Miss You Most

I miss you most in the evening. I miss the routine of taking you out at night for one last pee, shivering in the cold, peering through the dark, watching for skunks as you take your sweet time finding the right spot. I miss having to put up the baby gates to keep you out of the living room. I miss getting your Kong and filling it, and watching you dash to your bed, eager, anticipating. One last pat as you took your Kong, and and then I headed upstairs to the contented sounds of you working out the contents of the Kong. I miss you most in the evening.

I miss you most as I am falling asleep, as my mind, in an unguarded moment, slams against the reality that you are no longer here, as I see your head drooping over the vet's arm as she helped to lift you out of the car, hanging in death in a way it never ever hung in life. I miss you most as I am falling asleep.

I miss you most in the morning when I come downstairs, and you are not there at the bottom of the stairs to greet me. There is no joyful reunion, no happy dance, no leaning up against me for your morning pet, just a breakfast I am not particularly hungry to eat, a breakfast I force myself to eat because breakfast had rituals that involved you. My kefir lasts longer because you are not there to share it. When I take out the blueberries, you're not there to ask for one. You don't come running when my spoon scrapes on the bottom of the yogurt container. It makes me not want to eat blueberries and yogurt. I miss you most in the morning.

I miss you most when I sit down on the couch to put on my boots, and you don't come running to bury your head in my lap so I can scratch your ears. I miss the feel of the soft, soft fur on your ears and the top of your head, and the way you burrowed your head in my lap and groaned in pleasure as I rubbed your ears. There are no twirls of anticipation as you pretend to try to catch your tail but are really just so excited at the thought of walks or road trips or barn adventures. Somehow you knew exactly what was coming by the footwear I put on. I miss you most when I am putting on my boots.

I miss you most in the car and I look into the rear view mirror and do not see your ears sticking up above the seat. I drive past the Starbucks and there is no drama. You aren't there to ask for your own puppachino or to flirt with the people working drive-thru. There is no new nose art, and I cannot bear to wash the old art away. I miss you most when I am driving in the car.

I miss you most when I open the cupboard to get a bandaid and see all of your grooming stuff there and realise I will never again have to clip your nails or brush you or clean out your ears or check you for ticks. I will never again have to doctor a hotspot or give you a pill or an allergy shot. I never did get the spot under your ear healed -- there was still a scab on the day we said goodbye. I had wanted it to be healed. Why did I want that spot to be healed? What difference did it make? But I did, and I miss you when I think about never having to care for you again.

I miss you most when I am working or watching tv or reading a book. You aren't there to shove stinky toys in my lap, or to lay your head in my lap and just look up at me. No more stinky toys shoved alluringly at my hands, no more heavy head in my lap, no more long looks of love, no more pats and hugs and nuzzles and leans and licks and the thousand little ways I had daily physical contact with another living being who loved me freely and was loved in return. I miss you most in those quiet in-between moments.

I don't believe you're "in heaven". I don't believe in rainbow bridges. You are not possessor of a soul created in the image of God, and while I believe there will be dogs on the new earth, I don't believe we will have a reunion. It is goodbye, girl. Not just see you later, not until we meet again, but goodbye. The greatest comfort that I can conjure is that your body will break down and nurture the ground of a place you loved. But believing all that doesn't change my grief. It does not negate the tears I shed. I do not love you less or miss you less because I believe you are just dead and not "in a better place". My life is emptier with you not in it. My heart aches so much sometimes I can hardly catch my breath to breathe. No, believing you are just dead does not make my grief less sharp. I am grieving differently because you were a dog and not a human, but it is legitimate and genuine and right and appropriate that I grieve, and it is real grief. You were a constant presence and a companion. You knew my routines and my moods. You watched me always. You brought joy and love and physical contact into my life. You were my dog, and I loved you dearly.

Oh, my little girl, my good girl, I miss you most.

Just a Dog

 Today I said goodbye to my dog. I took her to the farm – a place she loves -- and I had the farm vet euthanise her in the back of my car while I held her in my arms, and then we buried her in a grave I had dug earlier. I did my best to ensure it was the most peaceful and stressless way I could let her go. She was frail. She was losing feeling in her back legs, and she didn’t know where she was putting her feet anymore. She fell a lot, wobbled, couldn’t run, dragged her feet, couldn’t squat properly to go to the bathroom, was becoming incontinent. But her mind was still sharp. She didn’t think anything was wrong with her. She still wanted to play, still wanted to chase the squirrels and bark at the dog next door. She even roused herself from sedation to have one last bark at the farm cats.

 

Euthanasia – good death. It’s a lie, you know. There is no such thing as a good death. Death is horrible, even when it is “just a dog”. She went from a vibrant, muscled, alert creature to a slack and sagging mound of flesh in a matter of moments. Her eyes went from bright golden shoe buttons to clouded opacity in the time it took me to draw a breath. Her great and loving heart stilled under the assault of the drugs in her veins. Death is not good. It is heavy and hideous. Her fur is still soft and her body is still warm but it is so horribly loose. I can hardly lift her, and she flops and slithers where before, even in her weakness, she leaned and loved and held her own weight.

 

Good death. It’s not a good death. It’s just death and I miss her so much I am startled by the hugeness of the hollow in my heart. She’s “supposed” to be just a dog. It isn’t “supposed” to hurt this much. But it does. So much of my daily routine is wound up in caring for her. I don’t even know how to go to bed without the routine of taking her out for one last potty break, making sure the gates are up so she doesn’t sneak into the front rooms at night, getting her Kong and a handful of kibble and the can of dog food from the fridge and preparing her nightly treat. She sits and waits until I give her the spoon to lick off (two pills tucked inside the pasty canned meat she loves), and then runs to her bed and jumps on it, waiting, eager. And now I am to just get up and go to bed? How? And how do I face tomorrow, coming down the stairs, with no dog to greet me at the bottom and lean against me for pats and scratches? I am dreading almost to despair the long months of a lockdown winter without my dog lying on the rug beside me as I work alone from home and getting up every so often to put her great head in my lap and look up at me just because I am there, and she can.

 

Good death? Damn death. Damn this whole horrible, broken, miserable, pandemic-blighted year. Damn the devil who laughs at disease and death, even if it is just the death of a dog.

 

Aye, but isn’t that the crux of it? Because it is all damned, groaning under the agony of the curse, the curse of my sin, our sin, the sin of this broken world. But, for the grace of God, it is all damned, and I am damned with it, and the curse crushes, and when I think about it, it is not anger I feel but deep, deep sorrow, not just for a dog but for the whole of this world crying out for redemption. It is not damnation I desire but redemption, a longing for the curse to be finally broken, for death to be done, for my faith to be made sight. Oh, God, when? How long, O Lord? “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here. O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan’s tyranny; From depths of hell thy people save, and give them victory over the grave. O come, thou Key of David, come and open wide our heavenly home; Make safe the way that leads on high, and close the path to misery.” O come, Emmanuel. Emmanuel, come back!

 

But there is more than brokenness in this world. There is joy and laughter and love. Every good gift is a foretaste of the new heavens and new earth. My dog was a gift. She had a good life. She was larger than life, living with an intensity that sometimes drove me mad but mostly brought me joy because in so many ways, it mirrored my own. She was smart, eager, always ready to play. I could never train her not to eat the toilet paper or to sneak into the rooms she wasn’t allowed to be in or to bark at the dog next door, but she learned to spell r-a-b-b-i-t and to recognise the Starbucks logo without our even trying to teach her. She came with me to the barn every time I went, for years, waiting patiently in the car until it was her turn, then running with abandon through the woods, playing in the puddles, finding the biggest sticks she could carry to take me out at the knees when she ran by at full speed. She went on many, many road trips with my housemate and me, travelling on motorboats, pontoon boats, ferries, busses, and tractor-drawn wagons. She’s been all over southwestern Ontario with us, has been camping and cottaging and hiking. She lived life to the full – no, more than to the full, and when she wasn’t frustrating us, she was making us roar with laughter. If she could leap, she leapt. If she could run, she galloped. If she could dig, she’d dig trenches like the Grand Canyon. If one ball was good, three were better. Everything was over the top. She wrested every drop of joy and love and life out of every day she had, right up to the end. 

 

Good death? Never. Good life? For sure.

 

Maybe she was just a dog, but I miss her.

One Day More

 In the musical Les Miserables, there is a song called "One Day More". (You can hear it here.) The world is on the cusp of change. Every person is affected, some personally, some because they are being swept up in societal unrest. When tomorrow dawns, everything will be different, and no one knows what the sunrise will bring. It is a song of hope and longing, a song of fear and anxiety, a song of anticipation and dread, a song of triumphant resolve and tentative ambivalence. Everyone knows that things are about to change, but no one really knows how. No one knows how those changes will affect them personally. And, in many ways, it seems like an appropriate song for today.

