Navigating Pandemic Disagreement

Spent the morning with a dear one today. Amidst fresh air and coffee, we talked of many things… including how hard it is to live in the tension of disagreeing with those we love in this long season of pandemic.

We don’t always agree, but we hugged when we parted, because that was the most needful thing to say.

Feeling I’d left loose ends, I sent what I hadn’t said. Perhaps a piece will resonate if you’re battling the tension, too.

Grace upon grace, my friends.

“Know that as I express what I think and feel deeply, I am always leaving space for knowing I’m not God and I don’t know the beginning from the end. I’m just making my way like everyone else. And even if I’m disconcerted or downright exasperated with others, I always know that’s not the end of the story or the relationship. I’m committed to that; to wading through the hard and the mystery of Body [of Christ] life.

All from without that’s creating commotion in all our lives, thoughts, motivations, and actions surely is not outside God’s sovereignty. So I ask Him how to sit in and with all this seeming chaos in a way that can somehow cultivate quiet and rest; in a way where bearing with and suffering-long brings redemption and victory.

I am not blind to my own failings—even if I cannot name or see them all.

Of all the crusading for the big and loud things of our time, I have an inkling that our carefulness toward our own hearts and relationships are most needful to turn the tide.

A tested and healed heart ripples. It’s the quieter work that beats beneath, yet moves the life-blood to transform. It does not coerce, but woos and fills by a mysterious grace.

This is the work the the enemy would steal, and he often does in my life. But this is the work that I reach up through the mire to reclaim. At the end of the day, it is only my heart that I can change and let be changed. And when that happens collectively? Well, who wouldn’t wonder and wander after a parade of butterflies?”