March 19, 2021 There’s a wooden calendar in the preschool office that sits atop Ms. Mika’s desk. You know the kind – the one with the wooden blocks that look like a set of dice and you adjust the numbers on the blocks to the correct date? True story – the wooden blocks on that calendar stayed on “March 16, 2020” until this past August or September, until an actual human, who actually paid attention to the calendar (not me!), saw it and changed it to the current date. We reached the one-year mark of March 16, 2020 on Tuesday of this week, the one-year mark of the preschool’s initial COVID closure in early Spring of 2020. I’m choosing not to call it an “anniversary”. Anniversaries are to be celebrated. This “mark” is not. It’s been one-year since the world shut down, or feels that way, and I’m making a conscious choice not to give too much thought about it. We’ve been inundated in recent weeks by the news and social media, asking us to reflect upon the year that’s been, and I don’t know about you guys, but I’m tired of reflecting back. Back on what’s been missed, what’s been challenging, what’s been rip-your-hair-out or cry-until-it-hurts hard…because we can’t change what’s been. Instead, I was reminded this Sunday morning, sitting outside at our SUMC church service on the porch and listening to Pastor Mitzi’s sermon, that we are all going to emerge from what’s been. Some more tattered than others. Some with less hair or more grays that others. Some with hurt souls and banged-up hearts. Maybe all of us a little different than who we were a year ago? But we ARE going to emerge. I say we focus on what’s to come. I say we ask ourselves, “What are we emerging into?”.
Take me, for example. What do I want to do, once I can do it again? I made a list:
- HUG people again (no elbows, fist-bumps, weird shoulder bumps…no awkward “do we hug” moments or brushing of body parts)
- SIT INSIDE with the people I love. No more freezing or being bitten by mosquito-distanced gatherings. Lots of couch coziness.
- SHARED meals. See #2 above, again. I miss having people in my house.
- FACES – seeing others’ faces. I really love faces, and I think you do, too. We should just prepare that once these masks come off, we will all look at least one year older. In my case, maybe 10.
There’s a lot more on my list, and many are just as simple as going out to dinner, getting a massage and pedicure, or trying clothes on in a store so I don’t have to constantly pretend like I’m going to return ill-fitting clothes, but the things I value at the top of my list have everything to do with PEOPLE. That’s just who I am. I’m curious what your list is, or what it would be. What will things look like for you in the “reemergence”?
I have a friend who recently voiced worry about reemerging. She told me that she has so much anxiety about it. How will she do it? How will she actually feel when it happens?
It’s a valid worry. What changes have come from this past year that will stay etched in our minds or etched in the way we live our lives moving forward? When we reemerge, how will we do it? Will we beeline for all public things, or we will still choose to hang out at home? I laughed thinking about this. It makes me think about what parents do on a long-awaited date-night. You have a night alone! Freedom to go wherever you want, sit wherever you want, the world is your child-free oyster! And then (as my husband and I did last weekend), given all the choices to go out and go wherever, you end up choosing to stay home, order in, and watch a movie on the couch. PS – it was amazing.
Maybe that’s the point to all of this, the point of this blessed reemergence and this blessed past year. God has provided for each of us during this pandemic year. All in ways we can see and, I pray, in all the ways we can’t. He has watered each of us in the ways that would allow us to survive in this past year, even without all the “wants” (not necessities) that we have grown accustomed to having in our daily lives. But God’s sustenance has also provided strength to all of us, so that when it’s time for our own reemergence, we will not just survive, we will bloom.
“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”
Isaiah 46:4
We may bloom as slightly different people than we were a year ago, but bloom nonetheless, with new gratitude for the little things we took for granted in the past, a fierce thanksgiving for all there is to come on our lists, and with a deeper understanding of what we really, actually need. Get those lists, ready, folks. I know we are getting there, with the grace of God. And I can’t wait to focus on, to plan and prepare – sooner rather than later. I can’t wait to keep changing the numbers on that wooden calendar to all the bright days ahead.