Love Thy Neighbor

Several recent news articles have reported that people’s views around COVID-19 risks, mitigation measures and the government’s response seem to fall largely along party lines. This isn’t necessarily surprising, but it is concerning in the face of a pandemic that is blind to political affiliation. 

Over the last 12 years, we have seen a growing divide along political fault lines fueled by the 24-hour news cycle and social media grandstanding. Those fault lines widened dramatically over the last four years as more and more friends, families and strangers started jumping into the political boxing rings of social media during a polarizing election. These private and public matches left permanent scars as our political positions became more important than the person behind whatever “post” we were challenging. People started prioritizing politics over relationships.  There became an increasing perception that our country was irreparably divided.  

But in the heart of this crisis, actions bely what these articles and social media would have us believing about America and each other.  Neighbors are helping neighbors. Grocery store clerks, stock boys, cashiers, drivers, shippers and mailmen put their own safety aside and continue to show up every day to ensure that our supply chain holds. Nurses, doctors and medical assistants keep reporting, in some cases “unarmed,” to the trenches to care for the weakest among us. Communities are coming together to feed children. In the face of empty shelves, good Samaritans are sharing supplies with those unable to stock up themselves. Large and small businesses are stepping up to the call with donations of masks, gloves and other equipment they realize can be repurposed for a better good. Patrons are continuing to support their local restaurants by ordering in. These people belong to every political party, and they are working together for a common good. 

Last night brought word that social distancing measures will remain in place at least through April 30. For some, that news brought a sense of relief to worries that these safety measures might be lifted too early. For others, this news is the last thing they want to hear. The need to continue to isolate in the face of a real and present public health threat clashes with the need to get people back to work in the face of growing economic impacts that pose a danger of a different kind. The pressures from these two opposing forces will slowly start pushing us towards opposite corners of our rings again. But what if instead of taking up positions this time, we choose differently. What if we choose another way? What if we choose God’s way?

Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:31)

This time let us decide to step away from the ring and step toward each other. Let us leave party politics to the politicians. Let us choose respect instead of judgment. Let us call out leaders in our own parties, not just criticize leaders in the opposite party.  Let us praise our leaders when they get it right regardless of party. Let us always treat each other with humanity whether in person or over a posting, text or email. Let us choose to remember there are two sides to every story. Let us always remember that the number one party we belong to is the human party. Let us love our neighbors.

It is probably nothing.

I woke up dreaming that I was coughing only to find I actually was coughing. Suddenly I went from groggy to wide awake. I had a slight itch in my chest.

“It’s probably nothing.”

But try as I might, I could not get back to sleep. My thoughts started racing....” What if.....? What if this is NOT “nothing”? What if this is SOMETHING?”

Fourteen days ago, I was still working in the office. I had an offsite meeting midday with another company that had four people in attendance. We were still in the awkward “Do we shake hands or bump elbows stage?” Two people waved, one person bumped elbows and one person shook my hand and pointed me to the hand sanitizer afterwards.

Conferences had just started to get shut down earlier in the week. The term “social distancing” had only been in the news for a few days. The government and CDC were recommending no gatherings of over 250 people. Companies were being encouraged to move to increased telework.

Both of my daughter's and their families came to the house for our regular Thursday night dinner. My older daughter concerned she might go into labor before her sister's birthday dinner brought a honey bun cake for her sister.to wish her an early happy birthday. 

Thirteen days ago my youngest daughter’s house went up for sale. Because of her medical challenges, we decided that she and her family should move in with us for the weekend. This way she could be isolated from buyers while the house was being shown. It seemed smarter than cleaning her house after every showing. We knew we needed to be careful, because of her medical issues, but even then we were debating if that was necessary. 

Twelve days ago, we held the official “birthday” dinner - Thanksgiving in March. We skipped inviting “Army family and friends,” because we were “social distancing,” but both daughter's and their families were in attendance. 

Eleven days ago, DoD halted all travel for troops. They started recommending no gatherings of more than 100 people. My daughter sold her house and moved back home. 

Ten days ago I spent a full day in the office. I made the decision to move to full time teleworking. We were not able to install my VPN that day, so I would need to go back in the next morning one more time.  

Nine days ago, I spent half a day in the office and stopped at Wegmans grocery store on the way home. I made an Irish dinner for my youngest daughters family. I learned they would induce my oldest daughter the next morning. 

