There's a season for everything, and a time for every matter under the heavens ... a time for crying and a time for laughing, a time for mourning and a time for dancing." - Ecclesiastes 3:1,4
"But it could be so much worse."
I can't count the number of times I have found myself saying that to my therapist. "This is bad/painful/uncomfortable/awful ... BUT it could be so much worse." She always patiently responds with "Yes, we can always compare ourselves to someone experiencing something worse. But pain is pain." Sometimes I think that's what therapy, friendships, mentorships, etc. can be, for a lot of us - Listening to someone respond in patience and kindness enough, so when we are going through our daily lives, we can hear their voices and offer ourselves that same compassion.
I have found myself thinking, and saying, that unhelpful thing to myself a lot lately: "But it could be worse." I am so grateful for so many things - extra time with my kids (most days), a job that allows me to work from home, health, technology that connects us. It's easy for me to remember these things when quarantine life gets hard. And like our scripture says, there is a time for everything under the heavens - there is a time for these gratitude practices.
But there's also a time for mourning, and for sadness, and for grief. And friends ... this quarantine life is hard. Some days, it's only a matter of minor inconveniences, and some days - it's really, really hard. And we know, it could always be worse. But playing that pain comparison game and calling it a gratitude practice, well, it doesn't help. In fact, I'd go as far as saying ignoring or distracting ourselves from the pain of isolation and separation by guilting and forcing ourselves to hold a near constant positive outlook, is more harmful than it is helpful.
I want you to know, it is ok to not be ok right now. It is ok to grieve for life as it once was, to name that you were not meant to be a homeschool teacher, to cry every time you put on your mask to leave the house, to have a love/hate relationship with Zoom, and to ache to reach out and hold your neighbor's hand and sing "On Eagle's Wings." Yes, there is a time for joy and for laughing, and there is a time for weeping and for mourning. There is a time to dance, and a time to ache. Maybe, this time is all of those times. Maybe, we dance in the morning and we cry over lunch. Maybe, we laugh on our evening walk and we cry over having to cook dinner. Again. Maybe, we were created to feel not just positivity and gratitude, but sadness and frustration as well. Miraculously, we get to hold space for the complexity of joy and gratitude, and hurt and pain, all of it together. Because God is right there with us, through it all, and I'm pretty sure the God who created us to feel all the feels, can handle all of our feels, too.
- Erynne DeVore, Director of Children’s Ministry