One day more. 

For the past six months, I have been living and working at home. My physical world has become really quite small. I've gone from driving 400 km a week to driving about 40 km a week. My social circle has become even smaller. And that's all about to change. On Monday (ok, so not quite one day more -- more like four days more) I will resume teaching in person. My world will once again expand 100 km down the 401. My circle of contacts will expand from approximately five people to closer to 50 people.

One day more.

For the past 10 years, I have known exactly how to teach. Being in the classroom has always felt comfortable and safe and familiar. I have prided myself on being fairly technically-savvy. My classrooms have always been paperless, or very nearly so. But even so, I'm stepping into a strange new classroom, a classroom with plexiglass and microphones, and students are spread far and wide across a vast, echoing space, and group work and class discussions are a thing of the past, and masks and physical distancing are the new reality. Some of my students will be at tables in front of me, and some of my students will be on screens in front of me.

One day more.

When things shut down back in March, they shut down on a world that I was part of. I was out and about. I rubbed shoulders with people on a daily basis. I knew how to greet people with a handshake or a hug where appropriate. But the world I am about to reenter has changed. Where anxiety and depression were common before, now they are rife. Where stress and impatience and frustration were common before, now they are widespread. Where anger simmered, now it boils. And the world feels a much less kind place now than it did six months ago, not to me personally, but in general. Perhaps all those things were always there, and we just managed to cover them with a sheen of civility. Perhaps the past six months have done nothing but strip away the veneer to show the toxicity that was always there. Still, the world feels like a dangerous and unkind place now. One slip, one wrong word, one perceived wrong word, one thing spoken when someone should have kept silent, or one thing kept silent when the world judges someone should have spoken, and the mob roars in and cancel culture kills another person created in the image of God.

One day more.

I scarcely dare to move.

One day more.

I am filled with hope and longing, fear and axiety, anticipation and dread, triumphant resolve and tentative ambivalence.

One day more.

I'm looking forward to the drive again. I'm looking forward to seeing colleagues and students. I long to be in community again. Even off-the-scale introverts get lonely after a while. I hope my office remembers me. But at the same time, I'm nervous. Will we stay well? Will I stay well? Logically, I tell myself it's not if I get sick but when. After all, we are dealing with a highly-contageous disease for which there is no immunity and no cure. Logically, I tell myself that, regardless, my chances of getting a serious case or dying are very low indeed. I remind myself that every day of mine is in God's hands, and that I am not going to die one second before he calls me home, and if he is calling me home, I'm ready for that. But I do not want to get sick. I don't want my loved ones to get sick. I want to go back. I want to stay at home where I feel safe. I don't want to have to go back into lockdown. I am afraid to come out of lockdown. Hope and longing. Fear and anxiety. Anticipation and dread.

One day more.

I can't wait to get back into the classroom. I can't wait to see my students again, even if it is behind plexiglass and masks. Part of me believes that, regardless of the changes, it will feel more familiar than unfamiliar. I pray that the unfamiliar becomes familiar quickly. I pray that the internet doesn't go down and the projected slides stay up. I want so much for my students who are live-streaming to feel as much part of the community as they possibly can, given the limits of time and space and screens. I want this year to be truly good, not just ok, not just makeshift until we can get back to normal, but a year of excellence. I'm not sure I have the skills necessary to make that happen, but I'm giving it my best shot. Hope and longing. Fear and anxiety. Anticipation and dread.

One day more.

Oh, how I pray that these six months alone have taught me a measure of wisdom and grace, patience and kindness, love and faithfulness more than they have taught me fear and anger and depression. Oh, how I pray I can be a light shining in a world that feels so dark right now. How I pray that I can lean in hard to my faithful Father and lead well. How I pray that my classroom, and our school will be a light that the darkness cannot overcome. I feel so small and insignificant to the task, but then I am small and insignficant to the task. So I pray that in my weakness, God might be strong. Hope and longing. Fear and anxiety. Anticipation and dread.

Tentatitive ambivalence.

But, I pray, mostly triumphant resolve. By God's grace and in his strength alone.

One day more.

Culture Shock in Canada

I recently saw an advertisement for Uber Eats. A bunch of old friends are greeting each other in a gym, but what should be a moment of joy is a pathetic, awkward situation. The people approach each other, hands out as if to shake, a big, hand-slapping arm-shaking kind of shake that happens between good friends who haven't seen each other in a while, the kind of shake that would normally morph into a back-slapping hug. But they suddenly remember that they're not supposed to shake and reach up for a high five, but no, that's not right, either, and suddenly arms and hands are flapping in a chicken dance gone very wrong. Just as it gets beyond awkward to painful, they receive a notification that Uber Eats has arrived. Saved by the notification.

And isn't that being repeated over and over?

I walk out of the house and forget to bring a mask.

I instinctively go to the empty cashier at the grocery store only to remember that I need to join the line that stretches all the way to the freezer section and wait to be called to a cashier. I duck my head and am glad my mask hides the rising colour in my face as I face the glares of those already standing in line. I didn't mean to cut in front. I just forgot.

I see a dear friend and stand at a distance, smiling awkwardly, waving awkwardly. I feel like a toddler. It's not good enough. It's not near enough. But near enough is too near, and I don't know what else to do. No one does.

I get too close to someone in line. He glares. He gets too close to me. I glare. We're afraid. We're not meaning to get too close, but our social cues, our social norms are so ingrained that we forget. I'm so busy thinking about whether or not I have everything on my list that in that split second, I forget about the red circles on the floor. He is so busy thinking about the circles on the floor that he gets home and discovers that he's forgotten the very thing he went to the grocery store for in the first place.

Nothing feels right. Nothing feels the same. Faux pas await around every corner.

It's like when I was in Indonesia, trying to remember to use only my right hand for basically everything. Hand money to clerk with right hand. Take bag with right hand. Pass bag to left hand. Accept change with right hand. Left hand bad. Left hand useless. Pretend you do not have a left hand. But inevitably, I'd forget. I'd pass the money with my right hand and reach out my left to take the bag, only to have the clerk visibly recoil. I'd quickly snatch back my wicked left hand, and suddenly money and bag were falling all over the place as I tried to give money and take the bag and accept change all with one hand simultaneously. It's one small example of a thousand thousand ways I was reminded on a daily basis that nothing was the same anymore, that everything I thought I knew about how to interact with other people had gone out the window.

I read an article that talks about this very thing. The author argues that dealing with COVID and dealing with culture shock feel the same to the brain. I'd go a step further. I think that COVID has so altered the way we relate to each other that what we are experiencing really IS culture shock.

Our culture is no longer the same. The deep, unwritten rules about how we relate to other people have been changed. From how we greet each other to how we queue up at the grocery store to how big our personal bubbles are have all changed. The facial expressions and body language we use to "read" each other are altered, changed because we are hidden behind masks. I can no longer easily tell if you are friend or foe, happy or sad, angry or at peace. Even our voices are changed, muffled behind masks, diluted by distance, raised for the simplest of reasons -- we cannot hear each other. Pardon? Pardon? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. We may all be speaking the same language, but still we cannot understand, and so, just as we do when trying to learn a new language, we speak louder, slower, as though the other person is stupid and hard of hearing, as though my own tongue is too thick and stupid to make the proper sounds. And we are frustrated because we don't understand the rules and we feel the fool and no one likes feeling the fool.

And the problem is that no one understands the new culture. At least when I was in Indonesia, the Indonesians knew how their culture worked. I could watch and observe and hopefully not do anything too stupid or insensitive. At a fancy dinner with a dozen pieces of cutlery, I can at least watch to see what other people do. But here? Now? No one knows how the rules work anymore. No one even knows what the rules are. We know the don'ts. Don't shake hands. Don't hug. Don't get too close. Don't go into stores without a mask. But we don't know what to do in lieu. How do I greet you when I can't get too close, can't hug, can't shake hands, and Uber Eats isn't there to save me, but I'm really glad to see you and really want you to know that? How do I assure you that I see you, I hear you, and I care, when I can't see you or hear you or touch you, but I still care? How do I celebrate when potlucks are out of bounds, or grieve when there can't be a funeral, or worship when I can't sing? How do I teach behind plexiglass to masked faces scattered across a huge room? How do I build community when all the rules have broken down community and there are no new rules yet for how to build it again?

I don't have answers, just observations. Maybe observing this helps me to be kinder to myself, more patient with myself when I feel out of sorts, more willing to stop and rest when I feel exhausted, more able to admit that there are things that have to go because simply living is taking way more energy than it used to. Maybe it helps just to understand why I feel so awkward and thickheaded and homesick, why the longing for the way things used to be can feel at times so overwhelming. I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that expats adjust to new cultures all the time. Although I'm not sure even expats have ever found themselves in a situation where they have to basically invent a whole new culture.

