My heart sank when I heard the emergency alert from the Alberta Government: another set of restrictions and more hard news. I flipped over to my twitter account to look at the numbers: health care systems in jeopardy, protests, blame, and worse. I got the alert sitting around a table with a group of my favourite people: leaders of our church. We had been discussing ways to care for teens, kids, re-gather as a worshiping community, all while looking at budgets and other important details. We, like so many other communities, non-profits, businesses, and families, are stumbling forward with mixed feelings, and some postponed dreams.
It’s not weak to admit when your heart sinks. This week I’ve sat with so many people who have bad news crash over their best plans like waves on a sandcastle. A friend’s brother died of COVID, a child we know has it, another is in the hospital. Still others have lost jobs, are dealing with unrelated illnesses, and broken relationships. Now, a hail storm and election just seems like a matter of course in a season of bad news.
How do we find courage when our hearts sink at bad news in our community? How do we resist the rise of cynicism, anger, and fear? How do we stave off the feelings of doom that come from losing much, and feeling like there is more yet that could slip out of our grip?
On thing we are learning is that complaining and blaming does not heal anything, and conversely, neither does naive optimism – it often just masks over and diminishes our real painful experiences. There is another way to approach the hard times we face: encouragement. It is something we give and receive. Notice that the word, ‘encourage’ has ‘courage’ at the core. Courage is a decision, when fear is often a reaction. We actively choose courage and find ways to set the table for others to be courageous with us. Anxiety is real for many of us, but courage is the reminder that fear does not have to stop us in our tracks. We can take another step.
JRR Tolkien wrote that “Courage is found in unlikely places.” Many of us would not have expected that a pandemic would be the great trial that would put our character to the test. But in the same way that we have been surprised by the challenges of this great pandemic upheaval, we may also be surprised to discover that encouragement we need to endure this season may be found nearby.
In our neighbours and close friends we have an unlikely source of encouragement. Our neighbours are those who may know the suffering of this season and don’t downplay its impact – because they’ve experienced it, too. Like us, our neighbours may have good days, and bad, but together we can find in each other the encouragement we need. Like a muscle, encouragement grows and strengthens the more we use it. To give and receive encouragement flexes what we need the most when we are stuck or hurt.
Encouragement can come in many forms: a gift, a card, a text or a call. These in themselves are not hard to make. The challenge comes in the actual doing of the thing, and for this we need to trust. When we trust that we can actually find encouragement between us and those in our community, then the emergency alerts that ring in the night do not need to make us afraid. We begin to see that we are not alone and that we have others to walk with us. We can be of good courage even when we feel like the wind has been knocked out of us because we have others who can help us catch our breath.
