If ever there were a crisis I was made for, this seems like
the one. Stay inside the house and avoid contact with others? I’ve been preparing
for this all my life.
There are probably a lot of other introverts out there who would
agree with me, although I wouldn’t expect them to flock to my side even if they
were allowed to. Social distancing is built into our DNA.
I almost feel guilty when I see how hard the current
situation is hitting so many people. There are a lot of folks who can’t work
and don’t know when they’ll be allowed to, or even if there will be a job (or a
company) waiting for them when all this is over. And I just read a statistic
claiming that as many as 80% of American workers live paycheck-to-paycheck,
which is surely not good news if you don’t know when the next one is arriving.
Workers who are able to do their jobs from home have been
asked to do so; as a computer programmer, it’s no effort at all for me to do
that. In fact, it’s not even an “adjustment” for me – I’ve been working
full-time from home for 17 years now (even with 6 different actual physical
homes in that time).
Side note – now that everyone is posting “tips & tricks”
on how to work from home, I can testify to the truth of what seems to be
everyone’s rule #1: get up, shower, and get dressed like you mean it. I never
go to work in PJs or sweats or even jeans. I have found that the more
informally I dress, the dumber I am, so I always face the day looking like I’m
ready to “leave for work”… except my feet. I rarely wear socks and I literally
have almost no use for shoes.
Because my work situation is exactly identical to what it
was last month, I also don’t feel the same economic pressure that many are
suffering. And as far as “staying in my home” – I would be hard-pressed to even
find a way to leave the house less than I already was. If I didn’t run out of
salty snacks from time to time, I’d probably never experience fresh air.
Notwithstanding all that, there is one way that our current
predicament has hit me hard, maybe harder than I expected it would.
I am a preacher’s kid. The story in my house, or at least
what I’ve always believed, is that I was brought to church on the way home from
the hospital. From that day to this, across the months and years, through an
ever-changing selection of “home" churches, the one thing I knew about my life was
that my week always began with church.
Obviously there have been times when illness or travel or
circumstances prevented me from attending, though if I were able to count them
up I think I’d be pretty amazed by how few of those there were. I can tell you
with a straight face that there has never in my life been a Sunday when I woke
up and just said, “Nah, not today.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not offering this as any kind of
evidence for what an awesome Christian I am. I believe that clichés and memes
often hold great truth, and one of my favorites is “Sitting in church doesn’t
make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car.”
I definitely am, however, a creature of routine, and while I
make every effort not to go to church solely as a matter of routine, the
fact is that it’s been part of my weekly routine since before I could spell church, or anything else.
More than that, when my wife & I moved from New York to
Ohio, we had to sort of reboot our entire lives. We still “went to church”, but
we weren’t really part of a church and I soon found myself becoming seriously
depressed. Church is a big part of my spiritual life, but (especially as an
introvert) it seems to be a significant part of my social life too, and of my overall
sense of “belonging” in this world.
Fast-forward almost twenty-seven years and here I am again, essentially legally prohibited from attending church. My weeks still take the
same basic shape, since I’m still working, but it’s a little like the yeast or
the salt or some other pivotal ingredient is being left out of the recipe.
Easter approaches, and from this vantage point it seems all but inevitable
that we will not be gathering to celebrate the Resurrection. My wife recently
told my daughter that she didn’t think I’d handle that very well… and I’m
afraid I won’t.
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