My window is cracked open to let the outside world in as I
start my second week of self-quarantine, as I am sick during the corona virus
pandemic. I hear church bells ping
and birds chirping and the soft patter of rain. It’s a welcome reprieve from
the inside noises I am used to experiencing since my landlord painted my room
and I couldn’t get my window open. Thankfully it is now open and the world
around me calms and quiets me into my thoughts.
I’m aware that words on a paper, though not physical, are memorials
of a time. I want to look back and remember this forced time of solitude,
termed “shelter in place” by the government, and how it brought out so many new
dimensions of our inner lives that we weren’t even aware of. I knew going into
this New Yorkers at least would be overwhelmed that they can’t do anything and therefore the quiet
would force them to recognize the climate of their inner being. I am no
exception.
I am nearly 7 months into a relationship and it’s been
nearly a year since we met. We are
both busy New Yorkers. He works a full time job and I have many social,
artistic, and religious volunteer commitments aside from my part time job. The normalcy of our relationship up to
this point was not seeing each other all week and then sharing extremely
passionate weekends before going back to our daily lives.
Last Monday I started to not feel well. He had taken off work and I was hoping
to spend the day with him, instead I spent it in bed alone. This marked the
beginning of a shift in the routines of our relationship that would continue as
it continued on a grander level throughout the world. Nothing was normal
anymore.
He wasn’t working. I wasn’t working. But we weren’t in
physical contact. We were at our
separate apartments talking throughout the day everyday over text, phone call,
and Facetime video chat. It seemed so strange to me to be totally physically
cut off from him while at the same time having complete access to hearing his
voice and knowing what he was doing every second.
I grew restless and frustrated and wanted the comfort of
being physically held by him. Saturday night he called me and things weren’t
dandy. I was suddenly so insecure. The conversation was disjointed. He was
doing a million things. I felt like I wanted to be the center of attention but
at the same time had completely run out of things to say. This new way of
communicating was bringing up so many new insecurities I didn’t know I had. I
was suddenly at a loss for how to communicate that.
Alone in my room that night after he had dropped off to
sleep I cried and wrote in my journal wondering what was wrong with me. I started painting this picture in my
mind of who I am to my boyfriend, how I think he sees me. In my mind I was crazy, emotional,
dramatic, too young, and far too virginal.
Well, I may have gotten dramatic right based on how this
evening alone went and I practically did go crazy berating myself for not being
the kind of person he would want to be with. But when I told him how I felt essentially asking “who am I
to you?” I was met with so much love, so much tenderness. He likes me. He
actually likes me.
This new normal in our relationship got me thinking about how
God relates to us. I realize his
grace in this whole situation, using it to actually draw my boyfriend and I
closer together. God actually told me as I dropped off to sleep that night, “This
is my mercy for you. You are learning emotional intimacy without physical
intimacy.”
First, this longing for physical closeness that I feel is
like the longing we have for union with God and his longing for us. Remember, God used to walk with Adam in the
cool of the day. Now God is in
Heaven and we are on earth separated by this tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. Christ’s death has given us access to God, but no one has seen his face. Our
way of relating to him is internal and emotional. Our ultimate longing will be fulfilled when we are married
to him in Heaven. What will it
look like to be chilling with God in the Heavenly places, having dominion over
the earth? We can only
imagine. God longs for total union
and that should be our longing as well.
Secondly, this separation is going to bring up insecurities
in our hearts. We are not doing
anything. We tend to put our identities in what we do for the world. In situations of crisis, especially
disease and death, we are forced to recognize how not in control we actually
are. For humans, this can be
terrifying. We go down dark rabbit holes in our minds. In these moments of
crisis we can either reject God or run towards him. We can assume, as I did
with my boyfriend, “he doesn’t care about me.” Or we can ask, “Who am I to you?
Who are you to me?”
I have felt since before we were all physically isolated
that God would use this for his good. He is drawing us to himself. He wants to
meet us on a deep, individual, emotional level. He wants us to learn to develop
emotional intimacy with him.
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