Eight days ago, my first granddaughter was born. No visitors other than one support partner could go to the hospital. Recommendations for gatherings had dropped to 10 or under.

Seven days ago. I only saw my husband. Parts of the country were instituting shelter in place injunctions.

Six days ago, my oldest daughter came home with her baby. The doctors said to keep visitors down, but family could see her if they were not sick. We went for a short visit. I held the baby. We ordered in dinner from our local restaurant and two army family friends joined us. We didn’t hug as we normally would. We kept space between us.

Five days ago, I watched my granddaughter all day while my daughter was back in the ER.

Four days ago we started ordering groceries to be delivered.

Three days ago my husband moved to full time telework.

Since then we have teleworked, waved to neighbors and taken long walks outside to get fresh air and a change of scenery.

In the light of day, it became clear my cough was just my allergies, but the experience brought a different level of awareness to the issue for me.

A person can remain asymptomatic for up to fourteen days. During that period the person can shed the virus. None of us at this point can know without a test that we are not already infected. 

And that is exactly the point. Who have YOU exposed in the last fourteen days? It is probably nothing, but what if....

How Long?

"How long Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?" Psalm 89:46

This is a verse I have wrestled with off and on since my daughter's diagnosis as we have hit road bump after road bump and complication after complication. Today, I hear echoes of it across my Facebook feed as the world keeps asking, "How long?" 

How long before life gets back to normal? How long before we can go out again? How long before we can go back to work? How long before my kids are back in school? How long before my business has to close? How long before I go bankrupt? How long?

There is a cumulative pressure that builds when living day to day in crisis management. Each new pressure takes on a different weight than the one before it. If I am honest, I will say, " I am tired." I want to be the person who is endlessly optimistic in the face of challenges, but I confess that  I can still allow life and heartache to get in my way.  

This past week has been a rollercoaster of emotions. The joy of welcoming my newborn granddaughter to the world against the backdrop of guidance that left us questioning whether or not we should wait to meet her. This was quickly followed by a post partum emergency that left us struggling with what decisions that would have been quick and easy pre-COVID, but became more complicated in the face of potential exposure and transmission concerns.  

Who should take my daughter to the ER? Who should stay with the baby? What is the protocol when you are immune compromised but your child needs you? What is the protocol for two parents who have three children to care for? Should one stay home to reduce exposure? Questions we never expected to have to ask ourselves in the midst of an emergency were making it harder to decide on the next right step. We finally put a halt to overthinking and went with the solution that made our daughter feel the most secure. Her Dad and I stayed with the baby, so she could have her husband with her for support.  

Things are settling back down on that front, but this past weekend left me feeling "war weary".  When I am stressed ( and when I am not stressed), I rely on "quiet time" in the morning for readings and prayers to help center my day. It was during this practice that I came across this verse again. Even though the lesson was meant to assure me of God's perfect timing, I found myself focused on the part of the passage asking "Will you hide from us forever?"

It was in the heartache, I finally realized the lesson in this verse for me, is not in the waiting, but instead in the finding. Just because God does not seem to be answering,  does not mean he is not showing up. He showed up this weekend in an unexpected day spent holding and caring for my first granddaughter. He showed up in phone calls from friends and family at the just the right moment. He is showing up in the world around us as our front line "heroes" in the medical community, the pharmaceutical community, the service community continue to "show up" for their jobs despite safety concerns. He shows up in the video from a talented high school girl sharing a song from her heart despite an abrupt end to her senior year activities. He is always showing up if I simply redirect my gaze. If God is hiding, he is hiding in plain sight. 

In our season of waiting, we have a choice. We can choose to wallow or we can choose to wonder at the world around us.  We can choose to remain focused on the unanswered prayer or we can choose to focus on the GODness that surrounds us every day. We can choose to see God as hiding from us or we can choose to see God standing by us. Today, tomorrow and the next day, I will try to choose better. How about you? 

Statistics

I've had a good life. I met the love of my life at 16 and married him just shy of my 20th birthday. I travelled the world by his side for 35 years. During that time we had two wonderful daughters who in turn found their loves and gave us four amazing grandchildren.

We lost loved ones early in our marriage. My husband's father passed unexpectedly in a bicycling accident shortly before my first daughter was born. We lost grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles and a precious brother along the way. In between life, we've had the good fortune of jobs we have loved, friends who have become family and lots and lots of fun.

