perception during pandemic. . .

For almost a year now, I’ve been praying for clarity. In intervals on repeat, it seems like, of intense desperation and moderate desire. I’ve never been someone who can make a decision half-heartedly — so when I make one, you can bet that I have fully exhausted every single alternate outcome in my mind that it could result in. Making sure it’s “full proof.”

This past year has been full of so many decisions that seem to be such huge deciding factors for my future. I’ve been unsure, overwhelmed, discouraged, defeated, hopeful, excited, sure of things… and then unsure again… and the cycle repeats: Intense desperation—> moderate desire —> intense desperation….

This pandemic is a lot of things. Initial thoughts: all negative. Sickness, deaths, cancelations, quarantines, lockdowns.

But perception my friends….

God knew I needed to be still. While I was consciously filling my days with intent, trying my best to search for His will and His hopes and desires for me, I became so caught up in the searching and chasing that I wasn’t just being. I wasn’t carrying out my days with intent for that day, but with so much intent for the days to come that I was missing the days I was actually present in.

I am thankful now for the many moments I’ve been given lately to just be still and be present. Even amidst the uncertainty.

I was recently reminded of the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. A story a lot of us learn very young and can’t actually remember when we heard it first, just feels like we’ve always known it.

Lesson 1: how many truths do we know, but don’t exercise? we know that bad grade isn’t the end of the world, but we let it feel like it. To the point that it makes us sick and ruins our entire semester. Worrying about our GPA and if we will ever get a good job or even graduate.

We know we may not always get the job we feel like we need and we expect to be turned down a couple of times, but when the time comes that we are denied of what we think we need, we let ourselves think we have failed and we let it feel like the end of the world.

We know we are to love our neighbors, but saying it and actually expressing it in the checkout line at the end of a long day are two different disciplines.

We know that whoever God has planned for us to be with us better than anything that we think we need. But yet we exhaust our emotions and time into someone we swear is “the one” but in reality, is a type of relationship that God never meant for either of you to end up in. But we still doubt that God has better for us and continue to force something that isn’t holy.

Why do we do this? Why do we continue to lean on our own understandings? Try to put out our own fires and plan our own lives like we know what is best for us. Wanting happiness now not later. We we settle for mediocre and forced situations because we want instant results. Because we can’t see past this and to the bigger picture. But God can.

I’m learning to be conscious of letting go of things that aren’t for me. Allowing the things that are for me have their chance. The things God has for me. Learning also to not only spend my time trying to see what God is doing for me, but what I can do for others through God. Maybe this moment, this disappointment or this “failure” doesn’t have anything to do with you and what you need. Maybe it’s opening doors for you to be what others’ need.

Lesson 2: The 3 men, just before being thrown into “a blazing furnace (NIV)” by Nebuchadnezzar, proclaimed ”The God we serve is able to deliver us from it and He will deliver us…”

Their faith was strong and could not be defied, but even so, reading this story you hear them say God will deliver them. So, you expect them to be freed, or spared from, the flames. But no…

Instead, they remained in the flames, but were accompanied by God (an angel or presence of Christ, you decide) who protected them through their fire.

I sometimes pray in subconscious hopes that God will “spare me” from uncertainty and trials and hardship. But that isn’t the point at all of this entire belief system. God didn’t promise to save us from all the world’s troubles. He promised to never leave our side.

So, through this pandemic and time of indefinites and uncertainties, may we remember that the hard times are actually promised. It’s in how we view them, how we use them, and how we let them effect our mentality knowing that this, like all other hardships and inconveniences, is guaranteed. But it is also guaranteed that we are never alone in the middle of it’s flames. And when we are on the other side of our battle, after we’ve lived through the flames, after we have kept our positive perceptions and our faith strong, we can rise up proclaiming His good works. Shouting to everyone the truths of His humanly incomprehensible love and commitment to us. His promise to never leave our side and wanting nothing more but for us to join Him in a place where these hardships are no more. To worship Him for eternity. Where this pandemic is merely a grain of sand on the widest shore. Thanks forever be to our Awesome Father God!!!!