Streams in the Desert

My Sister, Melyssa Colón Cordero brought a word last week on #thearisepodcast,  (link: https://youtu.be/zzvyydUzvdc or https://www.thearisepodcast.com )

and, I held onto it. 

Isaiah 43:19 states,

 (NLT)

19 For I am about to do something new.
    See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
    I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.

It is a wasteland. It is a desert.

The days of grief continue, past Easter. What could God possibly be doing that is new? 

Public Theologian Ekemini Uwan stated the following, “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but all of us need to grieve the life we once knew by shifting into radical acceptance of our present reality. There is no “normal” to return to and if we are honest, the pace of our former lives was abnormal.”

(@sistatheology)

I agree. I feel it. If tomorrow someone would snap their fingers, I know the grief wouldn’t go away, and I also know that I wouldn’t hop up, pull on my jeans, and “get to work.” Competition is an addiction, too. And, I think that the United States breeds an atmosphere of competitive-addictive-style productivity, activity and envy of all of that. 

That doesn’t just apply to sports, but to all sorts of other areas. I don’t to want to bustle from here to there, fight to get every last dollar out of our account for this item or for that stuff. If you don’t know us, it’s not like we are well-off either. 

There are sparks of something else, something that was always there, something new I want to name, but it’s not really birthed yet.

What I want is something different I didn’t know could be, and yet, I’m tired. 

Uwan goes on to say, “This prolonged social distancing is not normal either, nor is it good for our mental health because we were created for human connection. The toll on our mental health is unquantifiable at this point, but if we underestimate the collective trauma, we do so to our own peril.”

I’m tired of the isolation, tired of the aloneness, tired of screens, and only holding the faces on those screens virtually in my mind. I want to cradle the faces of my friends, sit close, hug, and laugh for hours. There are ways of coping and ways of not-coping-that-is-coping. And, my friend, I know those spaces because I am there sometimes and then not there other times.

Finally, Uwan states, “We won’t be the same. Nothing will be the same. Our lives have changed forever. That warrants grief, lament, and tears. Weeping with you.”

So, I hopped on a zoom call to lead a group last night, and seconds before admitted to my co-leader I had been crying. I don’t think that is going to stop anytime soon.

Yet, I woke this morning with my husband by my side, coffee brewing, the sun shining through the back door and a sense that I can at least move through this moment, this morning – maybe even this day. I anticipate a bike ride with my kids. I know I’ll be in the girl’s room, in the fort they built, complete with Christmas lights, to watch a movie. That will probably bring me to tears, too. Pastor Cordero is right, these are the streams in the desert, the wasteland. These are the moments I fought for every year before this one regardless of a pandemic. 

 May God bring you streams in your wasteland, goodness in your desert, a cool drink in your thirst for connection, and the knowledge and hope that something new is possible.

 I’m out of words, for now. Peace to you.