And maybe this also helps to explain the general unrest in the world. If all the old "rules" have been thrown out, then who gets to decide what the new "rules" are? It seems that in the void of the old rules, there is a rush for warring factions to create the new rules. After all, one might argue, if we're going to throw out handshakes and hugs, then we might as well throw out democracy and economic systems and free enterprise and history and freedom of speech and religion and start completely from scratch.

I don't have answers, just observations. But it has been pressing on me more and more that all of this reveals one thing to me: I am not a citizen of this country. The culture in which I found myself so comfortable was never my culture in the first place.

And maybe, just maybe, the culture of the Kingdom to which I do belong has never changed.

And that is where I must look to find answers.

On the Days When I'm Not Ok

 I'm not ok today.

I'm tired -- no, exhausted. I'm frustrated and weary and fed up. Everything feels too complicated, too overwhelming, too much hard work and not enough fun. I want to run away, but there's nowhere to run to because the cause of my weariness is everywhere. There's no one to talk to because everyone is dealing with the same thing. There is no "dumping out", no relieving the burden with someone who is further away from the centre of the crisis than I am because everyone is stuck in the same crisis. "We're all in this together" isn't a rallying cry; it's more like the cries of the hundreds of freezing, drowning souls who were in the icy waters of the North Atlantic as the Titanic sank. "We're all in this together" isn't very comforting when everyone is drowning.

And, frankly, I don't care that we're all in this together. Knowing that the entire world is suffering doesn't make my suffering go away. Knowing that everyone is struggling to figure out how to navigate these wretched horrible days doesn't make my struggle any less. Knowing, even, that I might have it better than some, or even most, doesn't make my hurt disappear.

But somehow, I'm supposed to be ok. Because we're all in this together. Everyone is struggling. It's hard for us all. People are counting on you. You're a leader. The implication is clear: you don't get to be "not ok". And that makes me feel even worse. I have been trying valiantly to be ok, to approach the increased workload with positivity, to try to make the best of a bad situation, to try to find creative ways around the mounting problems that COVID has brought. But it never ends. Day after day after day. New problems. More work. More bad news. More roadblocks and changes. But don't be sad, because we're all in it together. Don't complain because it could be so much worse. I feel like I'm conducting an experiment on myself to see how long I can go on like this without going completely barking mad. The tears, the frustration, the sadness are a great lump in my throat.

I'm not ok. I'm sad and lonely and isolated. It's been weeks upon weeks upon months since I've had any physical contact with another human being on anywhere close to a regular basis. It's been months since I've been able to sing and worship with my brothers and sisters in Christ. It's been forever since I've been able to sit down and talk with friends without having to shout across a 6' gap, to see colleagues, even to see human faces. Oh, I know, my lot is common to humanity right now. But being not unique does not make me feel better. I'm still sad.

I'm not ok today. I'm really not ok.

Oh, now you sound depressed. 

So I need to pretend to be ok now to prove to everyone that I'm not depressed. Because if I dare to say that I'm struggling, it must of course mean that I'm depressed. How about we're in the middle of a blasted pandemic and a lot of life really sucks and things aren't much fun and everything is harder and saying so doesn't make me depressed, it just means that I'm facing the truth? And how about facing the truth and feeling sad about it doesn't make me depressed, it just makes me human? I hate this. I hate it. I hate that everything is harder and nothing is as much fun and everywhere I turn, I have reminders of COVID shoved down my throat (or up my nose). It sucks. Can you honestly say it doesn't? Most days, I can say that it sucks and I can carry on.

But not today.

Wow, where is your faith, girl? You call yourself a Christian? How can you be so pessimistic and down and cynical and angry? You even sound like you've got some swears in there you want to let loose.

Yup, yup, I do. Because I actually think it's pretty godly to be angry and sad about a world that is so very far removed from what God created it to be, so ravaged by sin and death and all that is evil. Because I think that my dear, dear Father knows exactly how I feel anyway and pretending that I'm not feeling this way only distances me from him, and I might as well just tell him how I'm feeling. You know what? He's not going to say to me, "Everyone feels that way right now." Because he doesn't feel that way. He's not overwhelmed by the problems he's facing. He's not lonely and isolated. He's not weary and frustrated and ready to throw in the towel. He is, literally, the only One who is not struggling right now. He is the only one who can pour into me instead of draining me. So why would I not tell him? Why would I not fall flat on my face and say, "I'm not ok today"?

But you know what he does say? He says to me, "We're in this together." Not drowning together like the poor steerage passengers in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. Not saved together like some of the rich folk floating in the boats on the North Atlantic. Not like that at all. When my Father says to me, "We're in this together," he is telling me that he's the life preserver keeping me afloat. The wetsuit that will keep me from hypothermia. He's there to save, powerful, able, not affected by the waves and the cold but in them with me and able to save me from them.

Where is my faith? It is in my cry.

I'm not ok today.

Facing Mortality

On July 5, many years ago, my family found out there was something critically wrong with my father. He was in acute kidney failure. It was my birthday, and we sat in a restaurant (Mother's Pizza -- back in the day when it still existed) and pretended to celebrate, but really, acute kidney failure was at the front and centre of all our minds. How could it not be? A few days later we found out it was cancer: multiple myeloma, to be exact. He was given 6-18 months to live. There was no cure.

On July 5, this year, I turned the same age that my father was when he was diagnosed. Ironically, I have been reading a book called Rejoicing in Lament, by Todd Billings. (It is excellent; you should read it.) Billings was diagnosed with — you guessed it — multiple myeloma. The life expectancy is far longer, but it is still an incurable cancer. And so Billings and his loved ones are facing mortality, even as my family had to do, and I am reading about his journey on the anniversary of the same day we began my father's journey, at the same age that my father was.

It has been sobering — remembering those days so long ago, knowing that I am now the same age that he was, all whilst being in the middle of a pandemic.

Because, you see, the declaration of a pandemic is, in many ways, similar to a diagnosis of cancer, except that it is much wider-spread.

There is the same staggering sense of disbelief. It can't really be happening. Pandemics, and cancer, are things that happen to other people. In the movies. They are the sort of "oh-the-poor-soul-thank-God-it's-not-me" happenings of life until suddenly it IS me, and nothing makes sense anymore. I wake up and think that it must all be a bad dream only to realise again and again that it's not a dream and it is still bad.

There is the same sudden thrust into an unknown world of medical terminology. We are scrambling to make sense of the inscrutable. We are learning new vocabularies -- epidemiology, R0, antibodies, T-cells. We are memorising long lists of strange symptoms and examining ourselves for them daily (hourly?) Every twinge, every ache, every drop of sweat, every tickle in the throat becomes cause for alarm.  We have become acutely aware of all our internal workings.

There is the same waiting game. We watch the numbers -- are they going up? Are they going down? Is what we're doing working? When the numbers go in the right direction, hope soars. When they don't, hope plummets. And we watch. And we wait. And we hope and we pray and watch and wait and hope and pray some more. Our lives revolve around medical updates and numbers.

There is the same effort to grasp at normalcy, to find something, anything that isn't touched by the new reality, the "new normal" that is, in fact, so far from normal it's almost a joke to call it any kind of normal, even a new one.  But it doesn't work that way. Cancer and pandemics destroy normal. They affect how we feel and how we look (chemo head and pandemic hair might be opposite ends of the spectrum, but they have the same effect). They affect what we can do. They blast routine into smithereens. We slowly become aware that more and more of life is affected by this intruder, be it cancer or COVID -- both are thieves of "normal". And it is hard to not resent it. Everyone has a breaking point, a point at which he or she stops accepting what the thief is stealing and becomes angry and tries to fight back. Maybe it is the cancer patient shaving her hair before the chemo causes it to fall out. Maybe it is my father insisting that he is going to have a Blooming Onion at the Rockton Fair just three weeks before he died because, blast it all, he liked them. Maybe it is the person refusing to wear a mask in indoor public places, and becoming angry about it when challenged. It is useless, of course, fighting back, but oh, how we long for a return to normalcy, the way life was "before".

But mostly, there is the same confrontation with my own mortality. We could die. I could die. I remember, very shortly after my father was diagnosed, driving somewhere and becoming almost paralysed with a fear that I was going to crash my car and die in that moment. I tried to settle myself by telling myself something like this: Don't be so ridiculous! That's not going to happen! That kind of thing only happens to other people. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind when another one rose up: That's what you thought about cancer, too, and look how that turned out. It was the first time in my young life that I was confronted in a visceral way with my own mortality -- I could die. In fact, I was absolutely going to die, if not in the car that day, then some day.

