Let this be for something.

I really miss my therapist’s office.

This observation is far from profound, I know, but nonetheless, it feels worthy of my attention. In less than a week’s time, I’ll plug in my laptop and talk to my therapist from my own kitchen table, and whenever I think about this, I’m left slack-jawed at my privilege. But like so much of life right now, it is not the same.

Life right now is an overwhelming tangle of contradictions. It feels excruciatingly loud and somehow deafeningly quiet at the same time—the uneasy quiet that falls after the bomb is dropped, when you wake up disoriented after being thrown by the shockwaves. I crave connection and interaction but am surprised by the anger that rises up in me when a stranger comes too close in the middle of the soup aisle. The apparition has worn away, and I begin to wonder if this has simply become my permanent state of being in the world. The ping! of notifications is both intoxicating and panic-inducing. In the span of minutes, I can go from feeling overstimulated to the point of exhaustion to feeling so understimulated that I question my own consciousness, the energy flooded clean out of me in an attempt to stave off the truth: I am running out of steam.

We’ve not sacrificed much, I have to remind myself, but hope has felt more elusive, and normalcy, nonexistent. The ever-present temptation is to search for an explanation—to keep turning things over and over in search of some clues as to why this is happening. Because maybe if we could figure out why, then we could control it. Maybe we could avoid the depths of grief we’re denying is already here. Surely, this fleshy desperation to bargain and rationalize is a remnant of the first half of life, determined to have a swan song.

I’ve been thinking about change a lot lately. Also, ego and commitment and hope and rootedness—the interconnectedness of all things. But I keep coming back to change. Maybe it is because I turned 30 this year and often find myself repeating Psalms 119:32 and 90:12 like breath prayers nestled somewhere deep in my subconscious. Inhale, I will run the course of your commandments.  Exhale, for you have enlarged my heart. Inhale, teach me to number my days.  Exhale, so that I might gain a heart of wisdom. Maybe it is because I’ve been listening to The Oh Hello’s latest EP when I walk through my neighborhood as dusk settles in. Maybe it is because dusk is settling in before 6 pm these days. Maybe it is the nudging of the Holy Spirit. My suspicion is that it is likely a mixture of all of these things, woven together to form the tapestry of my days.

I’m certain that exactly zero people would be surprised by my deep disliking of change. I much prefer the ease of predictability and the safety of routine. Risk-averse for as long as I can remember, I’m disinclined to leave my house without the bones of a plan to keep me upright. Ask just about anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you that going with the flow and rolling with the punches are qualities that do not come naturally to me at all. But 2020 has pulled the rug out from underneath all of our best-laid plans and thrown so many punches that we can scarcely hope for relief. We have all felt it in ways big and small—likely in some ways that we won’t even recognize until all of this is over and we relearn how to exhale.

Back in March, when the whole world (or, at least most of it, anyway) came to a grinding halt, I gathered up all the energy I could muster and told myself that this will not last forever. There’s a lot we’re willing to endure when we can trust that the discomfort is finite. Now, nine months later, it finally seems like there is a faint flicker of light at the end of the tunnel (though, on the hard days, I’m convinced that my eyes are playing tricks on me). When I think about the long days and the short months, all that has been ripped away from us, I find myself praying—to God or the sky or the beat of my own heart—just let this be for something. I can stand the pain a little bit longer if I know that this is for something.

Bearing all of this in mind, I am trying to reframe my thoughts about change—tearing down the old to make room for the new—because there are only 42 days left in this year, and I’m worried that come January 1, I might drift back to sleep, might scrape this year off the bottom of my shoes and go on as if nothing happened and this whole year was just a bad dream.

But so much has happened. A quarter of a million Americans have died from Covid-19, with countless other languishing alone in hospital rooms while the man we chose to run the free world is practicing his putting. And while we may be hearing the death rattles of his presidency, Trumpism is alive and well, its fires stoked in the hearts of so many of my neighbors. Breonna Taylor is dead. George Floyd is dead—we watched him die with our own eyes. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, whose tiny stature and relentless heart moved mountains so that the marginalized among us could flourish, is dead. More than 500 children have still not been reunited with the parents whose arms they were torn from (by the party who claims to wave the banner of family values, no less) at our southern border. All of this has changed me. But what I didn’t expect is for the change to feel less like a threat and more like a sacred invitation.

Because, you know, nothing changes unless we do.

I’m beginning to count the ability to change as a gift.
The ability to repent and make amends as the triumph of mercy.
The ability to evolve as evidence of the workings of “Christ in us, the hope of glory.”

And I am convinced that to ignore this invitation is to actively participate in our own entropy—the disintegration of a whole planet.

The truth is, I have my doubts that any of this is for anything—unless we decide to make it so. This crisis—the pandemic, the cultural and political moment that we find ourselves in—will change us if we let it. A kairos moment, in the truest sense. If we consciously choose to lean into the heaviness and feel it all instead of ignoring it or self-medicating to the point of stupor. We can choose to show ourselves and our neighbors a little more mercy. We can light a candle and marvel at the amazing grace to be found, the tables prepared for us even here in the middle of the wilderness. In the words of my wise friend Monica, “it is a wonder that anything blooms at all.”

We can choose to build an altar of remembrance in this place, bearing witness to all of the pain and repenting, so that when we’re tempted to fall asleep again, we can look to it as a reminder of what it felt like when we realized that our souls had gone missing while we were busy dismembering each other in our efforts to gain the whole world. After all, the literal meaning of the word remember is to put back together. We can become human again. And we can choose to take another step in the direction of the light, as first fruits made for a new garden, where we can learn to live like the lilies.

The nature of hope is that it is always better late than never.