THOUGHTS ON COVID-19 TO MY WORRIED SELF
- Sarah Powers
- Mar 20, 2020
- 4 min read
These last few weeks have been unreal. Up until a few weeks ago I was certain that the Coronavirus we had been hearing so much about would not effect us drastically or change our daily lives. But boy was I wrong!
The events of the past few weeks have been scary and full of uncertainty. Our lives have been impacted in ways we could not have seen coming. We are constantly hearing news that only feed into into our feelings of stress and fear.
Personally, I have been dealing with a lot of worry, stress, and even anger towards the predicament we have all found ourselves in today.
I worry about my loved ones who I want to protect and keep safe from the virus. I worry about the elderly and immune compromised people that I know. I stress over what this means for my husband's and I's future. I'm angry because I've lost my job due to the Coronavirus. This has caused me to spiral even more into feelings of panic, of worry, boredom, and embarrassment as I am now unemployed.
My response to all this has been to want to lock myself up in my apartment and stay away from the chaos of the world until it goes away. I've let myself become pulled into reading every news story and every social media post.
And it has not left me in an unhealthy place. I've been nauseous, lost my appetite and my nerves have been on edge (my poor husband) as I've let my fear win the battle against my faith in God.
But I'm realizing it is times like these that my faith is being tested. So even more then ever I have to cling onto the promises of God.
"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, love, and self-control."
So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
I don't know about you, but when I read these verses in light of our current events they hold a new level of peace and comfort to me.
Our world is a scary place but our God is stronger then any unknown that we are facing.
I take comfort knowing that nothing we are facing is beyond God's control. This isn't the first tragedy our world has seen and it won't be the last. I'm so thankful that God has given us a whole book of promises to cling to during a time of crisis, fear and a world pandemic.
I want to close by sharing a quote by C.S. Lewis. At the time that C.S. Lewis wrote this quote our world was facing another tragedy, the Atomic Bomb. You can only imagine the feelings of fear and panic that many people in the U.S must have felt unsure if or when an attack might happen. Although C.S. Lewis is talking about a different world crisis, I think the same advice can hold true to what we are facing today with the Coronavirus.
**Please know that I am not suggesting we not take COVID-19 seriously. Every precaution, social distancing and measure that we can take to slow the curve is necessary and I am not suggesting otherwise.
"In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."
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