We spend a great deal of our time pretending we are not going to die. Our culture tells us that talking about death is "morbid", that is, that it shows an unhealthy or abnormal interest in disturbing or unpleasant topics. So I acknowledge my mortality academically -- I don’t truly think that I or my loved ones are going to live forever -- but at an emotional level, I live as though we will. And then along comes cancer. Or COVID. And suddenly, the reality of our mortality slaps me across the face like a stunning blow. I could die. This could kill me. I obsess over "mortality rates", attempting to determine just how likely it is that I could die.  I rage against this thing that demonstrates to me just how mortal I really am. How very human and fragile we are. Our mortality is no longer an academic exercise but an emotional reality.  If cancer, or COVID, teaches me anything, it is that I and our loved ones could die -- at any moment.

So, here I am, same age, same date, reading about the same disease, and it all feels very, very familiar. 

Grief. Oh, it’s not always the gut-stabbing, breath-catching, heart-stopping grief that is so easy to diagnose as grief. It’s often the wistful longing for normal, the deep-sighing, teeth-gritting, just-keeping-on kind of grief that can disguise itself as weariness, disinterest, lack of motivation, or even anger. Everything feels harder. Everything feels covered with a layer of dust. It’s like looking out at a world of colour through dirty glasses, so that it’s all smudged and misty, even in the most dazzling sunshine. Grief because death hurts. Losing a loved one causes heart-stopping pain. Just the fear of losing a loved one brings its own exquisite ache. My heart flinches from it the way my hand flinches from a hot stove.

But the truth is that part of my grief arises because this season so sharply reminds me that I am not God. Cancer and COVID are quick to show me just how much “not God” I am when I am tempted to put myself on the throne as I build my kingdom of me with all MY hopes and MY dreams and MY plans. It is a death that needs to happen, just as cancer cells need to die. But the cure is hard. My sinful self-glorification must die, but The death of the sinful nature is still death. It still hurts. This season hurts. 

My mortality was never meant to prompt only academic acquiescence.  I am a finite, fragile, fallen human being, here today and gone tomorrow. Soap bubbles. I am not God. On this side of Christ's return, I am mortal. And I am called to live that way every single day, not just when I am handed diagnoses of cancer or COVID. Every breath I breathe is a gift from God. Every heartbeat happens because he says to my heart, "Do it again. And again. And again." My life, my every breath, my heartbeat is in his hands.  There is peace in knowing that. It allows me to grieve fully without despair.

So I am grieving.  It is sometimes hard to find the balance between living as though death won’t happen and living in fear of death. I am learning again to love as though I’m going to live forever, and to forgive as though I’m going to die today. I get there, day by day, as I open my eyes up to discover that I’m still living in a COVID world, that life still looks grey and dusty, but that a new day has dawned and God says to me, “Another day! Do it again!”

“So teach us to number our days

That we may get a heart of wisdom.”

— Psalm 90:12

Weeping over Alliums

I have discovered a love for gardening. Over the last number of years, I have been blessed to have the opportunity to play in the dirt, and I have been putting in raised beds, planting plants, pruning trees and bushes, and so on. Some things have been a success -- the raised beds I put in last year grew several meals of delicious fresh peas and beans, as well as loads of lettuce. Some things have gone fairly well -- the carrots and beets were small but delicious. Some things have been an unmitigated disaster. I did not harvest a single pepper off of nine plants -- they grew fruit but never ripened, and the squirrels stole almost all of the few heritage-variety tomatoes before I could get to them.

I really have no clue what I'm doing. I basically bung a plant in the ground and watch what happens. I've discovered that you really can kill forsythia by pruning it back too hard. Then again, maybe it was already dying; it hadn't flowered for years. Full sun apparently means more than four hours a day.  Clay is hard work. So is shade. And so is a yard prone to flooding after heavy rain.

And "deer and rabbit resistant" is a lie.

Or maybe it was squirrels.

Last fall, I planted 25 allium bulbs, and 25 camassia bulbs. "Attracts bees", they said. "Deer and rabbit resistant," they said. Heaven knows that's critical in our yard, where three or four rabbits can be seen frolicking about on any given evening, and everyone knows that where there are three or four, there are actually dozens.

They came up with a flourish this spring. All of them. Within days, the rabbits were eating at the new leaves of the camassias. They left the alliums alone -- of course they did. Alliums are of the onion family and taste and smell distinctly like their more bulbous cousins. But apparently the camassias were fine eating. So, I cut the bottoms out of flower pots and yogurt containers, and surrounded each emerging shoot with a protective cone. When the plants were a bit bigger, I figured they'd be ok on their own.

It worked. And so my camassias and alliums grew and thrived and send up a host of promising buds. I had visions of a sea of purple pompoms and blue spires. (Ok, probably a sea was overly optimistic. More like a shallow pond. But still. And the best part of alliums, at least, is that they readily self-seed, and so I knew that next year, I'd have a lake's worth of purple pompoms.)

And then it happened. I woke up one Sunday morning and took the dog out and discovered that of my 25 beautiful alliums, 18 of them had been beheaded and the foliage trampled. The buds lay scattered about my garden, snapped off and discarded.

By 9:00 that evening, every other allium had met the same fate.

I stood in my back garden and bawled my eyes out.

I literally cried myself to sleep that night.

Over alliums.

But it wasn't really over alliums. It was the disappointment. The failed expectations. The hard work that didn't pay off. The promise that wasn't fulfilled. It was this whole year.

It was a year that started off bright and full of promise, and it has twisted into this blighted awful thing that just goes on and on and is one loss followed by another. We couldn't get together for Easter. Mother's Day was a write-off. Victoria Day weekend was a washout on so many levels. Graduations are cancelled. Shootings in Nova Scotia. One day, the Snowbirds flew directly over our yard while I was out working, and it was awesome to see them, and a few days later, one of them crashed. Sorrow upon sorrow, disappointment upon disappointment, and my alliums were just one more thing, and I cried like I haven't cried in months. Over all of it. Over this whole messed-up year, and our whole messed-up world, including my beautiful alliums that weren't eaten, just wantonly destroyed. An ocean of purple turned into a river of tears.

And that's the way of grief so often. It builds. Sometimes I don't even know that I'm grieving, and then I find myself overreacting to something innocuous (although having every allium beheaded isn't exactly innocous, except in the grand scheme of things). I could have told myself to buck up, to not be silly. I could have scolded myself for my tears. I could have reminded myself that they are just alliums, and they'll grow back next year, and rabbits (or squirrels) will be rabbits (or squirrels). But I didn't. I let myself cry. I knew it wasn't just the alliums. And I cried with God. I told him this year sucked. I told him I was ready for it to be over. I told him I hated rabbits and squirrels with a holy hatred that verged on unholy hatred. (I even texted my brother to see if he had an air rifle I could use to send the varmints to their eternal home. You will be glad to know he did not, and no wildlife has been injured in the creating of this garden. Cages are, however, prolific.)

I told him I was sad and that I missed my old life, the life where I felt safe and in control. I told him how hard it was to trust him to be in control when I felt so out of control and vulnerable. I cried and I prayed, and I prayed and I cried until I fell asleep.

I still feel sad often. And that's ok. I feel happy, too. My camassias, also in bud, were protected forthwith, with cages. It wasn't quite the look I was going for, but it did the trick. The camassias survived and have begun flowering. They are quite beautiful, unfolding above their cages.





















It's the way of today, it seems. We bloom. Within cages, perhaps, but we bloom.

The rabbits (or squirrels, but my bet is on rabbits) didn't behead quite all the alliums. They left one. It was the one most accessible. And it seems fitting that they left it.

It's fasciated. Twisted and blighted. Just like this year.

And yet ... somehow ... still trying to carry on, to do what it was created to do, beautiful in its own odd way.

That's somehow comforting. If my one remaining allium can carry on, then perhaps I can, too.

A Time to Trust

It has been the year of 1000 days, and we are on day 2789.

I have spent the last ten weeks at home. Ten weeks. It feels like forever. It has been forever. Basically, the only place I've been for the last ten weeks is to the barn to take care of my horse. We've had groceries delivered. We've had pet food delivered. We've had plants delivered. I'm even getting a pair of new jeans delivered. And, you know, in a lot of ways, it's been ok. I've had loads to do. I had to finish up my courses at the college I teach at, and then I had to do work on a course toward my doctorate. I've been busy in the garden. Every day has been filled with purpose, and I'm grateful for that.

But in the last few weeks, especially as things have started to open back up again a little, I've discovered things about myself that I don't like. I was getting more and more afraid. I found myself looking at people with suspicion and fear. Getting gas felt like walking through a minefield. I was trying to walk through the world without touching anything or anyone. "Out there" felt dangerous. "At home" felt safe. The rigamarole of trying to remember to disinfect my hands, not touch my face, not touch germy surfaces, stay two metres away from everyone, remember not to touch my steering wheel until I'd disinfected my hands, and on and on and on in a desperate effort to not get sick is exhausting. It didn't feel worth it. Leaving the house didn't feel worth it. It was easier to just stay home and avoid everyone altogether. Plaguey bags of pestilence -- that's how I was looking at people. Every time I got back home, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I am naturally an introvert and a homebody, and I think I could quite easily become agoraphobic.

