These are shadow days, when the dark imprints of more Covid restrictions slant long across our days. And the gloom of another round of distance learning makes it hard to see the light.
So to keep hope alive, every night before we go to sleep, Travis and I look into each other’s eyes and say, “Tell me what is true.”
That can be a hard thing to do, these days. There are so many voices shouting in our ears and glaring from our screens and whispering in our own minds that are not saying what is true. And our own exhausted emotions so quickly fall prey to the sensational over-simplifications, the frustration-laced outbursts, and the hopeless despair.
And so we go back and forth, reminding each other of what we know is true, even if we don’t feel it.
Tell me what is true.
It can be hard even to see what is true these days, much less keep it in front of us.
But truth can be found. It may take more effort, more discernment, and more intentionality than ever before, but Truth is offering us a relationship with Him—the safest place of all in this world full of division and rage and grief.
Tell me what is true.
My heart needs this daily rhythm of speaking and receiving truth. And maybe yours does, too. So let me tell you a few things that are true.
It is true that when God said, “Give thanks in all circumstances,” He meant situations like these, too.
It is true that how we treat each other matters far more than who is right. Be kind.
It is true that falling asleep listening to the sound of Scripture being read by David Heath’s rich voice is far superior to falling asleep listening to the sound of my own anxious thoughts.
It is true that when I let myself start to believe that this is significant suffering, I dull myself to the reality of the many around the world who are actually suffering deep injustices and evil. Perspective doesn’t magically change my situation, but it should change my view of the situation.
It is true that I can rest in the fact that God is working all things out for good.
It is true that donuts and coffee don’t actually make anything better, but they sure help.
It is true that dwelling on the feelings of helplessness and rage and self-pity only keeps me from being able to serve and love those right around me. And inversely, focusing on serving and loving others dilutes that powerful cocktail of helplessness, rage, and self-pity.
It is true that His grace is sufficient for me. Every day. Every moment.
And it is true that God is with us, and that is enough.
Care to join this practice of truth-speaking in the comments? I would love to hear from you. Tell me what is true.
Somehow, North American Christendom has bought into the idea that democracy and our rights and the government staying in their rightful place is what determines whether we are free or not.
This may be more of an issue in the States, where liberty and freedom are so embedded into the culture that it’s hard not to let it seep into your bones a little. But Canadian Christians are not exempt, and our chafing at the restrictions placed on us for the last year and a half proves it.
We seem to be caught up in the idea that in our society, we have rights and freedoms that should not be taken away from us. The government should not be able to tell me when I may leave my home and whom I may interact with. No one has the rightful authority to tell me to wear a mask on my face or put a vaccine into my body. And if those things are mandated for me to be able to go certain places or participate in certain activities, I should be allowed to rebel, because I deserve to have the liberty to do whatever I want.
To quote the book of James terribly out of context for dramatic effect: “My brethren, these things ought not so to be.” When did our civic rights and freedoms become what we as Christians are fighting for? When did the North American idea of freedom become our idol—the thing that we crave and long for more than anything, even more than God? When did we so easily let our happiness become tied to lesser things?
We are listening to a lie if we believe that North American culture’s view of freedom is what true freedom is. And we are selling ourselves terribly short if we believe that this kind of freedom is what we need in order to be happy.
Freedom is not the ability to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. True freedom is doing what Jesus wants me to do whenever He asks me to do it (i.e. all the time). True freedom is forgiveness and salvation that last forever. True freedom is living out the way of Christ, regardless of my circumstances, and regardless of how many restrictions are placed upon me.
You see, Jesus isn’t held back by man-made institutions. So often we act as though He is, and it is somehow our job to break Him free by calling out corruption or deceit. But we don’t need to, because He is already free and at large, working in His kingdom that overlaps with the earthly kingdoms but is never hindered by them.
Freedom doesn’t depend on me. It doesn’t depend on my ability to see through institutional corruption or my ability to rebel against government overreach. In fact, true freedom doesn’t depend on those things at all. If it did, Jesus would have had plenty of institutional corruption and government overreach from which to free the first-century Jews.
But He didn’t. Not because those things weren’t an issue back then—because they were, much more so than today. But because it wasn’t what Jesus was here to do. And it still isn’t what He’s here to do as His Spirit works through us.
Why are we looking for freedom where we will never find it? Why are we placing our hope in a system that will fail us—and then being upset when it does?
I am free because Jesus has set me free. And His freedom knows no limits. I will not choose to live in bondage to things that are ultimately of little consequence. In fifty years, what will matter more, whether or not we spent 2021 living under Covid restrictions or how we chose to spend the time we were given?
