A Time for Everything: We’re All in This Differently [Day 1]
By Joy Orona
For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. What do people really get for all their hard work? I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 NLT)
I’ve been in quarantine with my two teen sons and my husband. Each of us has handled this quarantine differently. My husband, an ambivert who gets his energy from people, has morphed into this new reality seamlessly. He already spent four hours each workday on Teams meetings; now he just spends eight. His need for people is satisfied by the “face to face” on a screen in collaboration with his coworkers. My youngest is in heaven: an extreme introvert, his dream come true is no one talking to him and reading all day, every day. If you need someone to blame for the closure of society, he might be your guy—I think he might have actually prayed for this. My oldest is anxious and frustrated and sad. At the prime developmental age needing peer interaction, this extrovert keeps snapping at us and then apologizing, saying “I’m sorry, but I’m so lonely and I just need to SEE people.” Then there’s me—a workaholic (teacher), who buries my head in the work for fourteen hours a day, anxiously convinced that all will crash around me if I miss one detail. And then I walk upstairs to my family to discover that I had just lost perspective.
How are you in this time for everything? Do you live alone? Are you compartmentalizing out the loneliness, or are you dwelling on it? Are you going back and forth between the two? Did you (or your partner) lose your job? How are you dealing with the financial fears, or, even more significantly, how are you dealing with the loss of identity and purpose without a job defining you? Are you waiting in the fear not knowing when your job will be taken from you? Have you lost a loved one? You are walking this without many others who understand not just what it is to lose someone in this time, but also what it is to not be able to grieve publicly and not be able to be comforted. Are you on the frontlines, one day too busy to even be aware of the risks you are taking for others, and the next day too terrified and exhausted to take the risks again? Are you raising children and their needs are overriding your own as you help navigate the changes in routine, structure, and education? Are you pregnant or engaged, but instead of the birth or wedding you intended, you are having to limit your hopes and expectations, and grieve the way you pictured it would happen?
This is the invitation: to recognize that there is a time and there is room for all of these emotions, all of these questions, all of these processes. While some of us are planting, others are plucking; while some are silent, some need to speak. This may mean you need to give others room to walk this differently, or it may mean you need to give yourself grace to need all of these feelings and walk all of these paths from day to day or even just morning to noon.
Take time to discern exactly what path you are on and to be aware of how this is impacting you.
Prayer
Jesus, this time has been _________ for me. Forgive me for not giving others grace in their unique process, and help me to forgive myself for the way I have _____________. Lord, reveal to me what You have designed for me in this season, and I trust You to make me beautiful in Your time.
