The avalanche of change triggered by one virus…

Friday, February 28th, 2020, 4:30 PM. I got the call the email from our infection control medical director – “Houston – we have a problem” followed by details of the first documented case of community acquired COVID-19 in our state, in our county, in our clinic. I spent the next several months working literally everyday at command central 12-14 hour days while we navigated unchartered territory. I was the Vice President of Nursing at the time and was accountable for all nursing, infection control, employee health and safety, and clinical practice at the time. The Chief Medical Officer and I had to sign off on all new policies, workflows, and critical decisions that impacted our clinical teams.

In some ways it was amazing to have so many teams come together and collaborate in new ways for a common mission. There are moments and relationships during that time that enriched my life and my experiences like nothing else could. You learned to see that we were all on one team, with a unified mission to keep patients and staff safe. I would not have experienced anything like it without the virus invading our world.

But with the virus came the ugliness of what people truly valued. There were many of us that valued safety, mission, and comforting those suffering. There were just as many that valued autonomy, separation from the government, and zealous faith. The stark contrast caused me to evaluate my relationship with my church, close relationships, and purpose in life. The dissonance between what I valued and what my church and close friends valued led me to walk away from church for two years. It led to me divorcing many relationships and making my social circle really small. It led to a prolonged state of grief.

I left my role as a nursing leader, instead stepping into a totally operational role where I could place some distance from me and the moral toll; choosing to focus on the dollars and return on investment. It allowed me to be “business” minded rather than clinically minded. I just could not approve one more policy or protocol related to COVID or infection prevention. The space afforded me to evaluate what I really thought related to my faith and what Jesus was asking us to really do.

Jesus wants us to love God and our neighbor. That seemed hard to do when our church refused masking and blatantly ignored social distancing. That seemed contradictory when abortion abolitionists pushed for public shame and criminalization of those who had an abortion or were involved with abortion. It was soul breaking when congregants supported a known liar and predator in President Trump. So I left the church after over 15 years of serving, engaging, and loving the body.

I know that I love Jesus with all of my being. I’m grateful for a God that meets us where we are. I’m humbled by the love and grace poured out on me. But I refuse to embrace hate, bigotry, exclusivity, and Christian Nationalism. I’m still a weary soul. So much is broken in me while I continue to focus on healing. I share all of this so that someone, somewhere knows that things will break us, circumstances will shatter what we hold dear, and growth is excruciatingly painful. Yet, God loves us, holds us, and meets us where we are. He can handle our weariness and rage. Thought COVID broke me and changed my whole world…. I KNOW that God is there and He has not allowed me to be defined by my grief. Praying for joy and peace for all of us….

When your mom dies you join a “club” you never wanted to join. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how old she is, what your relationship was like, what it wasn’t. You join the ranks of women everywhere who experience grief and longing and you go behind the veil, you go to the place of knowing loss in a way that is palpable. You know what your children will feel one day and you can’t stop it.

My best friend’s mom is dying. She is coming home on hospice tomorrow and she will begin the journey towards loss and grief. Joining her and supporting her on this journey is bringing with it a tidal wave of feelings for myself. For my own history of loss, of belonging to this club. Damn I miss her so, so much.

When my mom died, my good friend Sarah and I went to Macy’s to buy something for me to wear to the funeral. I had just turned 33 (I found out my mother died on my 33rd birthday, the night prior) and had not attended a lot of funerals – basically I didn’t have anything appropriate for a graveside service and reception. I was in a Macy’s dressing room, half dressed looking in the mirror and started to laugh-cry. She asked if I was ok, I opened the door and looked at her and said “I just realized I’m one of those women, the women who’ve lost their mother – it feels like a club you never want to join.” I wanted to rescind my membership.

I was so, so angry when she died for so many reasons. It would take years and medication for me to grieve her properly and honestly I’m still not sure I have. I remember seeing this picture and quote for the first time several years ago and I realized so much of my anger was grief. Grief for so many things, including her. My mother will go down as the most tragic love story for me. I so wish I could have saved her.

If you have a friend whose mom is dying or has died – give her grace, love her, and know she is going through something so awful, palpable, and irrevocable. Love her well, show her mercy, and just be present. There is nothing you can say, nothing you can do, but love her in all her rage, all her sadness, all her helplessness. She’s joining a club that she doesn’t want to join, receiving a membership she can’t give back.

I shouted at him “You’re acting like a crazy person!” while he sat there, with a flat affect, looking straight ahead across the kitchen table into nothingness. I knew I had gone too far, was too angry with him and yet I said it. He was supposed to be home an hour earlier as he was grounded, and it was the last day of school. He wasn’t responding to my verbal injections, my attempt to get a rise out of him. He just sat there, like he wasn’t even engaged, didn’t care and it was pissing me off.

