, instead of our coveted distractions, are our present realities. The places in our relationships which have been aggravating us for a while. The spaces where we have harbored frustration with our situation, or even with God. The things we try so hard not to look at suddenly stand facing us from across the room. They are with us when we brush our teeth or when we cook too many meals in the week to ignore the fact that we don’t actually love cooking, but more need it to survive. When we turn the corner and find ourselves faced with that special someone we’ve already run into enough times in one day. In our present reality, there is no running to the store, the gym, the movie theater or a favorite restaurant to alleviate that which lies underneath it all. Now there is just the yearning. The desire. The disappointment. The hope. These are the things the most privileged in our present-day scenario are daily faced with; those of us who are fortunate enough to be healthy, at home, not on a ventilator, not fighting COVID-19 in our bodies.
So, what do we do when faced with the difficult realities from which we can no longer disassociate? Perhaps there is not one answer, but I will offer one I have found to be true:
DO THE WORK.
When we do not face the things that are going on underneath the surface, they bubble up and out of us and onto other people. As believers, we lean on God for a lot, but what I have found is that in life, God has a part, and we have a part. More than that, we have a choice if we are going to engage our part or leave that work for someone else to do. Often, we are quick to lean into prayer for protection and blessing (and we should, by all means). But what about praying for power to be able to confront the reality of the decisions we have made and correct ourselves? What about praying for the courage to stand up to our loved ones when we are convicted to do so? What about asking for the strength to name truth when it is neither happy nor clappy, but honest and real?
During quarantine, there is an abundance of time. More than enough of it to go around, in fact. Time for FUN: for playing games, for calling friends, for eating good food. Time for MEDITATION: as we reflect and relax and listen in. Time for WORK: to complete tasks, continue the search for work, or work out our bodies. Time for LOVE: Truth telling, serving, pouring into. And when all of that is done, quarantine gives us one last gift, that of REDEMPTION: still, there is time to sit down, to have the hard conversations, to do the work, and to make decisions that we will look back on when this all over and think “I am so glad I had the courage to reconcile that which needed to be redeemed when the opportunity was presented to me.”
Redemption work isn’t easy, but much of it is like sitting down to write. Once you make space and time for what you intend to do, set your mind to the task, and resolve that it is worth investing in, the rest falls into alignment. Things begin to flow, as if led by a Current much larger than any one of us. Yes, we would rather procrastinate, push things past their deadline. But being that we have such an abundance of it right now, don’t you think it’s time?