I am missing my loved ones, missing my friends and colleagues, missing my church, missing hugs, but I was becoming more afraid of the risks. I am afraid of the people I love most, and they are afraid of me. I am afraid of doing things I have always enjoyed doing. It strikes me as especially cruel that if my loved ones are suffering, I am to keep my distance. So my friends are crying and I stand at a distance and let them cry alone because I am too afraid that I might get sick if I break that precious two-metre rule. Oh, I am staying healthy, physically, but I'm not living. I'm being told I need to fear everyone and they need to fear me. But I miss them. And I'm pretty sure that if this is how I need to live for the next two years in order to avoid getting sick, until maybe a vaccine is available, or maybe a vaccine will never be available, then by the time a vaccine comes available, if it ever does, my heart of flesh will once again be a heart of stone. I will start believing what I am now feeling — people, even my loved ones, are to be feared and avoided. I will be content to stay inside and stay safe because I will have stopped feeling and stopped caring.

While I was becoming aware of all of this, I was writing a paper for my doctorate. A paper on the sovereignty of God.

And I began to think: what does it really mean, practically, for me to say that I believe God is in control? I'll tell you what I think I mean by it. I think that when I say, "God is in control,"  I'm saying something like, God has the power to make this all go away with a wave of his wand, and I'm pretty sure that he's going to do it right quick. (I know that's supposed to be an adverb. Poetic license.) He's going to inspire some brilliant scientist who is going to create a vaccine in, like, six months, and we'll all go back to normal living just like that, and we can look back on this year with a fond shudder and pat ourselves on the back for having survived the pandemic of 2020. He's going to somehow make this all go away even without the scientist, because, well, this is inconvenient. And it's horrible. And I hate it. And God is good, so he's going to just make it all disappear. Because, after all, he's in control. Maybe what some people mean is that they can act like idiots and go around licking doorknobs in public places because God will prevent them from getting sick. They can just ignore all government regulations (or suggestions) (or suggestions that become regulations -- it's hard to keep up with it all) because God is going to prevent the coronavirus from affecting their bodies the way it affects everyone else.

But what if that's not what it means? What does God’s being in control mean when the coronavirus doesn’t go away and there is no vaccine and I need to learn to live in this new reality? I have been focused on staying alive and keeping my loved ones alive. But what happens when the cost of staying alive comes at the price of living? What does God being in control mean when staying alive costs me love and I get fear instead?

When this whole thing started, I saw often this quote by Martin Luther: “Very well, by God’s decree the enemy has sent us poison and deadly offal. Therefore I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence." Don't panic. Ask God to protect us. Wash your hands often. Avoid contaminated surfaces. And for goodness' sake, stay home. Socially distance. Flatten the curve. Etc. Basically, everyone stay alive.

But that quote is a four-line section out of an eight-page essay on how Christians in 1527 should respond during the bubonic plague. When I read the whole document, one thing became clear: there is no one right way to respond. Luther says, If you are needed, you should be available. If there is no one else available, you are obliged to help. If you are not needed, but are not afraid, you should stay. But if you are not needed, and you are afraid, you may flee the plague. However, he adds this caveat for those fleeing: "I am nevertheless in (God’s) hands in this danger as in any other which might overtake me. (His) will be done. My flight alone will not succeed of itself because calamity and harm are everywhere." I can try to protect myself from the coronavirus and I might catch it anyway. I could avoid COVID-19 and die from some other cause. There are no guarantees -- not in pandemics and not outside of them.

And earlier in the same document, Luther writes this: "What do all kinds of pestilence or devils mean over against God, who binds and obliges himself to be our attendant and physician? Shame and more shame on you, you out-and-out unbeliever, for despising such great comfort and letting yourself become more frightened by some small boil or some uncertain danger than emboldened by such sure and faithful promises of God!" Luther isn't saying, "Don't not fear the danger." He isn't saying, "There is no danger. Just go out there and live your life." He isn't arguing that it's all a mass-conspiracy to inhibit democratic freedom or anything of the like. In fact, he speaks harshly against those who have that attitude. He calls them murderers. Neither is he suggesting that we should go out and deliberately get sick just to get it over with. He calls that suicide. (Apparently the way people react to pandemics hasn’t changed very much in 500 years.)

Instead, Luther argues against allowing fear to override doing the right thing. He says, "The devil is such a bitter, knavish devil that he not only unceasingly tries to slay and kill, but also takes delight in making us deathly afraid, worried, and apprehensive so that we should regard dying as horrible and have no rest or peace all through our life. And so the devil would excrete us out of this life as he tries to make us despair of God, become unwilling and unprepared to die, and, under the stormy and dark sky of fear and anxiety, make us forget and lose Christ, our light and life, and desert our neighbor in his troubles." And that, I fear, is what I have been doing. I have seen people in pain and suffering, and rather than going to them, I have stood back for fear of getting sick. I have allowed the fear of getting sick, or the fear of loved ones getting sick, to shape my attitude toward people Jesus died for. It is hard to love someone I see as a plaguey bag of pestilence. It is hard to think kindly of those I see as threatening my physical wellbeing because they get too close to me in the grocery store. It is hard to live when I am focused solely on staying alive, as though staying alive is the most important thing and dying is so horrible it should be avoided at all costs. It is even hard to put aside my own comfort by putting on a mask for the sake of another's wellbeing.

In some ways, it would be easy to lock myself into my sterilised home and peer suspiciously through the drapes at the world out there, and tell myself that God is in control as I hope that I might wake up tomorrow to a world magically freed of the coronavirus. I would stay alive. But doing so is killing me. It is killing my soul. It is allowing fear to rule over trust in God. It is allowing my own attempts to control my wellbeing to rule over my trust that God is in control of my wellbeing. If I truly trust that God is in control, then I need to learn to live, not just survive, in a world with COVID-19. I don't quite know what that means yet. I know that part of it means that when I saw my mom this past week, I gave her a hug. We wore masks, and then after that, we Took our masks off, kept our distance, and visited outside, but not giving her a hug when I knew she needed one would have been wrong. Part of it means going to the barn and being truly happy to hang out with my friends there, physically distanced, to be sure, but not spending every second fretting about what I've touched or not touched or what they've touched or not touched. So, on Saturday, we were there together, and we celebrated a birthday and we had cake and lemonade and we sang Happy Birthday (dryly, not moistly) and we forewent the candles. We did our best to stay physically distanced, and we did well but not perfectly, and it was ok. It was wonderful. It felt almost ... normal. It might mean offering my neighbour a hug when he stands there crying because his dog died, instead of telling him (as I did) that I can’t hug him. (I’m ashamed of that now.)

Luther has one more word to say. "Everyone should prepare in time and get ready for death.... He should become reconciled with his neighbour and make his will so that if the Lord knocks and he departs... he has provided for his soul, has left nothing undone, and has committed himself to God." I've had the conversation. I've told my loved ones that I do not want to be put on a ventilator, should there ever come a time when I get COVID-19 and need one. I am ready to die. I know my Lord and Saviour. To depart from the body is to be present with Christ. The thought of being put into a drug-induced coma and to be hooked up to a machine that breathes for me for weeks on end, lying there totally alone, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits fill me with far more horror than the thought of dying to be with Christ. I am not looking to die, but saying that God is sovereign and that he is in control means that I do not need to fear dying. My life is in his hands. My loved ones' lives are in his hands. Should they die of COVID-19, I will grieve. I will cry my eyes out. It will hurt. But I will still adore my Jesus. I will know that they are in his hands, even as I am. And I will look with more longing than ever for the day when I am with them again.

There are no guarantees. There never have been. My father died over 20 years ago, long before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19. I have lost many loved ones -- people whose losses have broken my heart and left me sobbing till I thought I might throw up. None of them died of the coronavirus. I am not going to allow this pandemic to harden my heart and fill me with fear and turn my belief that God is in control into lipservice and not heart service.

So what do I really mean when I say that God is in control? It means I believe that the revelation of God's glory will make every bit of this suffering today worth it. The day will come when I will stand before him and see his glory and recognise that every one of his decrees was good and right and glorious. It means I will step in where I am needed, however I am needed, even if it puts my life in danger. It means I will strive to keep my heart soft and not allow it to become calloused by fear and suspicion. It means I will obey stipulations and suggestions for the sake of others, even when they inconvenience me, but I will not trust that those stipulations or suggestions are what is keeping me healthy.

