COVID-19 has swept through the world and created an oddly unifying moment in history. This unity, however, is brought on us by both unexpected and perhaps painful circumstances.
The people contained in their homes across the globe in this season are vastly different. The diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds inside each apartment unit, townhouse or two-flat may literally be continents apart. Individuals may be single or married, have several children or none, own cats or dogs or fish. Nonetheless, at this moment, a single commonality between myself, sitting at a computer in Los Angeles, someone reading a newspaper from a dining room in Munich, and the billions of people between us is that we are all sitting inside and wondering what’s going to happen in the next few months. So much has happened since January. What could be lying in wait within the next four months of 2020?
For Crossing Borders, a new safehouse in South Korea that took the better part of two years to research, plan, fundraise, and prepare has been stalled when only a month away from the starting line. In my own case, the prohibition of gatherings over fifty has suddenly evaporated any plans of a wedding celebration with family and friends and the eager plans for a honeymoon abroad have been dashed. It has been a dreamlike and unreal span of two months.
As Crossing Borders faced an unprecedented season of uncertainty, my fiance and I found ourselves discovering a similar season in our own lives as we navigated through cancelled venues and informing our guests and families of a postponed wedding. In a time we expected to be one of the most adventurous seasons of our life together, planting roots for a new future, we instead discovered an oddly cyclical and mundane season of waiting without a clear future. The purpose and drive we had held in anticipation seemed to have swerved off course.
The two of us spent the time in much thought and conversation. The result was a mixture of hopeful, anticipatory prayer and tentative first steps. My fiance and I decided to proceed with a private wedding with a few family members in the backyard of her parents’ home. At the wedding, she laughed as she recalled a nightmare she had only a month prior. “I dreamed that we were unprepared for the wedding. That we were scrambling to figure out what music to play, where to hold the ceremony, who would officiate.”
She was wearing small flowers she herself had picked that morning in her hair. She wasn’t sitting at the table of a reception area of a golf club but instead on the metal chair of her backyard patio. We hadn’t even had time to get wedding bands. I wore her father’s old ring, which was too big and kept slipping off my finger. But she was laughing. “Basically, my nightmare looked exactly like the ceremony we had today.” None of the wedding was what we planned, but it was joyful nonetheless.
Today, the two of us sit at home as we realize we may have been halfway across the world on our honeymoon if things had gone according to plan. We wonder if there are others going through the same in many different ways. Perhaps there was no better way to teach us to deliberate what lies in uncertainty. At the same time, the two of us are praying for guidance and wisdom in taking the right next steps. We want to plan and invest time in seeking good counsel and support, even as we get ready for the unknown ahead.
Crossing Borders, in this season, has expressed exactly the same. Oddly at work, I find myself in the same position as I am in my personal life. In the midst of the coronavirus, it has been a fruitful season of prayer and pause for our missionaries and staff, reflecting faithfulness, hope, and the individuals we have reached in China. Our staff is gathering to pray for the women and children we know have struggled through much greater for much longer, adversity. They, too, are waiting on a change - deliverance from their fears, uncertainties, oppression. It has been a season to remind us that we are incapable of serving them at all without prayer. Simultaneously, Crossing Borders is preparing the resources to minister to North Koreans in China and hopefully, in South Korea soon. They are in great need, now more than ever.
I don’t think it would be wise to say that a definitive lesson has been learned through this season. It is still a developing experience and for many there is a great deal of pain and hardship. It is too early to say that we have adopted peaceful and productive living in the coronavirus. There may be more waiting, more confusion, more unexpected difficulties to come. It is possible to say, however, that in new and refreshed ways, I want to be prepared and Crossing Borders wants to be ready. But there are clearly some things that no amount of planning can help me, my new marriage or Crossing Borders overcome easily.
A hidden joy in the midst of the unknown, the operative word being hidden, is a hope in something greater than our deepest fears and our most unclear moments. I have found some peace, certainty and comfort in faith in these circumstances - especially the ones that were not planned. I hope I will remember this truth often in this season. It is uncharacteristically optimistic of me, but I hope that this will be true for many of us united in waiting as well.
Psalm 62:8
“Trust in Him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before Him;
God is a refuge for us.”