Before I even started, I knew I shouldn’t have engaged. It was the last day of my job, I had just quit my job with no plan other than to help fix my family. Our world had descended into a giant ball of overwhelmingness and I knew I needed to right size things. I was working in downtown Seattle, gone 60-70 hours a week because of the commute and nature of the job, chasing my career dreams. My poor husband felt like a single dad, afraid to vocalize his heightened levels of anxiety because he didn’t want to crush my dreams. But I could tell he was hanging by a thread and it was impacting our relationship, which is never good.

We had spent the last year watching our son slip away from us. He was failing school, depressed, and not effectively coping with anything. We had tried various counselors and antidepressants before but with little effect. This last year was different though. In late February he tried to kill himself by taking an overdose of Tylenol. Something beyond the “normal” depression he’d been exhibiting had settled in. It was big, we were scared, and quite frankly not proactive enough.

I called him crazy on June 15^th. On October 10^th, he would run away, and the first episode of mania would reveal itself. By the end of October, we would realize he was at least bipolar and possibly had schizoaffective disorder. I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. He still brings up that I called him crazy that day because I think it hurt him and it scared him, confirming what he’d already been considering himself.

By the end of October, he had gone through months of seeing faces in the wall, feeling like people were watching him, and hearing voices from creatures that were threatening to hurt him. He would have days where he could barely get out of bed, be so depressed and feel so worthless that he wasn’t worthy of living. When the mania hit, I knew exactly what it was and was relieved we’d established a relationship with a psychiatrist and a counselor. I also felt relief, it was something I could grab onto and work with, a potential diagnosis with interventions my medical background could work with. I’m a nurse, that means I know how to educate, advocate, and coordinate.

Our journey is just beginning, and we’ve switched care teams, but I feel like we are on the right path. I found more manageable work closer to home, my husband and I prioritize supporting one another, and my son isn’t crazy. He’s a young man with mental health disease that we are trying to normalize, trying to survive some days, and fighting for a future where he is enabled to be his best self.

I plan to share our history, our journey, and our goals through these postings. Perhaps its cathartic, perhaps it is healing of a sort, and perhaps it will help others not feel so alone in their own journey.

What does it mean to be weary? According to Dictionary.com it means to be physically or mentally exhausted by hard work, exertion, strain, etc.; or to be fatigued or tired. To me being weary is a bone deep, soul crippling exhaustion of my essence that starts the moment I wake up and that fills me as I drift off to sleep in the wee hours of the morning.

I know that I am a weary woman most days. If we are being honest, I hate that I feel this way. I hate that it I feel less than and imperfect in my make-up to not be able to handle what life throws at me; that I am so exhausted by it I’d rather numb myself out playing a stupid game app on my phone, avoid paying my bills, or eat half the bag of Tim’s Cascade chips because it feels better than accepting my weariness.

When you are weary, you start to question your life, your responsibilities, and your choices. Should I have gone to graduate school? Do I need to work full time? Should I have taken that promotion? Do the kids need to be enrolled in 27 after school activities? How are we going to pay for the new fence? Should we have started our son on that new ADD medicine? How are we going to deal with my aging mother in law? Can we really take on another church responsibility? How can help my husband achieve his dreams when there is no time?

While reading my Bible this week, I was struck with the notion that God is sovereign in my weariness, planning for it, and utilizing it to draw me to Him. The perfect example of His glory and strength revealed through my weakness.

Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 40:28-31 NIV

I am blessed with a God who NEVER grows weary, who commands me to cast my burdens on Him so that He may be glorified in His strength and mercies. “Come to Me, all of you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30 HCSB).

When am I going to learn that I cannot go it alone? When am I going to learn that I cannot do this with my own ability, that my Lord has designed me to need Him? To be cared for and satisfied in a way that only He can do? I loathe my weariness only to realize it is what brings me to Him repeatedly. He is going to give me strength so that I can run and not grow weary (look at Isaiah above).

And people, we are running a race. Don’t forget that. Hebrews 12:1-3 states:

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Fix our eyes on Jesus! My sisters in Christ, bring your weariness to Him. Lay it down at His feet, lift that soul deep ache to Him, pray and let His mercies and comfort surround you. I say this as much to myself as I do to you. My prayer this week is that we acknowledge our weakness, our weariness, our need for Him. That we let Him strengthen us and not our own sheer willpower and self-pep talks. Sigh into Him. You know that sigh – the one that rushes through your whole body and your shoulders sag with relief. Though I am weary, He is not. Though I am weak, He is not. Though I am exhausted, He is not. Amen to that.