We miss what God is doing when we focus on the wrong picture.
We choose our own bondage when we fight the wrong fight.
We narrow our own vision when we wrongly believe that freedom is tied to earth-bound things.
How small is our view of church if we think that it is only found in the gathering of believers in a certain building on a certain day? Freedom means that church is happening through the words Paul wrote while chained to a Roman soldier under house arrest and the vision of Revelation that John received while exiled on an island. And so it follows that me watching a church service in my living room and praying while walking with a friend and being built up by believers through voice messages and texts are also church happening in real and beautiful ways.
How small is our view of the abundant life if we think it can only be ours if we are allowed to make our own decisions? True freedom means that the abundant life is found in the garden of grief, in the road to the cross, in the dying to truly live.
How small is our view of God and His work when we think that He needs the world to change through the decisions of politicians? True freedom means that a Roman official can condemn an innocent man to death and God’s work can still be accomplished. True freedom means that lies about the resurrection can be told by corrupt government when they are bribed to do so, and it doesn’t change reality at all. True freedom means that we do not depend on earthly powers to do everything right; and we are not dismayed, because God’s work is big enough to carry on through poor or corrupt decisions.
How small is our view of freedom when we think it is tied up in a mask mandate, in a lockdown order, in a vaccine passport? True freedom means that we are equally free with or without those restrictions, because they’re not what true freedom is about. I would suggest that if we think those things keep us from true freedom, we have become desperately earthly-minded.
What if we stopped complaining about the problems and started looking for ways to be part of the solution?
What if we stopped dishonouring our authority in action or word and started living out Romans 13 without excuses, caveats, or justifications?
What if we broadened our definition of freedom and chose to live in its reality, regardless of circumstance?
What if we took the energy we put into forming, confirming, and proclaiming our opinions and funneled it into the work of Christ right around us?
True freedom is found in the way of the cross. It is not in standing for my rights, but in laying them down.
The artistically-gifted husband gets credit again.
John 8:36 says, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
He’s done His part. Will we do our part and live free?
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)
“But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’ This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father.” John 5:17-18
I find this very interesting,
This Pharisaical abhorrence to calling God “Father.”
They didn’t understand that they were speaking to God’s Son,
But they also didn’t understand that they could be God’s sons.
The idea of calling God their Father scandalized them.
It wasn’t done,
Save for a scattering of instances in the Old Testament,
And then always aimed at Israel as a whole.
God as Father is such a part of my theology,
Such a part of my praying and thinking and speaking,
That I can hardly imagine living on the other side of the
Dividing line
When Jesus had not yet come
And had not yet become human
So that we could become part of the family.
We have been grafted into the holy family tree.
And it’s not that we were prime candidates for the grafting.
We were not in a beautiful tree of our own,
Exuding life and bearing fruit.
We were some
Entirely different species of plant.
A thistle, perhaps—
Prickly, untouchable, unlovable.
Or maybe a dried, dead piece of grass.
No life, no beauty left in the shrivelled shell.
And yet, he picked us up,
Tatters and all,
And He did the impossible.
He changed who we are,
So that we could be part of who He is.
And He lets us call Him “Father.”
He claims us so that we can claim Him.
We are part of a family where
We don’t have to have it all together,
Or even a little bit together.
A family where
He is Life, and Peace, and Truth, and Beauty, and Goodness,
And we get to come and experience it all.
A family where
He turns our desperate, desolate bristles
Into beautiful, abundant life.
A family where
We belong, completely,
Just as we are—imperfections and all.
A family where
The fullness of God is our inheritance,
Given to us when He died.
It’s a family relationship that includes itself in
And no, I am not suggesting that we become more involved with the WWE. If you were hoping to read a blog post about that, you have come to the wrong place.
I’m talking about wrestling with complex ideas, facing disagreements head-on, and embracing topics of conflict.
Yuck.
Hasn’t this whole past year had enough division and fighting? Yes, it has. But hear me out.
It seems that the members of the church have lost their ability to respectfully disagree with each other. Instead, we have barricaded ourselves in our separate camps, with coils of barbed wire topping our walls, only too happy to hunker down with like-minded people and throw truth bombs at the other side.
Or we have retreated to the farthest corners of the camp, afraid to even get close to interacting with the other side and desperately trying to pretend that the divisions aren’t there at all.
Neither one brings us to a place of peace and reconciliation.
The problem is, everything is so complicated. When it comes down to it, each side has their own facts and justifications to support their position. So then what? Does it simply become a question of whose facts are better? Do we need to start putting justifications on scales to decide which carry the most weight?
