As I reflect back on 2020, I’m reminded of what God is doing and did. He sent fear, disruption, death, and trauma to everyone in the world. It came because of how uncontrollable life really is. A simple virus exposed how weak and vulnerable our bodies, souls, governments, communities, and families are. 

Are we healing and resting well as we progress away from what happened in 2020 and 2021? 

Some are…others continue to ignore God’s call to Sabbath, rest, heal, mourn, grieve, and lament.

The most difficult part of resting is having to stop and sit with what you’re left with inside. America was operating efficiently, but with no Sabbath rests. As a culture, we strive on towards the “American Dream” of self-sufficiency, self-fulfillment, and self-dependence. This leaves no room for heart and soul work by God, loving communities, or ourselves. We are unaware of how frail, vulnerable, desirous, needy, broken, lustful, and murderous we are. 

I remember the first and second weeks of the lockdowns. For the most part, my life hadn’t changed much because I was an essential worker in commercial HVAC. I still drove from Front Royal, VA, into Northern VA and DC., Government facilities, data centers, and various other organizations that continued operation – even if it was at a reduced capacity. I would come home from work and my mind and body were still grappling with masks, social distancing mandates, and non-essential businesses having to close. I was angry that my normal life was being disrupted with measures that seemed pointless. No one was dying around me. No one I knew had gotten the virus. No one I knew was sick. Why shut everything down because of what the government “believes” is going to happen? How could those in power have so much authority to augment and dictate my freedom? 

Just writing this, I don’t want to re-enter the trauma of that time. I want to leave and dissociate from what happened. The memories are fragmented and so has been my ability to fully process and metabolize it. I cannot recall the details of how the mandates progressed. I remember themes of my story through the pandemic. There was the lockdowns with essential workers only. I don’t recall if it was at the same time that churches weren’t allowed to gather any more. Then there was regulation on masks and social distancing. As we got into summer, yet another turn was George Floyd. This created social justice protests which erupted into crime, pillaging, riots, and murder. Our country is still processing the post traumatic stress (whether or not they’re aware of it) from the pandemic, social justice protests & riots, and the trauma of a Presidential election that ended with an insurrection. It’s too much! 

I don’t want to write what I went through. I want to get to the part that was the best of my story during that time.

At some point during all of this, churches were starting to divide over masks. I was still angry and in a state of defiance against a corrupt system of shameful coercion forcing me to mask up when the threat didn’t appear real to me. All of the data even concluded that I was right! While I was angry at the mandates, a kind guide helped me evaluate where my heart was. Was my heart in a place to honor Christ, submit to governing authorities (even if I don’t agree with their executive orders), and show love to others by respecting their wishes, desires, and beliefs for health safety? Was love my motivating goal to show and share the gospel? Or was my own pride and anger? 

I came to the conclusion that I needed both of these motivations. I needed to add love for my neighbor, submission to government, and gospel oriented actions. I needed to keep my anger, but direct it not against people, but to fight to protect liberty in its various forms. I also needed my anger to stand in defiance against a corrupt system that sought to shame people for their beliefs and life choices. It also sought to put pressure on people to coerce them against their own consciences.

I looked at my culture during the lockdown when only essential work was allowed. One of the things I saw was a refusal to rest, grieve, lament, confess, and repent. As a culture, we were running away from our brokenness, depravity, and trauma. For each person, it looked different. But it all had activities that produced dissociation from the pain, sorrow, and suffering we held in our bodies.

When we were forced to “do nothing”, we could not stand to bear what we felt in stillness, isolated from community, and no access to dissociative tactics.

My dissociative tactics were video games, YouTube, binge watching the Star Wars animated Clone Wars series, and copious amounts of chocolate. I talked with my wife about all of this over the whole year. I also had the help of guides who influenced me to name and engage what my soul and body did not. I decided to confront what I was too afraid to sit with. 

Around the time of George Floyd’s death, I remember one day coming home from work. I knew I wanted to immediately get onto my computer and find something to indulge my overwhelmed emotions and body. But I wanted to change and I wanted to follow God’s call to become a priest to intercede for my country. Instead of immediately getting on the computer to play video games or whatever dissociative tactic it was for that day, I sat on the couch and stared out the window and let myself become aware of all the thoughts and emotions that I was pushing down. Little by little they came to the surface. As I became aware of all these things buried deep down, I couldn’t help but begin to grieve. So many stories of disappointments, heartache, betrayal, abandonment, and hope deferred came up to the surface. But in the sorrow, the lament, grief, anger, and rage, I found a new intimacy with Christ’s suffering. I also began to see how my culture was fighting hard against rest, just as I had. I also saw how God brought about a viral pandemic to force the world to rest. But the world had refused to rest, and refused to acknowledge its frailty and need for God.  So it did not stop, repent, mourn and grieve. Instead it turned to its own control and self-dependence. Just as ancient Israel and Judah did not repent from their sin and seek God, so the world did not repent and seek God. 

After I began to see where I was, I also began to see where my culture was. As a result, I began a priestly intercession for my culture and the world. All through the pandemic, the protests and riots over social justice issues, protests and riots over the presidential elections, mask mandates, and vaccination requirements, my one plea has been that my world would know the kindness and mercy of the gospel through Jesus Christ. That they would become aware of their frailty, their vulnerability, and their neediness, instead of self-fulfillment, self-dependence, and self-sufficiency. 

And that is my prayer for you who are reading this blog. Have you learned how to sabbath rest? Have you learned how to find delight, pleasure, goodness, and honor in God, his creation, and community? Have you learned the skills of grief, lament, sorrow, pain, anger, rage, or defiance? Or, are you still trying to live in a fairytale world where pain is just something that happens every so often and goes away? Have you learned to delight in God? If you have not learned how to enter pain, sorrow, and brokenness with kindness and care,  you really do not know what it is to experience true delight and pleasure in God. The two go together.