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