It means I will be willing to risk staying alive for the sake of really living, knowing that my life is in God's hands. I will truly live today, because today God has given me breath in my lungs. If tomorrow he takes the breath from my lungs, then "with my final heartbeat, I will kiss the world goodbye, then go in peace, and laugh on Glory's side, and fly to Jesus, fly to Jesus, fly to Jesus and live!"

Frodo Fights the Coronavirus

The first week of the lockdown was all a bit of an adventure. There was the scramble to figure out how to do life online. Schools moved into the 21st century, staggering and tripping perhaps, but they moved. Churches found new and creative ways to stay connected. Everyone discovered Zoom and Skype and Microsoft Teams, and then discovered (or not) the mute buttons on those apps. Memes flourished. Cute videos streamed out of creative minds and onto the internet. There was a sense of resolve. Never mind flattening the curve, we were going to plank that sucker. I was running on a high. Problem-solving mode was in high gear. Look at us doing school online! Look at us doing church online! Look at us ordering groceries online and having them delivered! Look at us discovering how to do all the things online! The gates of hell will not prevail! I felt like Gandalf standing in the Mines of Moria saying to the coronavirus, "You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you. go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass (p. 331). It was a scary week, but I felt heroic, and I was game to fight.

The second week, it was all a bit more routine. I had developed a schedule. I was recording lectures and posting discussions and ordering groceries online. Two weeks, they had said. I knew it was going to be more than two weeks, but this was ok. Sort of. I could do this. Sort of. The steely resolve was still there, but the high was drifting away. Yup. School online. We can do it. It's ok. Uh-huh, church online. It'll do. For now. Don't love it, but it's ok. For the sake of the curve. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door" (p. 74).  It was feeling heavier, and I was content enough to stay home.

Around that time, I -- we all -- began to see who really mattered to the running of the world. The university students who delivered my groceries were heroes. Weren't we just seeing who the real heroes were? Not the actors and the sports stars who sat in their mansions with their pools and golf courses and whinged about confinement, but the ordinary people behind plexiglass at the grocery stores, the Instacart shoppers, the farmers, the truck drivers, the people working in hospitals, fire departments, police departments, and ambulances.  "Such is oft the course of the deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands move them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere" (p. 269).

By the third week, it became drudgery. Frankly, I'm sick of my computer. I'm sick of Zoom and Team. I'm sick of communicating via email and text and screens. I'm sick of having my work life and my home life bleed together into a messy puddle. I'm sick of the fact that working and talking to my mom and buying groceries and relaxing in front of the TV and going to church all feel like exactly the same thing. It's all a screen. I'm fed up with life mediated by screens. But ok. I'm complaining just like the movie actors. One foot in front of the other, figuratively speaking, of course, because there's really nowhere to go. "'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo. 'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us'" (p. 51). It was drudgery, but I committed to asking God to redeem the time I have been given and I carried on.

I have continued to pray thus. But now we're into week six. I'm well past the high, well past the resolve, well past the drudgery. It's beginning to feel like it's never going to end. "'You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: "Shut the book now, dad, we don't want to read anymore"'" (p. 713). I'm ready to shut the book. I'm ready to stop reading. I am so tired of all of this. I just want it to be done. I am weary of feeling like a pariah. I am weary of feeling suspicious about every person around me and having them feel suspicious of me. We are all walking around like lepers, crying, "Unclean! Unclean!" Like lepers, we are isolated, alone, untouchable. And oh, I am longing for it to be done.

I understand the necessity. I get the dangers of ending this isolation too quickly. I'm not oblivious to the risks. I'm not about to start protesting, to start questioning if maybe this is all a grand conspiracy designed to turn the world into a totalitarian regime under the rule of the WHO. I don't believe that. I've seen the stories of how this virus is raging through nursing homes. I've read the stories of those who have had to stand outside hospitals whilst loved ones die alone inside them. I believe the danger is real, and I can show grace for a government that is trying, just as I am, to fathom the unfathomable and find a path through the uncharted. My cry is a cry of the heart, not a cry of the intellect. The two are different. "It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognise necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope" (p. 269). I'm not imagining that the virus is not that bad, or that we have this thing beat, or that we can simply fling open the gates to "normal" life and things can just go back to the way they were before. They may never go back to the way they were before. Maybe they ought not to. But oh, the cry of my heart is to hug and be hugged. No wonder the lepers were so astonished when Jesus broke protocol and touched them. I am beginning to understand the depth of their loneliness.

And the reality is, I have it good. I have a home. I have a backyard (never looking better). I have a job with a paycheque. I have the technology to live live mediated by a screen. I have a dog and a housemate."There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach" (p. 922). There is still good and godly and light in this dark world. The shadow will pass.

Most importantly, I have Jesus. Having Jesus does not make the longings less real. I still want this to be done. I want to see a person face-to-face and not have to stay six feet away. I want a hug. I want to visit my mom. I'd love to sit down over sushi. I'd like to do my own grocery shopping. I'd like to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my brothers and sisters in Christ and sing together and hear the sound of our voices lifting the roof together (because won't we!) But knowing Jesus, filling my mind with his Word, does bring fresh resolve. I can hold on. I can do this for him. "[The Elven bread] did not satisfy desire, and at times, Sam's mind was filled with the memories of food, and the longing for simple bread and meats. And yet this waybread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind" (p. 936). His Word is my Elven bread and it gives the strength to endure.

I will come through this. We all will. Like Frodo, we may come through it a little mangled. We will carry the scars. They will be the testimony that we endured. We survived the Pandemic of 2020. And "in all that ruin of the world for the moment, [we will] feel only joy, great joy."

The burden [will be] gone.... The Quest [will be] achieved, and all will be over (p. 947).

I'm looking forward to the end of the story.

******

All quotes are taken from Tolkein, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings. London: HarperCollins Publishers. 2005. Kindle.

The Silence of Saturday

It's Friday, but Sunday is a-comin'.

We hear that a lot on Good Friday, don't we?

We take time to contemplate the staggering cost of our sin as Jesus suffers and hangs on the cross. We shudder as the darkness rolls in and the earth heaves and the lone voice pierces the darkness, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" We stand aghast as our Saviour cries out, "It is finished!" and breathes his last breath. Head falls. Jaw slacks. Muscles sag. Flesh tears as the full weight of his body pulls on the nails. And ... silence. No more struggle. No last, heaving, ragged breath. Nothing. It is finished. His body is taken down and hastily wrapped and put in a borrowed tomb. There is a finality about the thud of the stone as it drops into place across the entrance of the grave.

But we, who know the end of the story, are not willing to linger there.

It's Friday, but Sunday is a-comin'! We tut the disciples for their lack of faith. "Jesus told them he'd rise again. They should have known!" So they, who had just watched their loved one be betrayed by a friend, tried, tortured, and killed, should have looked at each other and high-fived (in an appropriately-socially distanced manner) and said, "It's Friday, but Sunday is a-comin'"? Really?

It's Saturday, and Jesus is dead. His body is undergoing the indignity that happens to every body upon death. His body cools. His skin pales. His muscles stiffen. His cells begin to break down. But we don't want to linger there. Some of us are flinching from those words, emotionally recoiling at the thought of our Saviour's body decomposing. We're already planning Easter dinner. We dismiss the disciples' pain with our schoolmarm scolding. We cannot sit in the pain.

And yet, here we are. It's Saturday. And the whole world is sitting in pain.

There will be no Easter dinners this year. No joyous church services, where we cry out to each other, "He is risen! He is risen indeed!" No hugs. No family gatherings. Oh, we'll celebrate. After all, he is still risen. But our celebrations are muffled. They are, at best, bittersweet. A pall hangs over our world, and we are in pain.

Someone ought to tell us to smarten up. Snap out of it. Get over it. After all, we know the end of the story. Tut-tut! And some people are trying to do just that. Positive thinking, faith in God, trust in science and all of that. Let's name it and proclaim it and declare this disease done! Bright hope for tomorrow! Ignore the experts! Chin up! Keep calm and carry on! We cannot tolerate sitting in the pain. We cannot bear to linger in the loss.

And it's true -- we do have faith in God. We do have bright hope for tomorrow. We know that God is on the throne. Someday this will all be over. It will be something we look back on, not something we are living through.Tomorrow will come, it is true. This season will pass, it is true.

But today is not that day. Today, the loss continues.Today, it is Saturday.

It is a day to sit in the pain. It is a day to acknowledge the loss.

It is a day to grieve.

