Terrifying
We don’t know how things are going to go.
And it’s terrifying.
Funny thing to keep in mind: the terrifying things of the past never feel as scary as the terror we face now in the present.
Let me explain.
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With any terrible thing that happened in the past, when it was happening, we didn’t know how it was going to resolve.
On the other side of it, from the present looking back at that terrible thing, it doesn’t seem as scary.
Because we know how it resolved.
“Brian,” my cousin David taught me, “Jesus’s followers didn’t know he was coming back.”
Same in the story of the Israelites who saw Moses go to the top of Mt. Sinai. Moses wasn’t texting from the top of the mountain to tell them, “I’ll be back in a few more days.”
No — he was just gone. They didn’t know how the story would resolve.
The present, compared to the past, is frightening.
Too many—well, infinite, actually—possibilities.
And it’s easier to fall asleep at night when we have certainty.
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Think about Y2K, 9/11, Trump 1.0, COVID-19, BLM, and January 6.
All terrible things which were terrifying.
Are they as scary now looking back on them?
No, because the seemingly limitless possibilities of those events have settled more comfortably in what we see as the past.
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We were home, at Friday night dinner—before lock-down but when we knew there was a virus spreading—when we told the kids about COVID and tried to answer their questions.
We couldn’t tell them that a vaccine would be available by the end of the year.
We couldn’t tell them how long they would be out of school.
We didn’t know that at the time.
That night we didn’t know that the biggest supply chain failures would be toilet paper, flour, webcams, disinfecting wipes, and hand sanitizer.
That night I couldn’t help foreseeing farm workers dying and food becoming scarce.
It was terrifying.
Not knowing was terrifying.
Not knowing is terrifying.
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And we are back to not knowing.
We don’t know how things will turn out.
And it’s scary.
My best advice?
Be kind to yourself.
And others.