The church is very bad at dealing with disagreements. We are called to unity, but we mistake that for uniformity. And then, when there’s someone whose ideas don’t quite fit the mold, we don’t know what to do with them, and so we either gently shove them out the door or all try to pretend that the anomaly doesn’t exist. Or we get into fights over things that don’t actually matter until the church either splinters in two or someone says “Yes, but the Spirit told me that…” And then it’s all over, because who could possibly disagree with the voice of God? Unfortunately, no one, not even the voice of God speaking through another channel.
It seems that this has always been a problem for the people of God. Way back in the Corinthian church, an issue came up that seemed to be causing great division. Was it okay for believers to eat meat that had been offered to idols? Strong opinions raged on either side of the debate—and it was confusing. I can imagine one believer saying, “The Spirit has so clearly shown me that this meat is evil, Satanic, and connected to darkness. I can’t have any part with that.” And then there’s another believer who says, “The Spirit has shown me that evil can’t touch me—it’s rendered powerless in the face of God. I can eat that meat and be entirely unaffected.”
This raises all sorts of questions. Who was right? Was one of them hearing the Spirit incorrectly? Why would God tell them two different things? I don’t know. But He did. And He still does.
One Christian sees Scripture telling them that the church should value and prioritize meeting together, and therefore they would see seasons of virtual worship as a sin of omission. Another Christian looks at different Scriptures and sees that respecting authority is paramount, and therefore feels comfortable with applying creativity to the format of worship during a time when authority says in-person gatherings are not acceptable.
One Christian sees God showing them that vaccines are a good gift from the Father to keep hundreds of thousands of people from dying of various preventable diseases. Another Christian hears the Spirit tell them that vaccines are evil and sinister in nature, propagating the slaughter of innocents.
One Christian sees the Bible in black and white, full of literal accounts that aren’t to be questioned. Another Christian sees nuance in genre—poetry and historical accounts and metaphor and prophecy—each to be read accordingly.
One Christian believes in seven literal days of creation that occurred six thousand years ago. Another Christian sees space for taking Genesis 1-3 metaphorically and does not discount that the evolution of species may be the miraculous method God chose to use to create this world.
One Christian woman feels convicted to cover her head at all hours of the day and night. Another Christian woman reads 1 Corinthians 11 as cultural, instruction for one time and place but not this one.
I could go on and on. In each of these situations, is one person right and one person wrong? Honestly, I don’t know. But here’s what I do know.
I know that objective truth exists, and objective truth matters. But I also know that a dogmatic assurance that I am seeing it perfectly closes me off from a relationship with Truth Himself.
I know that there are many times when Scripture does not lay things out for us in unquestioning certainty. God knew that giving something like that to humans would result in a lot of different interpretations. That didn’t seem to bother Him, so I don’t think it needs to bother us either.
I know that Jesus didn’t come to give us a bunch of answers…He came to be the Answer. He didn’t come with a 10-step method we can apply to always know the right thing to do or believe in every situation. He came to turn us into the kind of people who can choose wisely.
I know that getting it all “just right” does not seem to be what Jesus is about. In fact, He was pretty hard on the people in His day and age who thought they had it all together and saw no nuance in their iron-clad rules.
I know that we do not get to decide who goes to heaven and who doesn’t. That simply is not up to us. So it is also true that we should not label issues as a matter of salvation when God hasn’t called them that.
I know that too often, we as Christians make it about certainty. We want to know that if we do a certain list of things or believe a certain set of things, we are guaranteed to be “right.” But instead, God is asking us to release control and our desire to have all the answers.
I know that so much of what we say and do is not nearly as unbiased as we think. We all tend to see our own culture as either the best or the worst, and both are problematic. We all tend to look for verses or sources to back up what we already believe. This shuts us down from being able to grow. It can even shut us down from finding Jesus’ way.
I know that Paul told the Corinthians, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” Knowing all the answers isn’t the right way forward. Love is. He goes on to say, “If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”
What if we would apply that way of thinking to our conversations? What if we would keep that guiding force of love central in our minds? What if we would enter into difficult conversations not with the desire of proving who is right and who is wrong, but with the desire of listening to each other and loving each other deeply?
You can’t love someone when you’re on the other side of the fence throwing things at them.
We only love by releasing our desire to know and instead placing our focus on being known by God.
We like to think that we can cling with clenched fists to the things we know to be true. But God asks us to open our hands and release our need to know. Then, and only then, can we turn to face our brothers and sisters without fists raised to fight.