There is much to grieve. We grieve the loss of community -- Zoom meetings and FaceTime and Skype may be better than nothing, but they are a poor substitute for a warm hug, for a cuddle with grandkids or nieces and nephews. We grieve the loss of our sense of safety -- the world feels a far more frightening place now, and we feel so dreadfully alone. We grieve the loss of routines -- getting up, getting dressed, going to work, whatever the routine was, it has inevitably been changed. We grieve the loss of freedom -- remember the days when we could pop by the grocery store to pick up a bag of milk, and it wasn't, quite literally, a federal production? We grieve the loss of seeing faces, seeing smiles -- masks, while preventing us from "speaking moistly", make us strangers to each other. We grieve the loss of health, the days when a cough was just a cough. We grieve the loss of life, and when life is lost, we grieve the ability to grieve, together. Everything has become complicated. Everything has become difficult. Dreams have died. Weddings and funerals and milestone moments have been postponed. Loved ones are separated. Husbands and wives and children are living apart from each other in the same home because one of them is an essential worker. We grieve the loss of jobs and financial security and a sense that we knew what tomorrow would bring. We have much to grieve and we are a people in pain.

And today is a day to stop fighting , to sit there, to feel the pain, to grieve the losses, to cry out to our Abba that we are hurting and we are sad and we don't understand. No petitions for it to all be over quickly, no declarations of triumph, no rushing past the moment or trying to escape it in Netflix or food or silly memes or conspiracy theories or whatever other escapist behaviours we engage in because we cannot stand to feel the pain. None of that. We feel the pain. We bear the pain. Not because we don't believe that God is on the throne, but precisely because we know he is. We do not fear the pain because we know it will not lead to despair. We are able to grieve on Saturday because we know that Sunday is coming, but Sunday's coming must not short-circuit Saturday's grief.

So today, in the silence of Saturday, I am sitting still. It was Saturday, and Jesus was in the grave. Today is Saturday, and my life as I knew it is in the grave.

Today, in the silence of Saturday, I am sad.

Asking Why With Job In a Pandemic

When I was a kid growing up, my family had the habit of reading one chapter of the Bible every night after we had eaten dinner. My mom would mark the date in the front cover of my parents’ wedding Bible and we would start in Genesis and read all the way through Creation, Abraham, the plagues of Egypt, the weird mould laws, names, names, names, all the way through Revelation and the triumphal return of the King. One chapter a night. It took about three years. By the time I had left home, I had read through the entire Bible about seven times.

It is a habit that I continue to this day, though I no longer write the dates down in the front of the Bible, and I usually read more than a chapter a day. But I start at the beginning and read through to the end and then go back to the beginning and do it again. And right about when the pandemic started, I began the book of Job.

Pretty depressing stuff to read in the middle of a pandemic. It’s like reading the news reports. Wave after wave after wave of bad news. Unrelenting waves of accusations. Unwavering protestations of innocence. And through it all, no matter what, Job’s desperate clinging to God. It’s where so many of us find ourselves right now.

But I think what has struck me the most about Job is that the whole book is a quest to find one answer: why is this happening?

And don’t we want to know that, too? Why is this happening?

Job’s friends were pretty sure they knew why it was happening. Clearly, Job had sinned. Clearly, his downfall was God’s judgement for some secret or not-so-secret sin. They begged him repeatedly to repent. Just admit what you did, Job, and this will all be over!

But Job called them cold comforters. He refused to accept that he had done wrong, and that his suffering was divine judgement. He challenged God to face him in court, fully convinced he would be justified. He pleaded with God to exonerate him.

We want to know why, don’t we? If we only knew why this was happening, it would seem less out of control. If I know that A causes B, and I don’t like B, all I have to do is avoid A. I can control the outcomes if I know the causes. We want to lay blame and sort out causes because then we could fix this. The sick helplessness is a horrible feeling. If we could only explain it, we could solve it. There must be something we can do if we only knew why this had happened. Or, if we only knew the plan, we could judge it worthy. It would be easier to endure this if we could see some great and glorious outcome. After all, we often willingly go through difficulties in order to attain some higher goal. If we knew the higher goal, the pain of today would feel less onerous. It might even feel heroic if we knew we were bearing up under hope for a bright new tomorrow.

But here’s the thing about Job and his friends — they never learned why. We know why, as readers of the divine narrative, but they did not. When God showed up at the end, he did not come with explanations about why. But here’s what he did tell them.

First, he told them that he is sovereign. He is in control. He owes no one an explanation. He does what is right and good, whether we like it or not, and all that he does is righteous and good. He does not defend himself. He simply shows up in all his glory and might and Job puts his hand over his mouth and stops talking. Because in the midst of the greatest sorrow, God is in control, and God is enough.

Second, he told them that Job’s friends were wrong. “You did not speak rightly about me as my servant Job has.” Job’s suffering was no judgement, no punishment of secret sin. In fact, in their saying so, they had sinned, and Job had to intercede in prayer on their behalf.

Third, Job met God in the whirlwind before the bright new tomorrow. The bright new tomorrow is almost anticlimactic. Job had already come to a place of silent awe. He had already submitted, not because the bright new tomorrow was worth it, but because God was worth it.

And that’s it.

So, why? Why is the world being swept by a pandemic that is sickening and killing so many? Why is the world teetering on the brink of financial collapse? Why are nursing homes being blighted by a bug no one can see? Why are so many suffering and why is this world groaning in travail? Why is this happening?

I don’t know.

What I do know is this: God is sovereign. He owes us no explanation. He does not need to defend himself to us nor does he need me to defend him. He has promised us that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. He is sovereign. And in the midst of this greatest sorrow, he is enough.

Nor will I misspeak by declaring that this pandemic is divine judgement. We simply do not know that. If Job tells us anything, it is that Job’s friends were flat out wrong. The world is not that simple. Just repent and it will all be over sounds so comforting. It puts us in control of the outcome. But we don’t get to escape the uncertainty that easily. What we do get to do is to place our trust in our sovereign and gracious God in the midst of the uncertainty.

Finally, I ask my whys. It is a legitimate question; it is the cry of lament. Jesus himself asked it as he hung on the cross on that Dark Friday, that Friday of goodness and wonder and grace. I ask my whys precisely because he is sovereign and because I, too, know that my Redeemer lives. God, this hurts. I don’t like it. I’m sitting in the ashes of my ruined life in our ruined world and it hurts. Why does it hurt so? When will it be over? We ask why because asking why is the honest cry of God’s broken and hurting people and he is our gracious Abba. We cry the tears. We sit in the grief. We ask the questions.

We ask the question, but we do not attempt to answer it. We ask the question and we leave it with God. We come to a place of silent awe and we submit to him.

Because he is worthy.

When There Are No Palm Branches

It is Palm Sunday.

It was a day of celebration. It was a day of crowds. Oh, the crowds! They thronged around Jesus. They lined the streets. They lined the streets and jostled and pushed and reached hands out to touch Jesus. Not a speck of social distancing in sight, they lined the streets shoulder to shoulder, waving their arms, shouting, waving their palm branches, lining Jesus' path with leaves and coats. The wounded, the healed, the children, the hopeful, the sceptical, the downright cynical all gathered together, hailing Jesus as the coming triumphant king.

It was a noisy, crowded, jubilant affair.

It was everything today is not.

It is Palm Sunday, and we are scattered, sitting alone in our various homes. Our streets are strangely subdued. There are no crowds, and we cast suspicious eyes on any group of people that is not at least six feet apart. People hurry by each other, often with eyes downcast. We hold our breath as we pass others, afraid of the very air we breathe in and out. The whole world is on breathless pause. "Oh, Lord, save! Hosanna!" is not a jubilant cry of expectation today, but a wordless groan of collective grief.

It is Palm Sunday, and today is nothing of that first Palm Sunday, and I am sitting in my living room, alone, missing my church family keenly. It is a Sunday of grief rather than a Sunday of celebration.

And yet.

Those first crowds misunderstood. They proclaimed Jesus King of the Jews. They identified him as Messiah. He was all those things. But they assumed he was marching in as a military leader. They believed he was gathering an army to fight the Romans. They were looking for an earthly king, an earthly messiah, one who would rescue them from their earthly troubles. And when, in one week's time, Jesus was arrested and tried, that same crowd gathered outside the courts and called for his crucifixion. He had failed to meet their expectations and so they rejected him. Their eyes were stuck on the earthly, and when their expectations were not met, they turned from celebration to cynicism.

I think I am not that different. My eyes are also stuck on the earthly.

