Stories can sustain us. As we have been walking through this desert of COVID 19, we have been hearing stories. Stories of despair. Stories of hope. Stories from around the world as people experience loss, courage, despair, hope.
I have been revisiting stories that provide me strength in my times of confusion. I remember stories of my Dad who lost his father when he was 16 during the Great Depression . He inherited the responsibility for taking care of his mother. He hopped freight trains, travelled across the Great Plains to work in a CCC camp planting trees in Colorado. In poverty and responsibility he did what he had to do to provide care and survival. He lived because he loved.
And as a Christian I am remembering stories of our spiritual forbearers. Moses’ loving mother placing her baby in a basket and putting him in the river to give him a potential future. Jacob going to meet his alienated brother, wrestling with the angel of fear and unknowing at Jabbock. Jesus, in the garden, wrestling with loss of control and an unknown future as he waits for his execution. Women staring in an empty tomb uncertain where to turn. The Disciples, sent into the world without the presence of their physical leader. In empty space of unknown they lived because they loved.
As I rehearse these stories I am struck by what they have in common. They are all stories of a disruption of plans and dreams. They are crises caused by loss of something that mattered. They are empty spaces filled with questions about the unknown. And, they are stories about people growing spiritually. They are whispers of hope.
Any crisis is not only physical. But, it is also a crisis of spirit. How do we live? How do we move forward when we don’t have what we once had? What do we value? What is the best way forward? How many miss-steps can I take and still forgive myself and move forward?
By rehearsing these stories of courage in the face of empty spaces, I think, “If they can do it, maybe I can too.” I don’t always feel that I can handle this. But in the storehouse of my memory, I have known others who have survived. I hear my Dad whisper me hope. I have been fed on stories of women and men living into the questions that inhabit the unknown future. I hear a choir softly singing me hope.
And I can get up and take another step into that future with hope that I will have strength for the step beyond the next one.