My two-year-old just finished a google video call with her hearing specialist. It was one where she shut the laptop, clicked off the video and got out of range of the therapist, time and time again…
Still, we are thankful, some assemblance of appoointments and schedules are still resuming..
The world has stopped, store shelves lie empty, and it can feel like we have suddenly stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone.
I fumble with the circle, foam pad, once secured to her hearing aide. I squish saliva from it before trying to place it back on her aide, as a pad against her head.
Eye patches and Baha hearing aids have become a seeming annoying accessory to a child who just turned two in December.
What she doesn’t know is, these aides are good for her.
The patch blocks out her “good eye” strengthening the other eye that’s weaker. Her hearing aide amplifies the low tones and allows her to hear though being part deaf to her, must have seemed normal.
This past week, after our daughter’s appointment, our Governer, Jay Inlsee did a briefing. Washington State is finally on full lockdown. Life as we know it has come crashing down…
No more shopping for tights, right fitting shoes, or buying hair supplies to weave long, black braids in my African American daughter’s hair.
No more getting my nails done, driving through the carwash, heading into Dick’s Sporting Supply for the latest athletic supplies. (I know, all First World problems)
Our whole world is about to change.
48 hours. That’s the time frame Inslee gave before everything shuts down. The shelves are already empty. Target and Costco have no toilet paper, our local grocery store had no milk and it seems the whole world is homeschooling.
Yet, I have to believe, we have been living on excess, thriving from our strengths instead of stepping back, embracing weakness, recognizing or amplifying our lack.
Like my two-year-old, this coming quarantine is for our own good. Yet, we can all be a little resistant to what science shows will likely helps us slow this pandemic.
We daily, and too often, used to use our strengths and avoid our weaknesses. We wildly throw off restraints, like the patch on my daughter’s “good eye” and keep seeing what we want to…
We are oblivious, that as a society we have all just been growing blinder.
Or we accept willingly our deafness, calling it “normal”, when God has for us something better.
He wants us to see and hear fully, know Him and be known, recognize our deficiencies, so He can be our strength in every area of our lives.
State parks and beaches are closing. An already panicked people are losing control of everything they have known and experienced.
We are walking in unprecidented times, yet God is not distance nor has He abandoned us in our pain.
When my daughter was born, she did not ask to have vision or hearing, or craniofacial issues. She did not beg to use all her strength to work and function like other kids her age.
Therapies, testing, patches and aides wrapping around her head, bothering her contantly…I am sure wasn’t her hopes or dreams.
Yet, I am convinced, her weakness has produced in her great strength. And in her strength and through perseverance, she will one day have a great testimony.
Her “good eye” compensating for her weaker eye and her hearing loss gives her skills most of us would covet; like wisdom and intuitiveness, patience and deeper compassion.
When we are safe, have all of our felt needs met, and are content in our worlds with everything we want and need…We can turn our hearts from Him, not recognizing the place where all good blessings flow.
We can lean on our own understanding, blindly thinking our wisdom, wealth or our own knowledge is what keeps and sustains us…
When we are strong and feel compentent, we can lose sight of The One that placed the stars in Heavens, formed the rivers at His breathe and created man out of dust and ash.
We can so easily take what we have for granted, depending our leaning on our own self-sufficiency.
Yet, our Maker is the only perfect place to rest. As we are made smaller, God becomes bigger.
This life is not ours for the taking. This world is not our actual home.
It is His throne we bow down to. Our weaknesses in this season, He is using to strengthen us and make us all whole and holy.
If we want to become whole, we must first become holy.
And I’ll admit, my flesh wants to sprint down the street and leave this confinement. Jump from my seat and declare this isn’t in me, to silence myself to the point where we each must face our own inner demons.
Our past, our future, and the present all seem to collide as the world as we know it is shifting tides and drowning us all to our own inner pride.
Be held.
I rock my little one this morning on the rocking chair God provided before she first came. She becomes still in my arms and melts in the strength of my hands.
Here, she is seen, known, loved fully and completely. She doesn’t wrestle with her weakness, try to pull off her eye patch. She knows she is accepted, loved and known fully.
Yet, why do we run fast from God?
When our earth shakes, and people we love get sick? Why do we despise our own weakness? Justify insensitively, others illness?
Why do we rationalize or intellectualize our situations in hopes to place it in our own control?
God is in it all. He is big and overshadowing this thing called Coronavirus. Yet, He also meets us in the small.
In these times, we can throw off what’s trying to help us, despise what God has given us to refine us, spotlights directed at what most burdens us…
Still, God is near, not far. He is listening, present and able.
He hasn’t left us, friends. He just wants us to run to His lap and rest. He longs for us to stop removing the patch, so we might see. Keep wearing what aids us so that we might hear.
We have been a deaf and blind people. And we need the saving grace of Jesus.
We need His sovereign arms to hold us. We aren’t as strong as we think.
Jesus is the only answer. He dwells with us…
Even now, while in quarantine.
1 Comment
Much good will come from thisquarantine.
I am already convinced of this after just 2 days in lockdown,
God is with us all, connecting us in the old ways like neighbours talking over fences and younger people offerning to shop for older people who must not go to the supermarket.
May His plans and purposes in all of this, be fulfilled.