When Life Changes Over Night
By Shelby Mayer
It’s the last semester of my senior year of college. Coronavirus has become an epidemic, spreading fear and anxiety across the entire world. Humanity is being told to isolate themselves at all costs, closing schools and universities, clearing shelves in grocery stores, and giving anyone who coughs a dirty look and 6 feet of space. It’s the last semester of my senior year of college, and my university has just announced they’re moving to online classes for at least three weeks. Everything I’ve worked on has been canceled in the last 5 hours: my solo in cabaret, my team’s first home game, my performance at our alumni dinner, all gone in a matter of minutes.
I find myself becoming increasingly more and more frustrated, thinking to myself, “Well, this is gone, but at least there’s this!” Over and over again, my plans dissolve before I can even pray for them to stay. I ask God again and again, “Why this? Why now?” In a time of stressful school work, overwhelming post graduation plans, and a world of unknowns, I found sanctuary in my activities. But they’ve been taken away, and it just isn’t fair.
A lot of my classmates are celebrating, thinking that it’ll be just one big vacation. Some others are like me: heartbroken over lost opportunities and hard-work tossed aside. None of it makes sense, and none of it has to, because at the end of the day, it’s simply out of my hands. But if it’s out of my hands, what am I to do about my disappointment, anguish, and frustration over everything I’ve worked so hard to bring to fruition? It’s times like these, sitting in my apartment wondering what the heck I’m going to do now, when I am most grateful for my faith and my God.
Imagine for a moment this has happened to you (chances are something very similar recently did). If you had gone through this intense of a disappointment, this suddenly, and didn’t have God to turn to, what might your life look like? My guess is it would be filled with even greater confusion -confusion about why this is happening, why to you, what does it mean, what is its purpose, where is it coming from? My guess is that you would be filled with a confusion so great that the only cure for the anguish would be to set all questions aside, best you could, and accept everything under the lens of luck and chance.
You’re just unlucky, that’s all it is, just the randomization of the cosmos. Nothing to explain it, it just sucks. However, when we have God, everything changes. We may not have any concrete answers of why, what, and when, but we have something greater. We have hope, faith, and love.
Hope, that whatever has come will be avenged in a far greater way. That whatever has been taken away from you will be given back tenfold. That no matter what you go through, you will be taken care of, even if it’s not in the ways you expect.
Faith, that the God who breathed life into your soul is holding you in the palm of His hand. That no matter what happens, He will always be with you, and that He loves you more than anything. That even if everyone else leaves, He will be ever at your side.
Love, that drives our daily life, even in the midst of heartbreak. That keeps us taking one step forward, and keeps our eyes fixated on He who is Love. That allows us to turn to our brothers and sisters, suffering with them and for them, because we know that we are all one body in Christ our Savior. But if our God is supposed to love us so much, why on earth would He take away things we hold so close to our hearts? Why would He leave us feeling empty and frustrated over opportunities and experiences lost? This is something that I have struggled with for years, and will probably continue to struggle with for years to come. However, I think the answer is quite simple, although increasingly difficult for our hearts to accept. But maybe God took these things away for our benefit. Maybe He took them away to not make us suffer in despair, but to have us ache for Him as He aches for us. Maybe He took these small moments away from us, to show that better gifts are on the way. Again, this is hard to grasp, especially in the midst of such heartache, but I believe that if we fix our eyes not on what we could have had, but who we already have, that He will guide our gaze towards what’s to come.
The life lived with God is no less painful than the one lived without. It isn’t any more glamorous, or exciting, or secure. But it is more peaceful. And at the end of the day, when so much you care about has been ripped away, and you feel too weak to give anymore, our eyes gaze up, and we see a Father who is ready to catch us when we fall, hold us when we’re hurting, and teach us how to start again.