It’s not about figuring out who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s about letting each other’s perspectives broaden and enrich our own. It’s about loving each other deeply from a heart free of judgment. It’s about breaking down the walls and ripping down the barbed wire so that we can stand in the middle holding hands.
We don’t need to avoid all conflict, although sometimes not talking about it may be the most loving thing to do.
But we can turn to each other with hearts open to another point of view. We can listen to His Spirit without questioning His work in other’s lives.
And we can love our way back to each other, despite the ways we disagree.
Covid has been changing our lives for over a year now—and none of us likes it. But now, vaccines—the key to controlling this virus—are here. And yet, many people are uncertain, fearful, or downright antagonistic towards them.
I understand the confusion, the fear, and the uncertainty. The anti-vax voices are loud, and they have a myriad of horror stories to tell. It is so hard to know what to believe, and fear is powerful. But fear or misinformation should not be making our decisions for us.
I believe that before we make a decision, we ought to consider it from all angles. It is wise to explore both sides of a complex issue to avoid tunnel vision or the spread of misinformation. And I don’t see that happening on the spaces of social media very often.
So, to put it simply, that’s why I have written this article—to be a part of telling the other side of the story. If you are anti-vax and have firmly made up your mind, this article is not meant to try to change your mind. But if you are unsure because of all you’ve been hearing, I hope this article can be part of helping you explore this complex issue. I don’t claim to have all the answers. None of us does. I don’t like to force feed my opinion to anyone, especially because I am abundantly aware that I don’t see things perfectly.
But there are some things I wish were different about how this conversation—about Covid, about vaccines—were happening.
And so, I give you my opinion that way. As Things I Wish. You have every right to your own opinion and you certainly have every right to make your own decisions on these issues. But I hope that in forming your opinion, and making your decision, you will make sure you are well-informed, not just reacting in fear to wildly circulating information that may not be true.
Things I Wish:
I wish that the vaccine debate would not be so polarizing. Somehow, it has become an issue where you are either in one camp or the other, and you never stop to listen to the other side and honestly assess whether they are speaking truth. It has simply become a thing where you pick a side and then discard anything the opposition says as false. This is not how truth works.
I wish that we would not live in a world where truth is based on my personal approval of something. If I agree with it, it must be true. If I don’t, it must be a lie. When did that become what truth is about?
I wish that everyone—pro-vaxxers and anti-vaxxers alike—would take the time to listen to the other side. I wish that we would not simply listen to people who support our decisions and never bother to fact-check them. Does intentionally searching for the real facts make things messy? Undoubtedly. But the pursuit of truth is rarely simple. And wrestling makes us stronger. If we are not brave enough to listen to people who disagree with us and honestly assess what they have to say, is it because we’re afraid they’ll prove us wrong? I said before that the anti-vax camp is not where I find myself. But I believe they are saying what they’re saying for a reason, and I refuse to simply discard what they say because I don’t like it. Their claims deserve the same thoughtful and rigorous verification process as pro-vaccine information.
I wish that we could all admit we are wrong a little more often.
I wish that it would be easier to know who to trust. Is the media twisting things in a certain direction? Of course. That’s what they do, because that’s what all of us as people do, no matter how hard we try to be unbiased. But we cannot forget that anti-vaxxers are doing this as well. However, even misguided or evil people are capable of saying true things. Reading and absorbing with discernment means we examine truth on its own merit, not blindly accepting it or denying it because of who said it.
I wish that there would not be so much mistrust surrounding the scientific and medical community. This feels incredibly unfair to me. They have put in the work to become more knowledgeable about something than the rest of us, and that should not be discarded as insignificant. God has designed our bodies to be marvelously complex. Doctors and scientists spend years of their lives studying it inside and out, and they still don’t understand it fully. Not even close. But I hope we can recognize the pride of someone who has not put in that kind of time and effort thinking that they know more than the person who has.
I wish that we would remember that humans are biased and fallible. We always have been, and we always will be. The scientific community recognizes this and has many checks and balances in place to ensure that bias and fallibility do not taint the facts. Scientific findings are closely monitored, peer reviewed, and examined for bias or conflict of interest.
I wish that all of the anti-vaxxers on the internet who have “done their research” would have these same checks and balances in place. The fact that they do not does not automatically mean the are wrong, but it does make them inherently less trustworthy. Not because of who they are as a person, but because of who all humans are as fallible by nature.
I wish that Big Pharma would not have done things in the past that make them harder to trust in the present. I wish that they would not have so much control, and that they would not be so dominated by greed.
I wish that there would not still be questions floating around about whether or not the Covid vaccines work. There are so many real-world examples that prove they do. For example, Israel, who vaccinated their population at a faster rate than any other country, now has had far fewer cases over the past month than they have at any point since the pandemic started. Their hospitalizations and deaths have plummeted unquestionably as well. (1) A study in Cleveland showed that over 99% of their hospitalized patients since January were not vaccinated. Only 0.25% of their Covid patients were fully vaccinated. (2) This, too, is overwhelming evidence that vaccines do, in fact, make a difference.
I wish that there would not be this idea circulating that this pandemic will just go away without a vaccine if we all go back to normal. Pandemics don’t just end on their own, not without incredible loss of life. I’ve heard a lot of people bemoaning the loss of liberty and the mental health crisis that lockdowns have caused. Those are real things, and of course, concerning. But I haven’t heard the Anabaptist community mourning the loss of precious human life in the past year. (I don’t want to say Christian community here because I don’t know how the broader Christian community has responded to all of this. I hope they’ve done better as a whole than we as Mennonites have). When did human life lose its sanctity in our minds? If you think that this pandemic hasn’t killed many people, then you are incredibly privileged. You are clearly not weeping in front of a mass grave in Brazil, watching your loved one die outside of an overflowing hospital in India, or one of the more than 43,000 children in the United States who has lost a parent to Covid. (3) I wish I would hear less talk about how “the Covid deaths are being falsely recorded” and more sympathy and support and prayer for the people who have been heartbreakingly affected by the loss of life this pandemic has caused.
I wish that there would not be adverse affects from vaccines. I wish that they could be perfectly, unquestionably safe with absolutely zero risks involved. Unfortunately, they’re not, because nothing in this life is like that. There are risks involved in everything we do. The question is whether the benefit outweighs the risk. I have heard a lot of noise about the side effects of the vaccines. Some are real, some do not merit being concerned about. More on that in the next several points.
I wish that we would remember that correlation doesn’t equal causation. We need to recognize that some people are going to die the day after they get a vaccine because people die every day. And when you’re vaccinating high percentages of the population, it is inevitable that some people are going to die of heart attacks or seizures or brain aneurysms shortly after they are vaccinated. This does not mean the vaccine caused it, and it is both unfair and unreasonable to assume that it did.
I wish that we would remember that misinformation and rumours spread more quickly than truth. One example is this fear-driven narrative of “vaccine shedding,” the belief that healthy people can somehow get sick from recently vaccinated people “shedding” the virus. Turns out it’s a flat-out lie because it’s completely physically and scientifically impossible for that to happen with a vaccine that contains no live virus. And yet, the rumour is circulating wildly, because quite honestly, the science behind it is too complex for most of us to readily understand and be able to debunk on our own. (4)
I wish that there would not be distrust percolating that the experts are hiding adverse vaccine reactions from the public. That there’s widespread infertility or seizures or miscarriage happening, and “they” just don’t want you to know about it. Here’s something comforting: when there seemed to be a link between Johnson & Johnson and blood clots, they paused giving the vaccine until they could investigate further. The number of people who had a blood clot? Six. Six people. That was all it took, and they shut down the whole vaccine for a while. A similarly low rate of occurrence also shut down the AstraZeneca vaccine in Canada recently. Based on those responses, I don’t think its reasonable to believe that other adverse effects are happening in a widespread way and just being covered up somehow. Also, if you don’t trust the goodness of the medical and pharmaceutical community, then trust in their badness. People are greedy and selfish and will do things for their own means. And while many are using that as a reason to mistrust the vaccines, you could also look at it this way: if there were reasonable evidence that, say, Moderna vaccines were causing infertility, you’d better believe that the other pharmaceutical companies would be making it known. It would mean more money for them.
I wish that I would hear people being more truthful about the actual effects of Covid and the relatively minor effects of the vaccine. Did you know that many people who have had Covid are still dealing with ongoing health issues related to the virus? It’s called “long Covid,” and it’s a real thing. (5) One UK study did MRI scans of people who had had Covid a few months prior and were still experiencing symptomatic issues. Only 18% of the participants had been hospitalized from Covid, so the majority were not even severe cases. They examined each participant’s lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, and spleen and found that an alarming 70% had mild organ impairment that could be reasonably linked to their Covid infection. (6) On the other hand, there is no evidence to support that vaccines cause long term organ damage.
On a related note, I wish that when people talk about the risks of blood clots from the J&J vaccine, they would mention that the chances are 1 in 1,000,000. (7) But on the other hand, your chances of getting a blood clot if you get a mild case of Covid are 1 in 100, and rise to 1 in 20 if you are hospitalized with Covid. (8) Based on these two pieces of data, and many others not mentioned here, if getting Covid doesn’t scare you, then getting the vaccine definitely shouldn’t scare you.
