Mourning the Small Things

#tbt to the place I miss the most, to a time when I didn’t even consider the possibility of owning a mask or giving someone a wide berth when walking down Front Street. A time when you could smile at strangers and they could actually see your whole face and smile back.

Most days we wear our masks and get on with life as normal as best as we can, but yesterday, one of my kids broke down. He had had enough. He needed to mourn. Mourn the fact that Covid has changed our world and given us a new normal that means if someone has a sniffle, things are canceled. And he’s tired of things being canceled. We both are.

I told him I could relate. Yesterday I walked into a restaurant without a mask. This was completely unintentional. My scattered self has done this a couple times before (ALWAYS on accident), but this time was different.

I was confronted immediately by an employee demanding that I put on my mask. I was embarrassed and then I was angry. I wanted to shout at her, “this is NOT normal!”

Don’t worry, I didn’t. #enneagram9

I walked back out and got my mask and processed my reaction.  Usually I'm a happy little rule follower, but it hit me afresh that wearing a mask is NOT normal.   And while I understand why we wear them, I hadn’t really allowed myself to grieve the, yes small, but in many ways profound loss of freedom that cute fabric from Athleta represents. It is a daily, sometimes, hourly reminder every time we leave the house that something is not right in the world.  And when we don't take the time to mourn, to allow ourselves to feel sad, the grief turns into anger or bitterness and the bigger loss is that we miss out on the comfort of the Lord (Matthew 5:4).

 

I reminded my child (and myself), that we mourn but not without hope and not without comfort. And as believers we look at our suffering through a different lens than the world. Instead of asking, “God, why are you doing this to me?” We ask Him, “God, what are you doing?” Asking Him to open our eyes, hearts, and minds to the good we see Him bringing about in these bizarre times we are living in instead of just waiting for everything to go back to a normal that might not come.

God what are you doing? 

This question takes trusting Him that the path He has us on is right. He is not surprised that there is a worldwide pandemic.  He has not stopped being able to use what was meant for evil for good (Genesis 50:20). We trust Him with the big picture - that He has the end planned, and we can only see the piece of the path we need to see in this moment. And He is with us (Psalm 23:5).

We can trust Him because what looked like the biggest train wreck in the history of the world, the Cross, was the very thing He used to save us.

So we mourn our losses big and small. Process them through prayer and conversations with empathetic friends.  We have a God who leads us in paths of righteousness, comforts us through the valley of the shadow of death, and walks with us on every part of the journey.

If you’re struggling with this too, I highly recommend Psalm 23, Genesis 37-50, Romans 8 for meditation.