Running on Empty

If you would have told me months ago that a pandemic was coming, I would have gotten the formula all wrong on what would be easy and what would be difficult. I would have known it would be hard not to go where I wanted, or buy what I needed at the store. I would have known it would be difficult to homeschool 5 kids (although, I would have underestimated that one). What I could have never predicted is how draining this would all be without my people.

As an introvert, I’ve embraced the idea that I fuel my own inner life. It is rich and complex in there, a place long cultivated and run on the gasoline of the Holy Spirit. I paint with broad strokes, minimizing life-giving exchanges, boiling down most interactions to transactions that deplete from that deep well within me. I feel it drain out as I engage with difficult people, and complex situations, and I feel it fill back up when I can get still and quiet to pray. If you would have told me two months ago that my sole engagement in my community would be online, I would have hardly batted an eye. My energy, my life source, I thought, comes from within.

To be clear, I am a stalwart supporter of the local church. I believe deeply in the need for, and the power of, community. Our family shows up for church rain or shine, with or without Drew who often works Sundays. I am aware of my deep need for worship, for liturgy, for teaching. I am, apparently, less aware of how much I needed other people around me to do it.

I am trying, like everyone around me, to make the best of this new era. We hold zoom meetings, and try to catch up on each other’s lives, yelling into cameras, exiting then rejoining meetings that are glitchy. We say “can you hear me?” and feel that the rhythm and cadence of our joking is off.  One person prays, and I spend most of the time fighting the urge to watch the screen, wondering what they look like with their eyes closed, wondering what I look like with my eyes closed. We even take communion together, but we all have different crackers and wine. My pantry is running on empty, so last Sunday our family communion was animal crackers and apple juice. It’s still unleavened bread and fruit, not from a vine, but a tree. Does it matter? What makes communion the eucharist? What makes the people around me my community?

Maybe other people are less bothered by online church, because they have become accustomed to online community. I have friends across the spectrum on their spiritual journey. Some have never stepped inside a church, some view it as a bygone era of their childhood. Some worship at the altar of beach meditation or the NYT crossword puzzle. Some still haven’t found their place and settle for podcasts or online sermons. Some drift in and out, unsure of the importance of their presence anywhere, but have within them a deep yearning for the rhythms of the church calendar, and a place among God’s people. Some have been so wounded by the church, they don’t even want to talk to me about it at all.

I wonder about these people as I lay on my living room floor at 2:30 in the afternoon, magnetized there by some unseen force. Are they as exhausted as I am? I’m sure none of us are sleeping great through a global pandemic. But this feels deeper, a throbbing exhaustion, that keeps me pinned to my bed, or the couch, or the floor almost against my will. It’s as though the centrifugal force of the whole world’s grief spins wildly at the center of the earth, pulling me toward it.

I fight against it, or at least I try.  I have spurts of energy, where I feel unleashed from the pull. I gut my hall closet, or spend 45 minutes inexplicably scrubbing my kitchen backsplash. I can summon an exterior façade for the sake of my kids, but it is still a mask; no matter how fun I try to be, I’d prefer to be under the covers at all times. I can’t help but wonder how much of my exhaustion is sheer loneliness. I am running on empty, and forced to reconsider what fills me up.

I’ve been writing for almost two years now on the concept of soul wilderness, when we find ourselves in unforeseen transition points in our lives: grief, death, loss, change…now, pandemics. I want to learn from people who are brave enough not to keep rushing down the same tired path. They have left something behind that they cannot return to, or that something has died, or will die if left clutched in their sweaty grasp. In this middle place, what once was is gone, and what is to be has not yet revealed itself. I want to talk about how the desert landscape, for those willing to stay in it, does deep and unprecedented formation on the human soul. Wilderness asks the same questions of us now that it did the Israelites who wandered before us: How long will we be here and what do we do in the meantime?

I’m currently writing the conclusion. I like asking good questions, but I almost never have the right answer, which I’ve made peace with, since good questions seem to lead me in a better direction than good answers have. But still, I know that for all the good questions of the desert, for all the ways it reforms our ideas of God and worship, for all its benefits, the desert is still a pitstop, a layover, even if it’s a long one. No matter how much hard, good and beautiful work is done there, the desert is never God’s destination for His people. He is always leading us on to the Promised Land.

I mostly suspect this, because I’ve met people who have stayed in their wilderness too long, who refuse to leave, who bear the victim banner and who have made the desert their identity. They think the Promised Land is for better, luckier people and I just don’t believe that is true.

I’m mulling over these ideas, as I’m prostrate on the ground, trying to teach common core math, and wondering how to get out of my current wilderness. I want to know how to get out of this sandy, barren pandemic and back to life as I know it. I feel more tired every day and no matter how much alone time I have in prayer or silence or meditation, it is never enough to fill up the emptiness. It’s humbling for me to tell you that this realization just dawned on me: I cannot live the Christian life in isolation. I can’t escape the conclusion that the Israelites were led out of slavery in community, they survived the desert in community, and their freedom, eventually, was through community.

Redemption, it seems, is not a one-time act reserved for some, but an ongoing act offered to all.

I’m not sure if this is the conclusion I’ll write, or if it’s just a placeholder. I only know it feels true right now. I only know I am desperate for my community in a way I could have never expected. I wait to be let into a zoom meeting and suddenly faces I know and love pop up onto my screen. They gaze at me casually, just as I left them. Something in their unguarded expressions make tears spring to my eyes. Some are eating chips, some are clicking buttons as they wait for the moderator to begin. They are simply here, waiting for me, like I belong here too. My eyes threaten to overflow. They address me, and I smile, but I cannot speak. My throat closes against my own words.