I am praying, "Oh, Lord, save!" I want God to do the miraculous. I want COVID-19 to disappear off the face of the earth overnight. I want to wake up tomorrow morning to discover that every person who is on a ventilator can miraculously breathe on his or her own. I want to wake up tomorrow morning to discover that people everywhere are healed, that doctors are looking around for a virus that simply no longer exists, that the world collectively is left shaking its head in bewilderment at what happened. I want my friends and family who are frontline workers -- paramedics, respiratory therapists, nurses, police officers, grocery store clerks -- I want them to be able to do their jobs without putting their and their families' health and lives at risk. I want to be able to stop having to wash my hands every five minutes, to grocery shop and linger and read labels, to go buy a Big Mac if I want (I don't, because even in a pandemic I have no interest in eating a Big Mac, but if I did). Goodness, I want to be able to scratch my nose without fearing I have introduced a contagion into my system. I want to be able to visit my mom and my brothers and sisters-in-law and nieces and nephews and give them all hugs. I want to be able to go to church. I long for my safe places to feel safe again. I want things to go back to normal. I am waiting, waiting, waiting for the king to ride into Jerusalem triumphant, to defeat the invisible soldiers of death that stalk our streets. I want to be able to wave my palm branches and gather in crowds (I who have never wanted to gather in crowds in my life) and cry, "Oh, Lord, save!"

But what if I, like those crowds in Jerusalem, am misunderstanding? What if the King has no intention of killing COVID-19, just as he had no intention of killing the Roman soldiers? I don't want to think that. I don't want to live like this, under the oppression of this virus. But I can't help wondering, What if I'm all wrong about this? What if killing COVID-19 isn't the apex of his reign after all? What if his goals are much higher than that? What if his goals are to lead me to suffering, through suffering, and into greater righteousness? What if his goal is this, in the words of Peter: "You have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith -- more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire -- may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 1:6-7)? What if I am to "count it all joy ... when [I] meet trials of various kinds, for [I] know that the testing of [my] faith produces steadfastness." And maybe I need to "let steadfastness have its full effect, that [I] may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing" (Jam. 1:2-4)? What if the King riding in on the donkey wants to do something much bigger in my heart, but I am far too busy expecting him to kill the enemy virus to recognise what he is doing?

This Palm Sunday is nothing like that first Palm Sunday. No jubilation. No noise. No crowds. No palm branches waving. Just a hushed, sad, lonely stillness. A sigh of sorrow instead of a cry of excitement.

But maybe this Palm Sunday is not so different. There was then, and there is today, in all of us, a great wordless longing for deliverance. There is in all of us a profound ache for freedom: for them, freedom from the Roman oppressors; for us, freedom from the walls of our homes, freedom from the fear, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the loneliness, the financial devastation. We weep, "Oh Lord, save! Oh, Lord, save!" And, perhaps there is in all of us, as there was in that first triumphal procession, an expectation that deliverance will look thus and so. Those early crowds in Jerusalem were filled with expectations, and when Jesus failed to meet their expectations, they bayed for his blood just one week later. I wonder, if I am not careful, could I do the same? Could I, angry because my expectations for deliverance are not being met, turn away?

Next weekend is Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I pray it will find me at the foot of the cross, not in derision because he didn't do as I expected, but standing in wonder because he is far more than I ever dreamed. Truly this man is the Son of God. I pray it will find me rejoicing at the empty tomb -- for the empty tomb loses none of its wonder if I stand there alone. After all, Jesus met Mary Magdalene there, as she stood weeping alone. And I pray that I will wait for deliverance, not with expectations, but with expectancy. I do not know what salvation will look like -- if it will be rescue from the pandemic or redemption through it -- but what I do know is this: I long for my faith to be genuine. So, this Palm Sunday, when there are no palm branches to wave, I pray.

Hosanna. Oh, Lord, save.

Mini-Eggs in the Midst of COVID-19

Yesterday, I was miserable. I was tired of staying home. I was resentful that I had to. I was angry that an invisible pathogen had disrupted my comfortable existence, and I wanted it to quit, right now. It's been two and a half weeks, and people are still getting sick and people are still dying, and the curve's not flattened yet and it's certainly not going down, and how long is it going to be, anyway? Weeks more? Months? Am I going to have to spend the whole beautiful summer stuck at home? It all just sucks.

Yes, I was miserable. I was grumpy and ungrateful and fed up.

The problem is, that I'm stuck at home. I can't get away when I'm feeling rumpled in my spirit. I can't distract me. And my poor housemate is locked up with me for who knows how much longer, and none of this is her fault, and if I don't deal with my stinky attitude, I make her lock-down more miserable, too. So I need to deal with my attitude.

I should pray. Problem is, I didn't feel like praying. What difference does it make, anyway? I've been praying and praying and praying, what feels like an endless wordless groan -- name after name after name of people I care about, and what difference is it making? This plague is going to last as long as it's going to last. The people who are going to get sick and die are going to get sick and die. I can beg and plead and look to the sky, but what difference does it make? God is going to do what God is going to do whether I pray or not.

I'm telling you, I was miserable, and grumpy, and fed up.

I'm not even going to get to see my family at Easter. I'm not going to get to go to church on Easter. And all I could think about was that I should have laid in a stock of mini-eggs.

Really, Marianne? Really?

Really?

Are you really going to go there? Fussing and fuming because you don't have mini-eggs when people are dying? I mean, how much shallower can you get?

Sometimes it takes truly outrageous thoughts to enter my head to bring me up short.

And it did bring me up short. Actually, it brings me to my knees. I read an article about how this season of lock-down is happening in the middle of Lent. N. T. Wright is right; fussing over chocolate mini-eggs is downright petty and silly now, when I think about the many things so many of us have had to give up -- jobs, socialising, church services, neat, safe routines, going to the gym, seeing loved ones, hugs from dear friends ... health ... safety ... life.

But it makes me realise how, still, I grasp for control. My world has shrunk considerably since March 12. But, still, I am holding tightly to the world that remains. I have not truly surrendered. I have reluctantly relinquished control of things beyond the border of my property lines, but I am hanging on with white knuckles to the things that lie within. I am trying with everything in me to live my life as much like I did Before. Before coronavirus. Before social distancing. Before everything collapsed and friends lost work and loved ones had to go out there every day and risk their lives because they have to go out there and I don't, before people I know started getting sick and maybe even dying. I fixate on the mini-eggs, not because I really want mini-eggs, but because in the old days, I'd have gone out and gotten mini-eggs if I'd wanted them that badly, but now the mini-eggs aren't worth risking my life for, and Out There -- where I have no control -- intrudes on In Here where I think I do. It's not really mini-eggs I want. It's control. And if not actual control, then at least the illusion of it.

It makes me realise how, even in this season where my world has shrunk to the property line and not having mini-eggs is silly in light of how much we have all had to give up, even in this season of dearth, compared to so many in the world, there is no lack at all.  "Christ, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself." How have I emptied myself? Yes, I have lost convenience and comfort and the freedom to go wherever I want whenever I want to. I have lost the sense of safety I had. I have lost the ability to gather with others. These are not insignificant losses, and I know that a good part of my angst is grief. But still, I have so much. I have a home, a roof over my head. I am able to socially distance because I have a home with walls and a roof and doors that I can close to the outside world. I have food in plenty on the table, even in the middle of a pandemic, and when I can't go out to get groceries, I can place an order for someone to bring them to me. I have clean running water, the ability to wash my hands dozens of times a day, to take hot showers and do laundry, and I even have hand lotion to soothe hands that are dry from being washed dozens of times a day. I can text and call and video chat with loved ones. I have clothes on my back and a car, filled with cheap gas, sitting in the driveway. I have a yard and a garden and I can sit on the back deck in the sunshine and do my grading because I even still have a job. Even in the middle of a pandemic, I am rich beyond most of the world's wildest dreams, and while people are squashed cheek-to-jowl in refugee camps in Syria and Jordan, and in dumps in Mexico and India, and in tiny apartments in all the urban centres around the world, I am complaining because I can't go out and buy mini-eggs, grumbling because my comfortable routine has been rumpled, and because the biggest thing I am grieving is the loss of my illusion of control.

Such a shabby spirituality. I know it won't do.

I'm not in control, not out there, and not in here, either. And it's only a matter of time before the realities of "out there" are felt "in here", in ways that are far more significant than mini-eggs. I don't know how that will happen. I know for many, it is happening already. Jobs lost. Rent due. Loved ones sick. Loved ones dying. Loved ones dead. I'm afraid of it, afraid of the pain that will come. I'm afraid that if I admit I have no control, I will be consumed by fear. But that is a lack of trust in a Sovereign God, a God who I am learning to lean into when I think about "out there" and "tomorrow" but who I am still holding at arms' length when I think about "here" and "today".

So here I am, on my knees, again. Praying. Not so much because praying changes things out there (although I fully believe it does), but because I so much need him to change things in me. I need to shed the shabby spirituality and be clothed in ferocious faith. If I am to be locked up for days, weeks, months, I do not want to emerge from my solitary confinement the same as I went in. I want him to change me. I want him -- frightening thought -- to empty me.

And then to fill me with himself, the one who holds all my yesterdays, every part of my today, and all my tomorrows in his hands, out there, and in here.

Even in the midst of COVID-19.