Neighbor Loving in the Time of Corona

There was a time--it seems like ages ago, but I guess it's just been 7 or 8 weeks--when I thought the Coronavirus might be what brought this country back together. A profound, difficult, shared experience can have that effect on people, no matter how hard it is for them to get along. I remembered 9/11, when for a couple of weeks one September, people were kinder to each other. We waved to strangers. We united by flying our flags off our front porches. We were all in the throes of shock and grief, and we treated each other carefully, gently. I thought that might be the case this time, too. And I think it was for a couple of weeks. But 9/11 lasted a day. The Coronavirus has lasted two months in the US, with no sign of letting up. We seem to have grown weary of treating each other gently.

The two ruling philosophies of the day are no longer Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, but "open ups" and "stay locked downs." They both have a pile of evidence to defend their positions. I can be convinced by either side. But since no one philosophy is completely doable, we've landed in some sort of wishy-washy middle ground where everyone just does their own thing. It doesn't take long for someone's "own thing" to collide with someone else's, and the result is usually not pretty.

Early on in this strange new life we find ourselves in, I went to Sam's Club with my youngest daughter. About a quarter of the people there were wearing masks. At that time my "own thing" did not include masks, but in the cold produce area, we collided with someone who saw things differently. While I was some distance away, an old man wearing a mask approached my 12-year-old and shouted at her, "You're killing people right now!"

My kids spend a lot of time at school talking about rights and responsibilities. Part of their school's creed, memorized since elementary school, is putting responsibilities ahead of rights. The man at Sam's surely had the right to say whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted. But as an adult, he also had the responsibility to not frighten a child. Or accuse her of murder.

The second it happened, my mama-bear instinct roared to life in a way I hadn't seen in years. I wanted to punch him, or maybe just hit him between the eyes with an oversized strawberry. That response lasted for about a second. Then I saw him for who he was, a scared, fragile old man living in the most disorienting, terrifying time of his life. My mama bear went back to sleep, and I only felt sorry for him.

Today I have a different perspective than I had that day in Sam's. It's my right to breathe freely in public, unencumbered by a mask. It's my right to visit a restaurant that has decided to challenge the order to stay closed. It's my right to hang out with a large group of friends. It's my right to attend church in a building with other people. Rights are important. I do not want to live in China. But responsibility is important too, and my chief responsibility is to obey God, who calls me to love my neighbor as myself.

I was not loving my neighbor in the produce section. I didn't know it at the time, and he didn't respond correctly, but I can now see it from his perspective. People are scared, especially those who are most vulnerable. They're scared, and they need a head of lettuce. They need to get out of the house to keep some shred of sanity. By wearing a mask in public, I'm not saying I'm scared of the virus or other people. I'm not kowtowing to the government. I'm saying, "I care about you." (I'm also thinking, "I feel absolutely ridiculous wearing this thing," but I'm hoping that feeling will fade.)

Isn't it strange how the smallest decisions these days seem like major ethical dilemmas? Do I really wear a mask to run into the post office for 10 seconds? Do I let my kid go to the park with four friends? How close do I get to the person who crosses my path on a hiking trail? With no hard and fast answers, we're all left to use our best judgment and do our own best thing. Let's give each other a lot of grace. And let's ask ourselves, "What would it look like to love my neighbor right now?" That may be our best hope for coming out of this thing better, kinder, and gentler.

To my senior

My friend Christa recently said to me that her parenting arsenal has been reduced to two sentences during this pandemic: "I'm sorry" and "I love you." Yes, so true.

And so, in light of our school district's announcement yesterday that in-person school is cancelled for the rest of the year, I say this to my daughter Addison, a high school senior:

I'm sorry that your senior year ended on March 13 and you didn't even know it. I'm sorry you didn't get to say goodbye or have any of those "lasts" that all the rest of us took for granted. 

I'm sorry you didn't get to give your senior defense, the capstone project of your K-12 education at one school. I'm sorry you gave it eight months' worth of brain space and hard work, only to see it cancelled with so many other things. You would have done such a good job with it.

I'm sorry you're missing the senior lock-in, the senior scavenger hunt, the senior breakfast, and the senior assembly. I'm sorry that your graduation will be a drive-by diploma pick-up. I'm sorry that you have a brother who did all these things two years ago so that you know exactly what you're missing.