I wish that everyone would know that statistically, you’re much more likely to die in a car accident, be killed by a bee sting, cut off a body part in a chainsaw accident, be knocked down by falling furniture, or experience a toilet-related injury than you are to have a life-threatening reaction to either of the mRNA vaccines. (9,10) There are risks in everything we do, but when the risks are small enough, we still get in our cars, let bees buzz past us, use chain saws, walk past furniture, and use toilets. So it goes to follow that we can also get vaccines.
I wish that there wouldn’t be such a large population of people saying “I’ll only get vaccinated if I have to for some reason.” If everyone thinks like this, or even if half of the population would think like this, we will spend more and more months living the nightmare of lockdowns that the last year has been. The way to stop a serious virus is to be vaccinated against it. The more unvaccinated people there are, the more cases and hospitalizations there are, and the longer it takes for life to get back to normal. It’s that simple.
I wish that it wouldn’t be true that viruses mutate the longer they exist. This is one that has literally kept me up at night. If people don’t get vaccinated, the chances become that much higher of the virus mutating into something that the current vaccines can’t protect against. And then we will literally start this pandemic all over again. Everyone has a part to play to make sure that doesn’t happen.
I wish that I would not hear Christians say, “I’ll let everyone else get vaccinated first to make sure it’s okay.” Is this not a selfish approach, something that we as believers are explicitly told not to be? Jesus did not say, “Let others do unto you and don’t bother doing the same to them.”
I wish that we could all listen to each other a little more without getting angry or defensive. We will never learn the richness of broader perspectives and depth of conviction this way. I have been humbled by my own lack of openness in the past year.
There is a lot more that I wish, but one can only wish so many things in one blog post.
I’m not here to tell you what to do. I’m definitely not here to pick a fight. But I strongly believe that these are some parts of the story that need to be talked about. And so I talked about them.
If you’re interested, here are a few fabulous resources to help you explore these issues further.
And not in the cozy-rainy-day-with-blankets-and-a-good-book-by-the-fire-and-endless-mugs-of-tea kind of way.
In the everything-feels-bleak-and-cold-and-dark-and-the-sun-will-probably-never-shine-again sort of way.
And now, I’ve used up my yearly allotment of hyphens. You could say that my hopes have been dashed.
A year ago, we were a little over a month into this pandemic, and I had so much energy to do well with it. The evenings and weekends at home felt luxurious. The slower pace of life was refreshing and desperately needed. Distance learning, while not enjoyable, was a new challenge—a new way to cultivate my creativity and hone my teaching skills. I had clear and strong convictions about where I stood in regards to what our response to all of this should look like.
But it’s been a year. A year of three different lockdowns. Also that many Covid tests and accompanying weeks of self-isolation. And let me tell you, our apartment is tiny and I love that, but when you literally can’t leave it for days or weeks on end, tiny isn’t an asset anymore. It’s been a year of separation from people we love. It’s been a year of missing out on so many things.
There have been big losses, like not seeing Travis’s family for sixteen months. Do you know how much changes in a family in sixteen months? Two whole new humans have joined the family. Three, if you count the fiancé of his twin sister who we’ve only really met in video chats. We’ve missed all of the family pizza suppers and birthday parties and holiday traditions and laughter and conversations and applesauce-making days and tree-cutting endeavors and new houses and entire stages of our nieces’ and nephew’s lives.
And then there are the countless little losses, so normal by now that I’ve stopped feeling the sting of them and just gotten numb instead. There have been so few Sunday dinners with friends, game nights, coffee shop dates, meals in restaurants, prayer in groups, or meanders through the mall. There have been no road trips, concerts or plays, or Sunday school discussions. There have been so few hugs. There has been so little normal.
And don’t even get me started on teaching during a pandemic. We’ve been jerked in and out of the classroom so many times that we can never actually hit a good rhythm before everything changes again, usually with very little warning. When we’re at school, the protocols become second nature but never stop carrying an undercurrent of exhaustion. We sanitize our hands and keep our social distance and wear masks. I teach through my mask, and I try to make my eyes and eyebrows as expressive as they can possibly be, because facial expression is key to good communication and suddenly half of my face is no longer a viable option. I struggle to find other ways of moment-by-moment assessing my students’ understanding because I can no longer rely on their faces to tell me if they’re understanding things or not. When students get lazy or forgetful or apathetic in their mask-wearing, I have to be the mask police, and I hate it.