On September 11, 2001, our world was rocked by terrorism. My husband worked in the Pentagon. I waited six long hours from the time the plane struck to hear he was safe. We were fortunate that day. Others we knew, were not as fortunate. The event changed the world,  but for our immediate family, it also was the first time we brushed up against what it could mean to be on the wrong side of a statistic.

As the next few years unfolded, I started relying on statistics to calm my children's nerves. They had seen their safe world turn into something very different suddenly. Fears were closer to the surface. Statistics had worked in our favor once before, they would again.

When the DC sniper began terrorizing the city, our world turned scary again. My children were locked inside schools each day with armed guards patrolling their roofs. I would recite statistics to myself as I pumped gas and scanned the horizon trying to assure myself I was safe.

When their Dad went to war, I relied on statistics as well. I would calculate the percentages of fatalities to deployed personnel. I would calm my fears for my husband's safety using statistics. That worked well until we lost a soldier in his battalion. Statistics became less comforting in the face of someone we knew and cared for, but I still hung onto the fact that my love was still with me. Statistics were still MY friend.

When my oldest daughter was sixteen, she started having seizures. She was diagnosed with epilepsy. It was the first time, we fell on the wrong side of a statistic. Thirteen years later my youngest daughter was diagnosed with Moyamoya, a rare disease impacting less than 1% of the population. That was when it finally clicked, life is random. Statistics do not protect, they only comfort. 

Please do not use statistics to justify actions or inactions. Behind every statistic is a person - a person who is loved by someone; a person like you; a person like me. Statistics do not protect, they only comfort....until they don't. 

The Boulder and the Snake

Even as the National Government, CDC, and the WHO urge people to stay home and take "social distancing" seriously, pictures continue to pop up on social media of "selfies" in crowded bars, throngs of partiers mulling around on Bourbon street, and "Social Distancing" parties. 

I continue to see posts questioning or outright dismissing the guidance that is being provided.  If I am honest, I will tell you these pictures and posts have been making it hard to stay in a place of calm. I have caught myself yelling at my Facebook feed more than once, "What are you thinking! Go home or at least stand six feet apart!  What part of 'Social distancing" do you not understand? At what point did you stop caring about your neighbors?" 

And after spending far too much time letting anger take the lead, I finally heard an inner voice whisper, “Judge not, lest ye be judged." (Matthew 7:1)

And then I had to ask myself, did I really believe in my heart that all of these people were either self involved or arrogant? And the answer was a quick "No." When I finally put down my frustration, and took some time to step back from judgment, this is where I landed. 

With the advent of 'Fake News," the truth has become subject to interpretation. If you don’t agree with the “facts” in front of you, all you have to is google to find a different set - a set that supports your view and validates your position. Parallel facts have led to an unfortunate reality in our country where "the truth" is no longer an absolute. In a crisis, pressured people are going to fall on the side of the "truth" that relieves their pressure.

I have one daughter with neurological and endocrine issues that land her in a 'high risk" category. I have another daughter with epilepsy who is in her ninth month of pregnancy. I have parents and loved ones over 65. I myself have an Immune Deficiency ( IGA Deficiency). I have multiple members in my extended family who suffer from asthma. I am super aware of the potential impacts of any one of us/them coming down with this virus. I am also super aware that even if none of us come down with the virus, if everyone else does, medical care will not be available to support the other daily complications that arise for daughter or loved ones in the high risk group. My pressures make me highly sensitive to the need for "social distancing". 

As another point of view, my daughters' generation are twenty and thirty somethings. At that age there is a feeling of invincibility until proven otherwise. RIght now, their feeling of invicibility has been validated when the news acknoweldges that they are low risk for much more than a bad cold. They, however, are also far more susceptible to the potential for very real financial harm from the closures looming in their future. They typically don't have savings, are more likely to be the group still working jobs without benefits and much more more likely to be living paycheck to paycheck. Their pressure is economic. 

While I am sure there are other pressures that are coming to play in how all of us view the current situation, the two biggest concerns are generally health concerns and economic concerns.  

As I was pondering the different views, I recalled a relationship meme that struck me several years ago. A woman is hanging from a cliff. Directly across from her is a snake in a crevice that has already struck her once and is threatening to strike again. Above her is a man holding on to her hand wanting to pull her to safety, but he has a heavy, boulder crushing his back.

The woman is frustrated at the man because he is not pulling her up faster. She can’t, however,  see the boulder on his back. The man is frustrated at the woman, because she isn’t making it easier for him by trying to use her feet to climb up the rocks. He doesn’t see the snake threatening to strike again. 