I'm sorry for the little things you'll never get to do again--drive your sisters to school, eat lunch in the band room, muster up your courage to share your thoughts in a Socratic seminar. I'm sorry I didn't get one last picture of you in your school uniform (or what you've been wearing the past couple years that we've called a school uniform).

I'm sorry that the hours, days, months, and years you've put into practicing music will not end with the senior recital we had planned.

I'm sorry for the senior girls in your class who have unworn prom dresses in their closets, for the senior baseball players and soccer players who got one game in before their season ended, for the track kids who were hours away from their first meet. I'm sorry for those hopeful athletes who needed one more season of highlight film to send to that college recruiter.

I'm sorry that you feel like life is too easy now for an introvert who loves to be alone, and that you feel like you're not stretching and growing like you used to every day when you went to school.

I'm sorry that you're trying to make a decision about college in the midst of the craziest days any of us has ever seen. I'm sorry that no one can guarantee you'll get to go to college in the fall.

I'm sorry that all of this feels so unreal that you can't even cry.

I'm sorry that for years we older people have doubted your generation's grit and resilience and that it took such a severe test for you to prove us wrong. You and every senior I know have blown me away with your resilience.

I'm sorry that I completely underestimated your ability to deal with the hard parts of life, when most days you're doing so much better with this than I am.

I'm sorry that you feel bad about feeling bad for your losses. I'm sorry that it feels selfish to mourn your graduation when people are dying and businesses are crumbling. Please know that loss is not a competition.

But here's what I'm not sorry for: that we are getting such sweet time with you, that instead of frantically running off to another senior event, you're playing dumb board games with us, watching 2012 episodes of Survivor with us, having a Tuesday-afternoon picnic in the park with us, playing basketball on rollerblades in the driveway with us. These are not the memories any of us expected to make in the last two months of your senior year. But they are good memories. We are not suffering here. God has been so good to us.

For what it's worth, sweet girl, I'm sorry for all you've lost. I'm sorry and I love you.

Ten Days Ago

I remember ten days ago...

• when the Coronavirus seemed like an Asian, Iranian, and Italian problem
• when the biggest concern at my kids' school was maxing out our snow days
• when we were wondering how to balance soccer, track, and club basketball without losing our minds
• when no one was home for dinner at the same time
• when my girls didn't see each other enough to argue
• when my daughter's looming college decision seemed like the most important thing in the world
• when only weird people wore masks
• when I assumed all these preparations we're making for the Class of 2020 would pay off in glorious memories
• when I was starting to plan parties for my April birthday girls
• when my college student went to college
• when I didn't spontaneously cry throughout the day
• when I had never in my life been on the CDC website
• when I didn't really talk on the phone
• when I didn't give much thought to people who live alone
• when I wondered why I had picked up TWO library books I was never going to be able to finish in three weeks
• when my husband's small business seemed fairly predictable and wasn't something I prayed about all day long  
• when going to church required a drive in the car and at least some degree of personal grooming
• when I wore makeup nearly every day
• when I got up at 5 and went to the gym
• when I was productive and got my work done and had my computer all to myself
• when I was a little disappointed about our lack of spring break plans
• when we couldn't wait for nine days of sleeping in
• when saying yes to sending my kid to a friend's house wasn't a monumental decision
• when partnering with the school to educate my children meant proofreading a paper now and then and taking in muffins for Teacher Appreciation Day
• when you couldn't get a one-way ticket to Nashville for $15
• when the Great Depression seemed completely irrelevant to our lives
• when the sniffles were just the sniffles
• when toilet paper didn't come up in every single conversation
• when my sister-in-law's family was having a great time at Disneyworld
• when I had no idea which restaurants delivered 
• when I had some idea of what tomorrow would be like
• when I prayed, "All to Jesus I surrender" and thought I meant it
• when I lived under the illusion of control
• when new mercies every morning were something I took for granted

Cursing or Mourning?

As timing (God) would have it, the March 12 heading in my daily devotional was this: If you mourn the fallenness of your world rather than curse its difficulties, you know that grace has visited you. 

