Rebuilding After the Fire
A few days later, out of nowhere, I developed acute pancreatitis and had a scary hospital stay, followed by a year of illness and debilitating pain. During that time, I had to cancel everything and back out of all commitments. It was an intensely difficult year, and when I eventually regained my health, I was a different person. As it happened, the new person was someone I liked much better than my old self. And the new person was much more cautious about adding things to my life.
During that season, I came across this passage in Hebrews 12 and it was imbibed with new meaning for me:
“This means that all of creation will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable things will remain. Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe. For our God is a devouring fire.”
Hebrews 12:27-29
I was talking to an acquaintance a while back who had had a large house fire and lost a large portion of their home. I asked if the insurance company had to rebuild it the same as it was before. She replied, “Oh, no! The house we have now is not at all the house we had before. The insurance companies know you would never rebuild your house the same.”
Isn’t that a jolting thought? None of us would rebuild our houses exactly the same. I know I wouldn’t. My pantry would be bigger, there’s a certain corner cabinet I would redesign, I would move the laundry room to the other end of the house, some windows would be moved to let in more light…
But here I am, my schedule wiped out, all my patterns of living disturbed, and we are starting to talk of a new normal. According to CNN, many families are discovering a rise in happiness for their children (https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/27/health/children-mental-health-quarantine-coronavirus-wellness/index.html). I have spoken to a handful of friends who struggle with anxiety who say that their anxiety is no longer being triggered. This interests me. It is not my experience. My experience is that the exhaustion of finding new systems for so many patterns of living is sucking my soul dry, so that around the middle of every week I lose all motivation.
Yet I am also experiencing much fruit. There are good things coming out of this for my family, big things, good enough to be worth the heavy cost.
“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
Deuteronomy 8:3
I feel very soul-hungry right now. And I don’t want to sit in it anymore, but I also don’t want to leave it until I figure out what it is my soul is truly hungering for. I met a friend at the park this morning and she and I were giddy as we got out of our cars and anticipated the deep conversations awaiting us on our hike. So that’s one of those things I can declare as a soul-feeding priority in my life as I rebuild. I imagine there are many things that fill space in my life the way that junk food can leave you over fed yet malnourished.
Here we are, talking about the steps to get back to normal life, and many keep throwing around the phrase “new normal.” I don’t get to choose what path the government chooses or what new patterns the culture around me adopts. But as I rebuild my house from the ashes, I can design my life differently. I can recognize this reset as an opportunity to build with the wisdom of experience that I didn’t have the first time I threw it together.
