Keeping Balance

Last week I wrote about trying to keep work/life balance after returning from holidays. This week I’m trying to keep Covid vigilance and living a sane and enjoyable life in balance.

At both the church and my secular job, Covid re-opening plans are either in high gear or in place. Every single person I encounter, employee or volunteer, has their own stories of people’s lax response to the pandemic or urgency to get things back to whatever new normal will look like because of Covid fatique and having had enough of all the restrictions. Strong feelings abound. Seemingly a million decisions are required as we plan - do we check people’s temperatures? do we have them sign a waiver or is that un-Christian and unwelcoming? do we mandate masks at all times or just until we’re seated distant from each other? does insisting on sanitizing hands alienate those with allergies to the stuff? if people have just sanitized why do we have to sanitize everything they touch? who will monitor washroom use and cleaning? how do you keep children apart who love and miss each other? what is required by insurance carriers and health boards? what is required by our God who loves us despite our diverse opinions on how clean is clean?

My head quickly starts spinning, and everyone seems to have fairly entrenched opinions, coming from places of fear, suspicion, misinformation, anger and perhaps even guilt. This isn’t surprising. For five months we’ve turned our lives inside out for the sake of our neighbours and health care system and its workers. Some of us live where cases are few (luckily I fall into this category) while others know their community has been ravaged and perhaps even have lost people close to them. In the midst of anxiety about all the unknowns we can quickly judge to deflect our difficult feelings, easily hurting others who aren’t thinking or choosing like us.

This is a marathon and not a sprint. How do we as leaders point the way and cut through the 24/7 newsfeed obsession of some and the malaise of others? We’re all tired, and even if we’ve had some holiday time, the end is nowhere in sight. As we hope to re-open for worship (and judge those who we think have done it too fast or wrong), whispers of a second wave flit around us and the possibility of having to go back.

As I think about this, it occurs to me that we need to fortify ourselves from the onslaught of negativity, exhaustion and impatience all around us. We need to ensure that we’re grounded in God and well fed, watered and rested. We need to monitor our energy levels and know how much we can take on, day to day and in our psyches, of people’s pain and opinions. We need to recognize what we need from our Creator and ask for it, submitting to God’s plans which are always better than our own. We need to offer space and peace to those struggling with making these decisions to hash them out.

None of this is easy, and it takes practice, particularly when we are raising families and supporting spouses and dealing with our own complex emotions about what is happening and how it’s not what we pictured at all. Instead of feeling stuck in disappointment we can seize the opportunity to innovate. We have the chance to slow down enough to really see what is happening, to connect with our people and how they’re actually doing. By listening to their stories in conversations longer than a 30 second check in at coffee hour we can sense what needs exist, their yearnings to help and serve, the pain of job loss and kids gone wild. We can hear loneliness and be inspired to find ways to mitigate that, even for those without technology access.

As we make plans to move forward into the fall, whether that is returning to public worship or expanding virtual offerings, re-starting programs that have had to be modified or focusing on small groups meeting in homes, we can pray for clarity and wisdom, discernment of God’s ways and the ability to separate out the chaff from the wheat in what we read and hear. We can model relying on God’s Word and the example of Jesus as the basis of what we decide and why. We can model reliance on grace and trusting in God above ourselves. It’s a great opportunity to dig deep in our faith because we can’t see too far ahead. But we can trust that God will continue to offer enough light for the next step so that we can move forward faithfully and safely.

May your plans for this fall bring you peace as you anticipate how God might use you and your church to do incredible things to witness to God’s love even in this time.