A few hours later, I learned that the Colorado High School Activities Association has cancelled all sporting events and music festivals until April 6. No track meets for my girl whose first meet was supposed to be Saturday. The one whose outlook in life is directly tied to how much athletic competition she's getting. No All State Band for my senior on April 4. It's her favorite event of the year. Our school's chili supper, which raises $10,000 a year for the band, was cancelled. Seniors are watching their last sports seasons disappear. College students are being sent home. The elderly are scared to go out of their houses. There's no toilet paper to be found. We were told to prepare for serious disruption, and here we are.

We can curse or we can mourn.

From Paul David Tripp:

"Cursing is all about our comfort, our pleasure, our ease. Cursing is fundamentally self-centered. Mourning embraces the tragedy of the fall, that the world is not the way God meant it to be. 

Mourning calls for God's redeeming, restoring hand. Mourning acknowledges the suffering of others. Mourning is about something bigger than the fact that life is hard. Mourning grieves what sin has done to the cosmos and longs for the Redeemer to come and make his broken world new again. Mourning, then, is a response that is prompted by grace. 

This side of eternity in this broken world, cursing is the default language of the kingdom of self, but mourning is the default language of the kingdom of God. Which language will you speak today?"

I have always welcomed disappointments into my kids' lives. I don't like it when they show up. I don't ask for them. But when they inevitably come, I try hard to be thankful for them. They are opportunities to trust God in a bigger way, to choose to be grateful. When we're all around the dinner table tonight, we'll try to talk about that. But for now, I'm going to mourn for just a bit longer.

Parenting in the New World

I've said before that I think my generation has a unique place in history. We entered adolescence using typewriters, and before our prefrontal cortexes were fully developed, we could send an email across the world. For free! The Millennials might think they're special in this regard, too, but they never had to max out the telephone cord down the hall and into the laundry room so they could have a private conversation. (People actually used to have phone conversations. But the long-distance ones had to wait until after 10 p.m.) Millennials didn't go from vinyl to 8-track to cassettes to CDs over the course of their childhoods. They don't remember tumbling around the back of a station wagon before anyone had heard of child restraints. These are privileged memories held by Gen Xers, the generation that straddled antiquity and the media age.

We're also the first generation to parent teenagers in the media age. And we are blindly feeling our way through it, day by day. Because it changes every day. The junior high world my 7th grader functions in today is vastly different than the one her brother inhabited (at the same school) seven years ago. 

We're the first generation to have online school as an option for our high schoolers. We're the first to raise teenagers at a time when everything from free SAT prep to graphic sex is just a click away all the time. To raise kids who don't need adults to teach them things, because surely everything they need to know can just be googled. To parent in the shadow of social media influencers who make more than I'll ever make in my life by putting on makeup or playing video games in their bedrooms. To parent in a world in which 10-year-olds carry something in their pockets that cost more than my first car and goad other 10-year-olds to just kill themselves already. A world in which we have to decide if we're going to track our kids 24/7 (and let them track us), and then decide what to do when a 19-year-old living two time zones away doesn't make it back to the dorm when we think they should. There are no handbooks for living in this world. We can't learn from the people who have gone before us. There are plenty of opinions, but very few absolutes. Most of us are trying to figure it out day by day, knowing tomorrow it will change.

My kids' school is feeling its way through the media age. Our seven campuses, K-12, are preparing to completely remove cell phones and other digital devices for the duration of the school day (or at least attempt to). It might require more staff. It might chase students, parents, and staff away. It might be impossible to enforce. But they're going to try it, and I fully support their efforts. My kids are less enthusiastic.

We are feeling our way through it in our own house. We use cheap, off-brand phones. We don't track anything--our fitness, our sleep, our Amazon packages, or our kids. We've been as slow as we could realistically be in handing out cell phones, but it's gotten earlier with each kid. The oldest got his first phone at 16, the next at 15, the next at 14, and it will be challenging to make it to 14 with our youngest, who's currently 12 and sharing my phone. (Yes, that's as fun as it sounds. I love the 6 a.m. texts asking me how I'm planning to wear my hair that day.) All of us have stayed off of social media. All of us are significantly less in the know than our friends. Our younger girls get teased, mostly in fun, about it. Their friends probably think their parents are either 95 or Amish. So far, it seems like it's been a good call, but I question myself all the time.

