At the beginning of this year, I felt quite strange when I realized that my word for 2020 was "middle." I thought for sure that I was missing something or that I certainly heard the word wrong. As 2020 moved forward, I felt that "middle" was actually where I would be all year. Oddly enough, many of us were looking forward to a year of vision and clarity (20/20, right?). Instead of perfect vision, it has seemed like our vision has become exactly the opposite and resulted in so much confusion and poor vision.
2020 has consisted of a myriad of emotions that have included fear, panic, anxiety, and anger causing animosity, conflict, and division. The world seemed to have shifted on its axis when the medical world warned of the most recent pandemic - COVID-19. This was complicated in America by the fact that 2020 is a major election year in which the current United States president was running for re-election against the previous vice president. This election was the end of a long four years of a presidency that people either approved of or violently hated. The extreme emotions resulted in a severely divided country. The United States have become anything BUT united. To top it off, racial conflict erupted into even more division and hatred, causing violent protesting and rioting, a horrible ripping apart in families, communities, even churches. 2020 has been nothing if not quite surreal. As I write this, I feel more in the middle than I ever have. The year has not ended and there continues to be uncertainty in the election, in the pandemic rules vs power and control from policy makers, and in what 2021 will look like.
2020 has consisted of a myriad of emotions that have included fear, panic, anxiety, and anger causing animosity, conflict, and division. The world seemed to have shifted on its axis when the medical world warned of the most recent pandemic - COVID-19. This was complicated in America by the fact that 2020 is a major election year in which the current United States president was running for re-election against the previous vice president. This election was the end of a long four years of a presidency that people either approved of or violently hated. The extreme emotions resulted in a severely divided country. The United States have become anything BUT united. To top it off, racial conflict erupted into even more division and hatred, causing violent protesting and rioting, a horrible ripping apart in families, communities, even churches. 2020 has been nothing if not quite surreal. As I write this, I feel more in the middle than I ever have. The year has not ended and there continues to be uncertainty in the election, in the pandemic rules vs power and control from policy makers, and in what 2021 will look like.
Living a year in the middle has been fascinating, and painful.
I was raised in the South, and attended school in inner city Savannah, Georgia - only a mile or two away from the Projects. In my elementary, middle, and high school years I was one of the minority. Diversity and racial inequality was something I was raised to be very familiar with. To see this explode across the country was incredibly painful to me. To have the limelight shine on poor choices by a small percentage of law enforcement and watch the media stir the pot by leaving out parts of the stories. To watch and hear invalidation on both sides. To believe that all people are created equal while listening as opposing sides are pushed further and further away from reconciliation - it has been mind boggling.
I was raised in the South, and attended school in inner city Savannah, Georgia - only a mile or two away from the Projects. In my elementary, middle, and high school years I was one of the minority. Diversity and racial inequality was something I was raised to be very familiar with. To see this explode across the country was incredibly painful to me. To have the limelight shine on poor choices by a small percentage of law enforcement and watch the media stir the pot by leaving out parts of the stories. To watch and hear invalidation on both sides. To believe that all people are created equal while listening as opposing sides are pushed further and further away from reconciliation - it has been mind boggling.
To witness people lose their livelihoods due to this pandemic and mandated quarantine and watch people lose their lives to this illness that no one really seems to understand, is an experience our culture has never experienced before. I even found myself shifting my therapy practice to strictly online in order to maintain safety for myself and my clients. That was a move that I never saw coming for my job. Giving up my office that we worked so hard to make a safe space for people to come into was hard for sure. We seem to have now morphed into a world of maskers vs non-maskers, creating even more divide. I go for days with never even leaving my home due to all of this chaos and uncertainty. This is, for sure, a different world than I ever thought I would live in. Church buildings were closed and we attended church virtually. Schools were closed and also done virtually. Then we have physical health (pandemic) vs mental health (isolation, depression, anxiety that has increased suicide rates enormously). I try to navigate myself and my client's mental health as they live in the same confusing world that I do. I feel right in the middle of it all.
Now onto the election that has divided families, churches, communities, and basically every aspect of life. There are people who voted out of fear. People who voted out of pure hatred over the sitting president. People who have spent his entire four years in office working to get him out. Now a massive division trying to figure out if there was truly election fraud, if the media is fake news, and which media one can believe.
People are allowed to protest with no fear of legal ramifications or blame for spreading the illness, and yet with political power and control manipulation, churches and places of worship are being shut down, taken to court, and blamed for being "super spreaders." The only choice we seem to have is to stand on one side or the other. If you are one end of the spectrum, you're selfish and don't care about your neighbors or families. If you are on the other end, you're a control freak and want to have a communistic or socialistic society. Where is the middle? Do we have to be on one side or the other? People in some states are being fined for having holiday gatherings with family members, or for gathering for weddings, funerals, birthdays, etc. Family members are dying alone because of Fear. Mothers are giving birth with no family in the delivery rooms due to the same fear. WOW!!!
Now onto the election that has divided families, churches, communities, and basically every aspect of life. There are people who voted out of fear. People who voted out of pure hatred over the sitting president. People who have spent his entire four years in office working to get him out. Now a massive division trying to figure out if there was truly election fraud, if the media is fake news, and which media one can believe.
People are allowed to protest with no fear of legal ramifications or blame for spreading the illness, and yet with political power and control manipulation, churches and places of worship are being shut down, taken to court, and blamed for being "super spreaders." The only choice we seem to have is to stand on one side or the other. If you are one end of the spectrum, you're selfish and don't care about your neighbors or families. If you are on the other end, you're a control freak and want to have a communistic or socialistic society. Where is the middle? Do we have to be on one side or the other? People in some states are being fined for having holiday gatherings with family members, or for gathering for weddings, funerals, birthdays, etc. Family members are dying alone because of Fear. Mothers are giving birth with no family in the delivery rooms due to the same fear. WOW!!!
Living in the middle has been such an experience....Not all fun, but an experience for sure. I feel I am walking out of 2020 with sadness. Looking at where our world has come. Living in a country that historically pulled together when in crisis, but this time is just. falling. apart. I am in the middle. And I am heart broken. Then God reminds me of the history of the world He created. I read the Bible and I remember history, both Biblical and world history. We have been here before. Not in my lifetime or in recent generations, but still we have been there. And throughout this history, we can see God's hands again and again. I am reminded to live where He has placed me, in the middle, looking upwards.
"I lift my eyes to the mountains - where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip - he who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you - the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm - he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore." ~ Psalm 121 NIV
I continue to watch and wait to see where this journey takes us - recognizing even more that God is in control and I need to lean on Him, whether I find myself in the middle or on either side. I am grateful for where He has brought me through this year - where I feel I can see life much clearer from the middle than I would have standing on one side or the other. Now I wait to see where God places clarity in my personal world as we navigate God's calling for my future amongst these changes and uncertainties.