But all of that is oh, so preferable to the alternative. Distance learning is a great big vacuum that sucks all the joy and life out of teaching. I am not a teacher because I love the sound of my own voice, writing instructions, making worksheets, or grading papers. I am a teacher because I love making learning come alive for my students and seeing their eyes shine with new understanding. I am a teacher because I love this beautiful opportunity I get to know and love these kids and to hopefully speak words of life and light into their hearts. I am a teacher because I care about what kind of people the next generation will be. I am a teacher because teaching a class when my kids are engaged and excited about learning is one of my favourite things in the whole world.
Want to guess which of those things happen a lot during distance learning, and which ones don’t?
The longer all of this goes on, the harder it is to keep my perspective. And the easier it is to lose sight of anything that resembles thriving, or positivity, or hope.
Yes, there’s a lot of grey these days.
But there’s also forsythia.
Hands down, my favourite thing about spring. And especially this spring, those pops of yellow have been bringing me so much life and joy. And while I know logically that every forsythia bloom I see was not placed there just for me, they still feel like a hug from God. A reminder, even if just for a moment, that no matter how grey life feels right now, there are still brilliant pops of yellow if I keep my eyes open.
There’s the beautiful book of prayers that a friend sent just in time for my birthday, whose pages have given me ways to talk to God when I can’t find words myself.
There’s the gradual awakening of spring that reminds me that change and new life are possible, even when they come slowly.
There’s the student who sent me the sweetest apology email after we worked through the consequences of some pretty disappointing choices he made. It reminded me that there is still growth and development happening in these children I love, even though I don’t get to witness it firsthand every day.
There is the walk with a friend that is so soul-filling that even when we get rained and hailed on, I hardly notice.
There’s the moments of shared laughter with my sweet husband, and the continuing delight in each other even though we’ve spent so much time together in the past year that statistically, we should probably be getting tired of each other by now.
There is the Snapchat conversation with a friend that meets me in a discouraged moment and reminds me of who I want to be.
I have even learned to be grateful for the tears that flow so easily these days over the tiniest of things. After so many months of feeling numb, it is a gift to feel again.
And what I’m learning these days is that the grey days and the forsythia can co-exist in my life, and I don’t need to stop looking at one in order to see the other. They don’t cancel each other out. But nor do they need to deny the other’s existence.
Life can hold both, all at the same time.
I painted this the other day to remind myself of this truth. I’m not a watercolour artist. This looks highly inferior to the tutorial that I followed. And when I look at it, I see all of the imperfections before I start to glimpse any beauty.
But I love it, because it’s reminding me of a truth that I know in my head, but am slowly learning to feel in my heart.
Life can be full of imperfections and still be beautiful.
Every year, I go to hear Handel’s Messiah. It just doesn’t feel like Christmas if I don’t.
And every year, it is meaningful to me in new ways.
And this year was the most meaningful experience I’ve ever had.
I don’t know why, exactly. Perhaps it was because I was in the oh-so-beautiful Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh. Perhaps it was the artful performance, complete with dramatic dynamics that took my breath away. Perhaps it was the fact that I was surrounded by people who I love so very much, people who have laughed and cried and learned with me over the past year and a half, people who have been Jesus’s hands and feet and mouth to me. Perhaps it was the way the Scriptures being sung spoke so directly to things I’ve been learning, thinking, and processing during my time at Faith Builders.
Whatever the reason, I spent the evening smiling so hard that my face got tired. Except for the times when I cried.
And the evening can be summed up in two words: profound worship.
This is my paltry, insufficient response to what happened that night.
From the first movement of the conductor’s hand,
The sounds of worship flow like waves,
Crashing through the room,
Crashing over me.
Just the very first few notes
Fan my internal embers of worship
Into flames of praise.
Each phrase a feeling that
Cuts the clamour and
Speaks to my soul.
Violins that cry and rejoice and dance and lament.
Trumpets that herald in glorious proclamation.
Double basses that ground everything in achingly deep tones.
Melodies that soar above the clouds,
Across space,
Beyond time.
Harmonies that weave together,
Intertwining moments past and moments to come.
And truth, beauty, and goodness are braided together
To create a strand of who He is.
These instruments,
These voices,
They tell a story.
They tell the desperation of a world awaiting His coming.
They tell the wonder of His Incarnation.
They tell the ache of His suffering.
They tell the sting of His death,
But oh, death, where is your sting?
For death has been swallowed up in His jubilant
Victory.
Victory!
Victory
That is worthy of all the hallelujahs that hearts and voices and fingers and strings can produce.
And the music sweeps through my heart
In a channel of praise
That swells as it flows and my worship grows.