And as I pondered our current situation it came to me that this is relevant to the COVID-19 story. COVID-19 is the snake in this story and the boulder is the economic impact. They are both very real dangers/pressures that we are facing. The man represents those  individuals who believe that the risk to the economy is the most immediate concern. The woman is representative of the group that believes that the virus is the clearest present danger. Whether or not we identify as the man or the woman in this story is less important than recognizing if they work together, they are far more likely to save themselves. 

Right now the science, the CDC, the WHO and the Government is telling us that COVID-19 is poised to strike quickly. These are the people who have the deepest insights into the facts surrouding both pressures. They are providing the strategy and priorities for navigating this pandemic. They are telling us we need to pull the woman out of harm's way first through social distancing and quarantines. Once she is back on the ledge, she will be able to push that economic boulder off the man's back. 

I recognize my own pressures may cloud my viewpoint, but logic seems to support the argument that if the man doesn't pull the woman to safety, he loses the person he needs to save himself. 

Why?

About six months ago, I started to feel drawn to the idea of publishing another BLOG. I wrote my first entry a few weeks ago and started building the site a little over a week ago. Little did I realize the events that were coming. Today we are all in the wake,  the wake of a pandemic that will leave most of us changed in some shape or fashion. 

We still don't understand the long term impacts of COVID-19 in our lives, but the expectation is for most, this will be a short lived period that disrupts day to day living. A year from now this will  become "the story" they lived through and will share with future generations...the story about a time a pandemic caught the world unprepared, people started hoarding TP and Clorox, schools shut down, business as usual came to a halt, but out of the chaos, a pressure point was created. That pressure point created changes and policies that made things safer for future generations. 

For others, this will be the story that changes their lives unalterably. They will lose a loved one. They or those they love will be left with a chronic health impact. They or someone they love will have a financial impact that changes their future.  For those people, our stories will be different, but our journeys will be much the same. It is here in the wake that our stories come together. 

Since my daughter’s diagnosis of Moyamoya, I have struggled with trying to understand the “why” of this in our lives.

“How can something like this be the will of God? Is this God’s punishment for some sin I committed being born out on my child? Does God really think she has shoulders that strong? Does he think I have shoulders that strong? Is she being tested? Are we being tested? Where is God in this? Why? Why? Why?”

In my struggle to understand, I find it far easier to want to reconcile “Moyamoya” as something released on the world by a “satan” than believe that a loving God could/would have any part of something so terrible.  It is definitely far easier to want to lay my blame and anger for my daughter’s suffering/the world's suffering at anyone else’s feet (including my own ) rather than God’s. But I have come to believe when we look for “satan” in our stories, we miss “God” in our story, and when we miss God in our stories, the weight of them becomes far too difficult to bear.

And so if there is a 'Satan," this is where he/she sits. Not as a fallen angel, actively seeking to cause pain in the world - the perpetrator of all things bad. Not as the antagonist of my personal super hero story of evil versus good. She is within me - challenging me to look away from the light to focus instead on the darkness. She is the temptation to take off my “God” glasses in the face of the eclipse.

I have seen her when I first read the words “incurable and progressive.” I saw her over and over again in that first year following my daughter's diagnosis when the “surgery” that would “fix” things and get life back to normal failed. I saw her every subsequent ER trip, hospital admission, surgery and complication. 

I have been staring her hard in the face this weekend as I find myself glued to my Facebook feed, the news and twitter. I see her second guessing every action, interaction and next right next steps as she tries desperately to grab the wheel in the front of this Virus. This morning I decided to shut her back down. 

Four years in to our life altering event, I still haven’t figured out the “whys” of our story, but I have come to recognize the “whys” are less important than the “hows”. How will I choose to live today “in spite” of my story? How will I find joy, love and happiness? How do I honor and keep my eyes on God in the face of my child's suffering? Then I remember this is also God’s exact struggle. We are his children. He would not let us suffer unless there were a purpose.

And this thought brings me full circle to the realization that my story is just a small piece of a puzzle. The color is beautiful; the edges are sharp and jagged. My faith tells me my puzzle pieces fit perfectly into a much larger picture- one filled with darkness, light and beauty, all created by a single artist. I may never get to see the “final picture” in this lifetime, but I have faith when it is complete - there will be no sharp edges, no suffering and the purpose will have been made clear.