Pandemic

I just sat in a very long meeting where several people stared across a table at masked faces trying to make decisions for the many students, families, and teachers that come to this building to learn and grow together. We tried to make choices and policies for a community with a glaring lack of solid information and a plethora of contingent situations. I sat and listened and inside I was in mourning.

This is not the hardest season of my life.

I think back on the moments, growing up in Ecuador when we had to navigate what school was as volcanic ash descended on the city. We sat in dorm rooms with packets of worksheets, windows taped shut as dorm brothers sang, “it’s the end of the world as we know it,” making the youngest kids cry.

I think back to watching a tank roll down the empty street in front of me. Tear gas and the sound of gunfire still lingered in the air, and with a quickened pulse and a packed bag of essentials I waited for news of a fallen government, evacuation orders, or both.

I think back to laying in my bed after having just thrown up. I  painstakingly dragged myself across the cool tile floor, exhausted from this Dengue Fever chewing away at my blood, covered in rashes, too weak to lift water to my mouth, and burning up.

I have been through worse, is what I think looking around at creased brows surrounding me at 6 foot intervals. 

And still, I want to mourn. I am a TCK who has walked in and out of many cultures, communities, and scenarios. I know this digital space we are forced to live in because all of my people live on the other side of the world and thus the other side of a screen. But I want to mourn. I know what can be lost here. That’s what this is. Loss. And I know that saying goodbye in loss is valuable and important. So tonight as I plan many virtual tutorials, attempting to use the gifts life has given me in adjusting and adapting to guide others, I will take time to mourn what this Virus is dropping my community into: loss. And then, like I have experienced again and again, life will move forward, things will end and other things will begin. This is the turning of the earth. Remember: it is hard now, but life will not be like this forever..


How have your previous life experiences prepared you for this season of life?