And every little note trips along with the others
To mount to the very heights that my heart can contain…
And it’s only a tiny, tiny taste of what heaven will be.
It’s the story of an all-powerful God speaking worlds into existence and breathing out galaxies, then getting His hands dirty to create You and I.
It’s the story of the God who has everything and is everything deciding that this world wasn’t complete until it had humans in it, too.
It’s the story of how willing humanity is to reach for good, wish for better, but ignore the best.
It’s the story of God holding out the greatest gift and being rejected.
It’s the story of Beauty taking on our ugliness.
It’s the story of the Giver of the breath of life breathing His last.
It’s the story of how we turn ourselves away from the force of His love, but He relentlessly pursues us.
It’s a story of Him being rejected, but giving anyways. Of Him being betrayed, but staying faithful. Of Him being hated, but always loving.
A story of beauty, penned by every rustling leaf, crashing wave, glorious sunset, diamond night, trickling river, delicate blossom, every piece of creation.
A story of grace that is dumped, not dripped, into the parched and thirsty pieces of our soul.
A story of peace that whispers more loudly than the crashing trials and thundering pain.
A story of joy in tears, of hope through darkness, of His Everything filling our nothing.
It’s a story of transformation, of Him making new, of self being lost and Christ being found.
A story of us being able to seek and seek yet never plunge to the deepest depths of who He is.
It’s a story of unexpected twists and turns, yet a guiding hand led us the whole way.
It’s a story with joy on every page, hope in every paragraph, grace in every sentence, love in every word.
It’s a story that has been written since the beginning of time, and will continue to be written after time ceases to exist.
It’s a story with you and me as minor characters, and Jesus as the all-important protagonist.
I used to think of myself as a poet. Back when I was twelve and thirteen and fourteen and poems were all I wrote.
Now, not so much.
Except for every once in a while, when the words inside of me start to arrange themselves in poem format.
This past week at school, we had Poetry Appreciation Week. I started the week by asking my students about their perceptions and opinions of poetry, most of which were not overly favorable. Then, I proceeded to try to smash all of those ideas and help them shape new ones.
I think I was overall successful this year. We laughed, we were serious, and some of them even felt a funny thing happen in their stomach when I read them the “punch in the gut” poem. (Seriously, if you want to spend approximately one minute of your life that you will not regret, look up “Mid Term Break” by Seamus Heaney. The first time I read this poem, I read the last line and literally felt as if I had been punched in the gut.)
On the first day I had asked them to write a number from 1-10 rating their past experiences with poetry. The best moment for me was when I was halfway through reading a poem and I saw one of my students reach into his desk for his pencil, scribble out the 3 he had written, and write a 10 beside it. #success
Anyways, at the end of the week, I always ask them to write a poem of their own. And I thought I should be a good example to them, and write one too. So here is mine, which is nowhere near Sarah Kay quality or anything. But it was fun to write.
The Unchosen
The humans have this phrase they like to say,
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
They say it,
But they don’t believe it.
Trust me, I know.
I am a book that is judged by my cover.
Even I can admit that I don’t look like much.
My cover is plain,
Unassuming.
I’m not as flashy as the other books on the shelf.
It’s easy to overlook me.
There are no golden medals on my front cover,
No brilliant graphic design,
No vibrant colours to catch the eye.
I look rather boring, I know.
Every once in a while,
A hand will grasp my spine and pull me free from my long-held prison.
And every time,
Like the fool I am,
I swell with so much excitement that my bindings nearly burst.
My words hum in frenzied delight
As every page of me longs to be read.
And every time,
Like the fools they are,
They find my appearance too drab to rouse their curiosity.
I get put back.
And every part of me shrivels a little more.
I have come to the conclusion that as much as it hurts to be ignored,
It hurts infinitely more to be chosen, then rejected.
One day,
Another book was returned to the shelf beside me
After a week of being read by what we call an abusive reader.
It was one of those crack-the-spine,
Curl-the-cover
Fold-the-page-to-mark-his-spot readers.
I listened for hours as the book complained of the atrocities and hardships he faced
Until his eyes finally scanned over my smooth cover and crease-free pages.
He said, “Well, I guess you just wouldn’t understand.”
And he’s right, I don’t.
Just like he will never understand how much it hurts to never get a single wrinkle.
I have so much to offer,
If only anyone would care enough to receive it.
I am full of adventures that no one ever takes,
Sprinkled with jokes that never get laughed at,
Brimming with lessons that nobody learns,
Offering wisdom that nobody gains.
People settle for less because it looks like more
And never bother to wonder what they might be missing out on.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” they say.
I wish they would realize that it’s not enough to say it.
Life 101 