You know those families that don't do sugar, and then their kids go to college and OD on it? Will our kids be like that? Are they not learning essential social media skills that would serve them well later in life? Should we follow the advice of multiple experts and be walking through it carefully with them while they're still under our roof? Are we just hiding our heads in the sand? Are we making our family archaic and completely out of touch?

I honestly don't know. I recently checked in with all my girls, a senior, a sophomore, and a 7th grader, to see where they're at with all of it. My youngest thinks it's dumb when everyone pulls out their phones at a birthday party, but she wishes she could choose for herself to be the one not pulling out her phone instead of having that decision made by us. That seems like a pretty fair and mature assessment to me. My older girls who both have phones but no social media said they feel out of it, but they think it's worth it. One said, "Life is stressful as it is. I can't imagine adding that." The other said she has plenty to make her feel insecure and self-conscious, and she doesn't need social media helping her out. They don't need to read studies about the rise in anxiety among teenage girls. They see it all around them. And they feel like staying out of the social media scene has saved them a lot of envious moments and sleepless nights. But it's not fun feeling like you're on the outside, even when you don't really want to be on the inside. At this point, neither of them thinks they'll jump in when they're out on their own, but they say they'll just have to wait and see.

Are we making the right decisions? I don't know. But I see my kids on their phones a lot, and I wonder what it would be like if they had TikTok and Snapchat and Instagram. I see how tricky it is to juggle endless homework, yelling coaches, needy friends, college searches, jobs, feeling left out, body image, insecurity, and honoring God without social media, and I think of how much more complicated it could be with it. I read articles and watch shows (Hulu's Jawline and the fictional movie Eighth Grade were so eye-opening) that make my heart break for today's teenagers. I don't want naive kids, but I want kids whose identity comes from God, not from how their phones make them feel. So this is our answer today. And to those parents who have thought through all of this as long and hard as I have and made totally different choices, I say, "We're all in this together. There's no room for judgment here."

The one thing that unites all parents of all generations is our need for wisdom. I cling to James 1:5, "If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you."

What's at the top of my flagpole?

I've never been totally comfortable with the "idolatry" terminology we use in Christian circles. I know it's biblical, but it makes me think of gargoyles or fat, shirtless Buddhas. When, as a young mother, I was confronted with the possibility that my children could be idols, I was even less comfortable. That hit way too close to home, especially when more than one of my babies bore some resemblance to a fat, shirtless Buddha.

Still, whatever word we use for it, idolatry is a real danger to faithfulness. My family, creature comforts, entertainment, work, workout schedule, opinions, and credit card can all steal my focus from God. But a message I heard recently helped me picture these things in a new light, to see them not as ugly archaic statues, but as flags.

Not that I have any great affinity for flags, either (except to continually wonder why they always seem to be at half-mast), but Ken Robertson from International Anglican Church used them in a way that opened my eyes to the things that threaten my first allegiance to God. (The original message, much better than my recap will be, can be found at springsiac.org. The message is from January 5, 2020.)

Flags are displays of allegiance. We salute the American flag because it represents our loyalty to our nation. The neighbors fly a Nebraska flag to tell the world they're Cornhuskers fans. Flags unite people ("Oh, you're a Cornhusker, too? Come in for a drink!") while also separating people ("CU fans not welcome here."). And while many of us don't literally fly flags, we all carry banners of allegiance to certain things. This might be for a certain political mindset or a parenting style or a hobby that's become a passion. Or it could be for a cause--gender equality, the environment, animal welfare, fostering children, or, in my case, good grammar and properly used semicolons. We all have multiple flags, and for a lot of us, our biggest, brightest banner is reserved for our families. We hoist that one up the pole and will die to protect it.

The thing I love about this metaphor is that flags aren't inherently bad. They're not ugly. They can even be quite beautiful. But they were never intended to fly at the top of our flagpoles. That spot is for Jehovah-Nissi, a name that means "the Lord is our banner" (see Exodus 17:15). The Bible talks about banners in a number of other places, but most interesting is the banner mentioned in Isaiah 11, the "Root of Jesse" who will unite not just Cornhuskers fans or Americans, but "all nations." This flag is Jesus, of course, and Ken Robertson pointed out that Christianity is the most diverse institution in the world. Its adherents are found in every country of the world and span the spectrum from Palestinian Christians to Messianic Jews, Orthodox Russians to Nigerian Pentecostals.

