When It Is All Too Much

My elderly in-laws are in crisis. Our family has had to shift our whole lives around this week to help take care of them. Our daughter is having to plan for next school year this week and that is an anxiety producing exercise. The School Board meeting I presided over earlier in the week was long, full of heavy issues, and marked by some leadership tests for me. A dear friend’s mother had a stroke, another friend is struggling with pain after a car accident, and our bubble had a possible COVID exposure. Never mind the global pandemic and political chaos.

This is my story this week, but I know so many other people have stories like this too. In a year marked by so much collective suffering we have also all had our own losses, heartbreaks, anxious moments, and tensions. It is all exacerbated by the exhaustion and stress of life in the pandemic. People seem more quick to snap or get angry, less willing to forgive or offer grace. I’ve had a falling out with a clergy colleague who will no longer speak to me. I get emails full of heightened rhetoric from the public about all sorts of issues related to school board. So much loss and pain. It is stress expounded upon stress.

This past week it has felt like all too much. More than one moment found me not even having the energy to tell a friend what was going on, much less ask for help. I’ve had a headache for days, brought on by tension. My husband’s eyes leak a lot more with tears from the worry and pressure of it all.

So what do we do when we find ourselves in these places? When friends are alienated, when even speaking the problems is too much, when our hearts are breaking, when we are worried about every little thing?

I stop and I listen. To the sounds outside my window. To the beating of my own heart and the sound of my breath. I listen to the gentle voice of God at the core of my being that whispers I am enough and all will be well. This gives me enough strength to take the next step, to do the next thing, and to trust that this season shall pass.

Be gentle with yourselves beloveds. Be gentle with each other. We have many miles yet to go through this wilderness of disease and chaos, but we do not walk alone. We listen for the voice of God and we hear God’s call.

-Eilidh