Words of Hope When a Pandemic Hits

Because, you know, pandemics hit us so often and we all know exactly how to respond.

Wow. What is there left to say?

I was thinking today about how best to serve my readers this week and in the weeks ahead, and I realized that there are posts I’ve written in the past that could be a comfort to you right now, too. There are so many voices out there commenting on the COVID-19 crisis, and who needs yet another? I mean, really—what is there left to say?

But I don’t want to leave you without hope. There is always hope. Knowing that we have a savior who loves us so, here are some words of hope in times of crisis:

If I Did Not Have the Hope of Heaven, I Could Not Go On One More Day

I Know It’s Difficult to Swallow When Times Are Tough, But God is Always Good

When You Need to Be Reminded of the Gospel

Lost and Found Printable Graphics for You

Parents, Why is It So Difficult to Give Grace to Ourselves?

100 Scripture Verses to Memorize—An Essential List

The last article is one I wrote for Key Life this week, so I’ll point you to their website. It’s for those of you who find yourself suddenly homeschooling, and it offers hope for the struggles that go right alongside children being at home all day long.

Don't Want to Homeschool Your Kids? Here’s the Remedy

I’ll leave you with a few pictures from my phone that could spark a little joy today:

Cookie Dough Balls with healing properties (just kidding)

Spring Daffs, Columbia, CA

My grandbaby. I mean, c’mon.

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If I Did Not Have the Hope of Heaven, I Could Not Go On One More Day

The skeptic in me says, “Hope of heaven? Yeah, you hope.”

Last Sunday our son Nate and his wife Jayne canceled dinner with us because he had a migraine. Or maybe the flu.

On Monday he went to the doctor and was given migraine meds.

On Tuesday he went to urgent care, who told him to go straight to the ER. They did a CT and sent him home.

On Wednesday morning he returned to the ER. The doctor casually inquired, “So, how long have you had this tumor?”

On Wednesday afternoon he was flown to UC SanFrancisco with a definitive diagnosis of a brain tumor. He couldn’t see anymore. His vitals were so wonky, he was struggling to even keep his eyes open.

On Thursday his family filled the Neuro ICU and prayed and hoped and wished and cried.

On Friday he had surgery. They pulled that nasty tumor right through his nose.

On Saturday and Sunday he was cared for and given an eye patch and reminded how to stand up and walk, and on Monday—this afternoon—he was home.

We’re all feeling a little sucker-punched. We’ve got your standard panic attacks, stress eating, and anger. Everything hurts.

Hope of heaven.

Yeah. Because we’ve been this road once, twice, three, four times before already. It’s a bad family joke when you’re wondering which Fletcher kid is next.

We’ve weathered a deadly virus and permanent brain damage, a car accident in which I ran over a child, a ruptured appendix and sepsis, and crippling mental illness. And those are just our children. In the past three years, we’ve had our own cancer scare and tumor removal and wept for two precious family members fighting their particular cancer battles.

It’s rough, folks. I’m sick of sitting in ICU waiting rooms. I give up.

Hope of heaven.

I woke up one night in a hotel room in San Francisco last week and heard the words of a John Mark McMillan song we sing sometimes at church:

I could lay my head in Sheol
I could make my bed at the bottom of the darkness deep
Oh but there is not a place I could escape you
Your heart won't stop coming after me

I felt as if my head was lain in Sheol. In hell. I felt hopeless. That last line, though, is the truth of the gospel and the hope that flickers a tiny, tiny atom of light: His heart won’t stop coming after me.

I decide to rest there. It’s all I have.

Some days my theology is rock-solid but most days it isn’t. Most days I’m a skeptic and I question the Bible and I push the cute Christian sayings off the cliff and I cover my ears and chant, “LA LA LA LA LA!” I stamp my foot and put my hands on my hips and square off with God. And still, his heart won’t stop coming after me. His heart. I can sit here in my skepticism and still understand that he loves me.

It’s all I have, folks. The hope of heaven.

If we’re being honest, it’s all any of us have. We just have to ask him to help us believe it. If we can’t, then what hope is there?

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Hope For Parenting the Extraordinary

Before Mighty Joe came along and fought the Enterovirus, I had no real understanding of seizures and medical issues and pretty much anything parents of kids with special needs go through. Joe has fewer "issues" then other kids with brain damage to the extent of his, but we still live our lives in a flux state that has to allow for what happened this morning.

I'm going to spare you the details, but here's what's good for folks without special needs in their homes to know: We parents with these extraordinary kiddos never get to turn off. 

Remember when you had a toddler or two? Remember how you always had to have an ear and an eye cocked in order to know what exactly they were doing at all times? This is the unrelenting reality of the parent of a child with special needs. There is no "off". 

I won't drag you into a pity party because Joe is now 9 and this has been our 9-year reality. It has actually been my 24-year reality because of the older kids and their toddler years that just all smooshed into Joe's life. He's the preschooler that doesn't progress. 

It doesn't end.

I sit with my closest friend-mom-of-a-child-with-special-needs and we spill our frustrations and joys. Kid you not, last night she texted me at 11:30 PM from the ER because her 18-year-old mentally retarded daughter got a ring stuck so firmly on her finger, it turned purple and took an entire ER team an hour to get the offending ring off while she spit in anger and kicked her mother and sister and screamed. 

This morning I texted her that Joe had just finished an 8-minute seizure that showed no signs of stopping until I pushed his heavy body onto its side so I could get the emergency meds suppository administered (that was fun) and watch him come down from the convulsing that left a huge, foaming pool of spit all over him and a sore hand that smacked the wall repeatedly before I got to him and held it down.

Neither my friend nor I know when the next event like these will occur. There is no "off". 

Joe is in the bath as I'm writing this. My day has had to change, from plans to be out and accomplishing tasks to what I can get done while keeping my ears and eyes wide open on him. 

Where is the hope for parents on seizure watch and parents of toddlers and parents of adult kids with the mentality of a preschooler? We're all parenting the extraordinary in one way or another. Where is the hope for me?

Hope always, always, always abounds in the goodness of God. I'm not one for prescribing anything, because I well know after years spent placing my hope in methods and "prescriptions" that the only true hope is in what God has done for us, but if you need a tool of ministry, there is no better RX than the Word of God. Start here?

“ Many are saying of my soul,
‘There is no salvation for him in God.’
But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
I cried aloud to the Lord,
and he answered me from his holy hill.
I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.”

— Psalm 3:2-6, ESV

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