It's not that other flags are bad, but we have to keep an eye on them. If we're not mindful, they start creeping up the flagpole. When our allegiance to Jesus stays higher than the other flags, the others stay in their places. The highest flag actually brings order and rightmindedness to lower flags. When I am living with Christ as my highest banner, I can be the best mom, wife, employee, friend, community member, and champion for causes that I can be. But I have to keep watch over letting any of these things climb too high on my flagpole.

One of the easiest ways to identify flag creep is to notice what I'm stubborn about. In other words, am I willing for my flag to look different? Am I willing to live with less money, a smaller house, or fewer friends? Can I let go of a job I love? Can my support for a cause be challenged? Am I willing for my role as a mom to change? (Um, yes, that's the question in my face as my children rapidly become adults.) The tighter my hands are grasped around one particular flag, the more likely it is that I've let it get too high on the flagpole.

My flagpole has room for lots of beautiful flags. But am I willing to change them, lower them, and swap them out if I need to? Is my highest flag steadfast in place at the very top, the place from which it can purify and shine through my other flags?

Release

I have to show some restraint not to write continually about all the things I learn about God from my dog. I realize not everyone loves dogs, and not everyone spiritualizes all of life like I do. But this one I'm sharing.

Oakley is a hunter. The kind that hunts through the window pane. And there is a lot of window-pane hunting to be done at 7 a.m. as the squirrels and rabbits chase around our yard and the neighbor dogs free range into our driveway. Because Oakley is confined to the small space between the table and the window, the only way to express his hunting enthusiasm is to whine, bark, and paw at the window. Essentially, he loses his mind. He did this the other day, using his high-pitched little-girl bark that makes us want to hide when we're in public and makes my husband wonder why he ever acquiesced to a poodle mix. In an effort to save the wood on my windowsills, I jumped up from my spot next to him and walked into a different room. And just like that, he followed me. Whatever he had been obsessing over a half-second earlier vanished from his mind. The bark was gone, the windowsill was safe, all because he has this compulsion to follow me wherever I go.

I'm still trying it on for size, but I think my word for 2020 is release. I have an obvious connection to this word because I'm in a releasing season of life. One definition of release is to allow something to move or flow freely. Faster than I can keep up, I am releasing my kids: "Kids, you are now free to move safely about the big world." Their seatbelts are unbuckled, they've grabbed their bags, and off they go. This is tremendously exciting and I love it, but it's also hard. Devastatingly hard, if I'm honest. I will get much practice releasing over the next 5 1/2 years, which means it's a word and a concept that I want to make friends with.

But there's another reason why the idea of release is resonating with me. I can easily get stuck in holding patterns of negative thinking. I've never been one who can stay mad or sad for any sustained amount of time. I hear a good 80's song and, boom, I'm dancing around, joyful and carefree. But what I can hang onto is envy, wishing someone else's experience was my own. (For some reason, I'm more envious of experiences than material possessions.) I can also hold onto my desire for control, wanting to make people who I wish they would be. By people, I am of course referring to my children. I can hold onto my desire for applause and affirmation from other people. Envious, controlling, and needy for affirmation are not the me I want to be. God and I are in agreement on that.

So I'm thinking a lot about what it means to release. Merriam-Webster's first definition of release is to set free from constraint, confinement, or servitude. Here's where Oakley comes in. I could give him what he wants and open the door, but he's never going to catch a rabbit. All he would do is spend a lot of energy chasing something that doesn't really satisfy him. But when he followed me away from the window, he got true release. His mind was free. He could focus again on how content he is just being with me, watching me unload the dishwasher.

What if I got my way? What if I could have all the experiences and the praise I think I want? What if I could shape my kids into exactly the people I think they should be? Would it satisfy me for even a day? Or would I just find new ways to be the me I don't want to be? The best kind of release is not to free my mind to think on whatever it wants, but to release those thoughts to God and follow Him into another room.

Not all the negative thoughts in my mind are purposeless. Some of them are there to teach me something. With some God says, "Hey, let's dig a little deeper and work through this together." But some just need to go. Sometimes I just need to stop fixating on the rabbits in my mind and follow the Master into the next room, where I can enjoy His company, my mind at ease.