Lord, I Don't Understand

Lord, I don’t understand. I know that You’re good, but I don’t understand.

Ever been there? Ever prayed those words?

The past 15 months have brought a lot of loss to a lot of people, myself included. Loss of jobs, loss of loved ones, loss of friendships, loss of peace, loss of normalcy…the list goes on and on. Everyone experiences loss and disappointment from time to time. None of us enjoy it, but we all experience it. You see, everything has a price. Nothing is gained without first experiencing a loss.

In the year 2000, I started volunteering with an afterschool program to fulfill a service requirement for one of my college classes. I fell in love with those kids and was asked to stay on as an employee after my volunteer hours were met. The program had about 20 kids in it when I started there. Over the next few years, I became close friends with one of the girls that helped start the program the year before I came along, and eventually, she and I took over the program. We grew that program to 90 kids at its peak and started a very successful summer camp along the way.

We poured our hearts and souls into those programs for 20 years. I loved my job so much that I sacrificed my internship at school so that I could continue to work there and stayed on after I graduated college, not at all using the degree that I earned over those years in school. I didn’t care that I had just spent many years and a huge amount of money on a degree that I was not using because I had found a job that I loved, with people that I loved, caring for children that I loved. I knew that not many people could say that they loved their job the way that I did, so I held onto it for dear life. I was helping to make a difference in the community through these kids and their families, and it felt good to be a part of that.

All of that changed on March 13, 2020, although I didn’t realize it until much later. You see, when we had to shut down, it was supposed to be for just two weeks. We were supposed to stay home for two weeks and then be back to business as usual. My coworker and I continued to plan out curriculum, devotions, and field trips for summer camp. We continued to take registrations for summer camp. We continued to create registration forms for after school for the next school year. We spent countless hours researching best practices for sanitation to keep our kids, families, and staff safe and healthy. We attended multiple meetings to find out when we would be able to open again and what changes we were going to have to make to be able to do so.

Two weeks came and went, and we still weren’t able to go back. The finish line just kept getting pushed farther and farther out. We kept plugging away, planning, strategizing, and emailing the parents to reassure them that we would be there for them again soon. We tried to encourage them with our words, give them tips on how to cope, and provide them with resources that might help with everything that they were dealing with during that crazy time. Every time another extension came, my heart broke a little bit more as I slowly began to realize that we weren’t going back that year, and I was never going to see some of those kids and families again. It hurt because some of our fifth graders had been with us since kindergarten and some had older siblings that had been with us long before they came along. We had built relationships with these families, and it was becoming painfully obvious that we were not going to get a chance to say goodbye. 

We found a way to make peace with that and began to focus all our attention on getting ready for summer camp, still hopeful that we would be back with our work family again soon. We stayed in constant communication with the leadership of the church that we ran our programs out of, and every meeting brought with it a new target date to open back up. Maybe June 15. Maybe July 6. By mid-July most of our parents were starting to have to go back to work and really needed to have childcare lined up in order to do so. At the end of July, we were officially told what we had feared for months…we were never going to open again. Church leadership had decided to shut down its after school and summer camp programs indefinitely. I was crushed.

I know that this seems extremely insignificant in the grand scheme of the tragedy that is COVID-19. I mean, people have lost family members and close friends to this horrible virus and here I am whining about losing a job. Where do I get off, right? You are right to think that. I get it. Despite knowing how insignificant this was in the grand scheme of things, it still sent me into a spiral of depression mixed with anger and a dash of doubt about God and His plans. I was pretty messed up for a while. I found things to distract me from it sometimes, but then something would happen, a song would play, or I would stumble across a photo, or a calendar reminder would pop up and send me into a tailspin again.

I remember driving to a friend’s house in Durham a couple of weeks after receiving the news. On my way there, I kept asking God why. Why is this happening? Why am I feeling this way? Why can’t I just let it go and move on? Why do I keep having these ups and downs? Why am I so sad? God spoke to me so clearly on my drive that day. He said, “You’re grieving." Grieving? Over a job? Is He serious right now? Is that really a thing? I almost laughed out loud until I realized that He was right. I was grieving a job. I was grieving what once was. I was grieving a loss.

It felt so strange to say that, and it still does. I asked my husband one day when I broke down for who knows what reason months after the fact, why in the world I would be grieving a job. He reminded me, ever so gently, of some pretty important facts that I had been overlooking all that time. I basically grew up at that job with those people. I was 19 years old when I started working there. I had spent most of my adult life working at that church running those programs. Those programs were my babies. I had built them (one of them from the ground up) and grown them into the successes that they were. I had learned so much about life and everything about running a business during my time there. And I had done it all with that same coworker by my side the whole time. Now, it had all been ripped away despite how hard I had fought to keep it.

I wish I could say that I am over it now, but that would be a lie. Just two weeks ago, I had a moment that ended with me in tears at the memory of what once was. Who am I kidding? The tears are flowing now as I write this blog post. It has gotten easier, but it is far from over. It comes in waves. There are long periods where I don’t think about it, and then a wave comes out of nowhere and knocks me off my feet again. I still don’t know why it had to be this way. It was not supposed to be this way. I still wonder sometimes if it is okay for me to grieve like this. I question whether God is okay with it. I find myself apologizing to Him for grieving as if He is somehow offended by it. I mean, does this mean that I don’t trust Him and His plan for me? I don’t think it does. I think that He understands. And, if I’m being honest, I think that He weeps with me sometimes over what once was…but I could be wrong.

So why am I telling you all this? I am sharing this piece of my story with you because I believe that you can relate. I believe that at some point in your life, probably within the last 15 months, you have experienced a loss, one that may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things to most people but is debilitatingly heavy and hard to carry for you. I need you to know that you are not alone. I need you to know that I see you. I need you to know that it’s okay to grieve that loss, whatever it is. I need you to know that God is not upset with you or offended by your grieving. I need you to know that I am here, standing beside you, crying with you at times, praying for you always. I also need you to call it what it is. What you are feeling is grief. And it’s okay.

I don’t have all the answers for you on how to get through this. I am still trying to get through it myself and learning along the way. I wish I could tell you the 5 magical steps you can take to get through what you’re going through and be healed from it, but I can’t. The truth is that there are no magical steps that you can take to be healed quickly from the pain that your loss has caused you. You just have to walk through it. What I can tell you is my least favorite scripture verse.

“…he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.” -John 15:2

I really can’t stand that verse. I know that is a terrible thing to say, but it’s true. Those seasons of my life are the worst. The pruning. The cutting away. The loss. The worst part about the pruning season is knowing that I am going to be so much better for it on the other side. I hate knowing that because it makes it that much harder to be angry about it. I would much rather be angry about the pain that I have to endure during the pruning seasons of life. I would much rather be able to be angry at God for allowing me to go through this and not protecting and shielding me from the pain of it all. But I can’t. I can’t be mad at Him for the pruning seasons because I know that the things that are to come on the other side of the pruning will be so much more than I could ever ask or imagine, in the best way. Strangely enough, knowing that makes the pruning slightly easier to take. It doesn’t take away the pain, but it does flood me with hopeful expectancy when the pain comes. I pray it can do the same for you as well. Weeping may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning my friend. You can count on that.