You don't have to be good at this

Are you seeing the photos of the amazing sourdough starters people are concocting, reading proclamations of folks taking up new hobbies, renovating rooms and backyards, adopting puppies, successfully purging every closet and storage bin and offering these accomplishments up for affirmation and envy on social media? Good job everyone, but for some people, just getting through each day is enough.

How about we give everybody a break?

This is hard. To live with continuous uncertainty about what is next, to make daily adaptations that make it possible to work from home and not lose heart. It is hard to meet all of your kids changing needs, help them to bear all of the losses in this time of sheltering and have the resilience to survive their frustrations and meltdowns. You don’t have to be good at living in a pandemic, at least not every day. You can have horrible days where everyone goes to their room to be on their screens and you chuck lunch in there because you are all done seeing each other. You can reach the end of your patience and reboot over and over again because that’s what it takes to live such a disrupted, unnatural life.  

Maybe this great pause isn’t an opportunity to be productive, but rather an opportunity to ask ourselves why we think our self-worth is tied to production. Maybe we finally learn how to be with ourselves. Maybe each of us learning to be a little kinder to our own selves and each other, to be a little more patient, to be a little more generous would change the world way more than one person being hyper-productive. This inner work is hard. It is painful, and it is going to take time and right now we have that. We just keep keeping on the best we can and don’t give up, like practicing an instrument or a dance or a skill.

And maybe somedays are pajama days. Maybe somedays are cry and yell and then apologize and try again days. We don’t have to be good at this. I am not even sure we have to try to be good at this every day. Take a lot of naps. Do nothing. Brag about that. No one is good at this, we are all just practicing. This is ordinary discipleship—living each day in front of and in conversation with a loving God who will supply what we need to just practice being faithful and gracious. That is enough.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation