Every Tuesday during the school year, I teach a junior high Bible class. This last week, I had them write me questions about the current situation. To my surprise, the vast majority had the same question: “How long will the pandemic/social distancing last?”
That’s the question, isn’t it? Wouldn’t we all like to know? I did a little research and I have well-educated guesses, but they’re just that: guesses. The most optimistic ones I’ve seen with any degree of research behind them discuss the end of May, but I’ve seen models stretching up to a year. New data comes in every day that changes these models, leaving everyone a little stir-crazy and confounded by the uncertainty of it all. However, even if someone managed to set a perfect, accurate date to restart everything, the question would remain. This isn’t just about the frustrations of not having a fixed date to plan around (maddening as it is), but the question every child asks on a road trip at some point: “Are we there yet?” “Are we there yet?” is not actually about arrival, just like “How long will this last?” isn’t just about dates. A kid can look out the window and see that they’re not there yet. Both questions really mean something along the lines of, “I’m really tired of being cooped up in this enclosed space and want it to be over already so we can get to the good stuff.” I don’t want to be trite in invoking the old saying, “It’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey.” I’ve traveled enough to tell you that I really wish someone would invent transporters so that one can go from LA to Europe/the Middle East/South America/wherever without the day and a half’s worth of brutal, tedious flying in between. The older I become, the less patience I have for these long flights and the jetlag they give me. In my teens and college years, it was exciting and fun to board a long-haul flight and wonder what people I’d meet on the plane, have uninterrupted reading time, enjoy drinks I don’t have at home (soda and coffee), and catch a movie or several that I haven’t seen before. I’ve even crocheted whole scarves on long-haul flights. Back then, I might’ve actually invoked the journey-not-destination thing. Now, my body gets crabby from the inactivity, persistent noise, irregular sleep, and incredibly dry air. Air travel has become something I put up with to get where I want to go, a disciplined art of building anticipation for the destination through suffering and delayed gratification. To survive a long-haul flight, a road trip, or our current situation, we don’t have to pretend that the journey is as good or better than the destination. We just have to get through it. Getting through it is a mind game: what can I do with the resources at hand to make this experience enjoyable, or at least bearable? Seasoned travelers prepare for their flights with ear plugs, reading materials, games, headphones, sleep masks, chewing gum, a water bottle to refill in the airport, comfortable clothing, and snacks to supplement the airline’s (usually) meager offerings. For a road trip, there is a similar dynamic, just with fewer space restrictions and the guaranteed ability to look outside the window. To dig in for this long-haul journey we’re all experiencing, we need to assess what resources we can call on to make it to the destination. There is an art to waiting, and a number of approaches to doing it that all work for different people at different times. We will be looking at some of those this week, such as distraction, observation, self-care, and anticipation. For now, it is enough to know that this journey will not last forever; even if it takes a while, we will get there. . . eventually.
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AuthorJillian Lutes is the youth pastor at West Covina Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. Archives
May 2020
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