Spring Forward

I am in weird place of frozen confusion, jostled amongst indecisiveness and stubborn contentment, antsy to move forward to something new but timid about leaving the present tense that is comfortable because it is already known. Every year it seems, when the winter is ending and spring’s engine tries to get going, I become giddy at the anticipation of sunshine filled days spent outside while also feeling at-home wearing fancy reading socks tucked into my UGG boots, traipsing around through rainy skies and the chilly morning air as needed. With all four wisdom teeth extracted recently and suffering through the sentence of a strictly soft food diet, I began fantasizing about scarfing down spicy fried chicken with a large order of fries, and a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup milkshake for dessert. But the thing is, all of that requires teeth to chew, and gums that aren’t in pain, so with a mouth still undergoing rehabilitation the prospect of one day eating normally again felt a bit fleeting.

In watching the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), it seems there is hope that aggressive, major vaccine production and acquisition in the United States will prompt the Canadian government to enhance their rollout efforts. Selfishly, this would allow my age group to be inoculated against COVID-19 earlier than late June, per the current phase four plan. As great as that would be, however, signaling an eventual end to the pandemic, I am finding myself increasingly nervous and even standoffish about reentering society, sharing air with strangers like we once did without the aide of masks and stockpiles of Lysol. As you can see, I am a little all over the place.

I remember that just one year ago both federal and local public health officials were heartily optimistic that the virus wouldn’t amount to any real, sustained trouble, only days later to admit in droves that we were facing an invisible weapon of mass destruction that did not intend to play fair. It was out for blood and there wasn’t a whole lot, instantly at least, that could be done in defense. In 72 hours, a friend cancelled her flight to visit us in British Columbia, restaurants submitted to provincial shutdown orders, and my beloved Clorox wipes were out of stock. We were officially under a stay-at-home order. It was as if the world had suddenly been given a big ‘ol timeout without having done anything wrong.

Whatever urgent matters that had been a tyrant were given the smack-down, virtually demolishing my proclivity to freak out when prized timed-stamped plans unraveled, as they would often enough. The new predicament was to find purpose in an unscheduled life. The pandemic’s calamity resolved any confusion I had about the difference between my skewed assessments of what was necessary and what was invaluable. If we let it, it offers an object lesson on the precious fragility of life. The door closes on procrastination. Long gone is the idea of optimal time. There is a visceral acknowledgement that now, like “right now,” is what you have to steward. You appreciate the small, humdrum things and, to take a page from recovery communities, start to take life one day at a time. The fiercely unrelenting instability, difficult and unjust moments, of the past 365 days has ripped through the lie of what Timothy Tennent labels “autonomous solitude” in his book, For the Body: Recovering a Theology of Gender, Sexuality, and the Human Body. There is no more waiting for a special occasion to tell a friend you love them or to present a parent some pressing or uncomfortable question.

Time, you hopefully begin realizing, is one of humanity’s most ignored luxuries. Skin color, zip code, gender, race, nationality, social standing, economic status, politics, and everything else aside, each life has an expiration date. In The Atlantic, retired pastor Tim Keller wrote: “Death is an abstraction to us, something technically true but unimaginable as a personal reality.” With the holiest day in the Christian calendar before us, the truth is that even Christ’s death is regularly romanticized and repackaged into a revisionist’s PG-13 account, far from the brutal mode of death that Scripture, and history, explains that crucifixion was. Jesus rising from the dead is not figurative. Quite literally, he was dead and then he was alive, but those were three dark days. Good Friday absolutely did not feel good at the time. From the beginning, Jesus knew what must happen to fulfill the Word of God, yet that did not extinguish his sorrow expressed in the Garden of Gethsemane or while on the cross exhaling for the last time.

The past year has stolen a lot from so many while others appear to have escaped relatively unscathed; of course, this is based on only what we can see with human eyes. Wrestling with the lingering psychological impact of surviving a pandemic will take years to address, and for some a stabilizing resolution may never come. I, myself, probably need a re-entry workshop or extended training sessions to help me get back into the swing of life in a real world no longer socially distanced. But it is scary, and the struggle is real. For a long time now, I have been in an elite, two-person pod with my husband, with most days spent within 800 square feet and it has been fine. So, I am jumpy about returning to the normal rhythms of pre-pandemic living, unknowingly standing in line at the grocery store next to people who hardly wore a mask through all of this and think getting vaccinated is a joke.

However, God has not called me out of darkness into His marvelous light to be led by fear. Sanctification flourishes in community, the kind we choose and the kind that simply exists because I need to swing by the shop to have my eyebrows threaded. Life goes on. Hiding in the corner somewhere, I know would not please God. I remain confident that my apprehension will start melting away upon finding myself once again, like the days of old, grabbing coffee at Starbucks or sharing gut-busting laughs and tears with a friend over a meal. Either way, I do not need every aspect of life to be mapped out anymore, or at least the pandemic has me working on it. I want to live like I know that I am dying because, well…I am. We all are. I am renewing the commitment to be preoccupied with what God requires of me, rather than creating never-ending to-do lists.