Like many of you, I found 2020 to be a difficult year, but I think I found it difficult in different ways. Astoundingly, this was a good year for me in ways where other people struggled. I remained employed all year, and, because older adjuncts decided to opt out of teaching for personal safety, I got extra work AND extra pay to fill their shoes, meaning that I had work to do and money aplenty. Fortunately too, I stayed healthy. However, I struggle to figure out God’s will, why what I hope and pray doesn’t happen. I also don’t understand why what I know and learned and believed did not transpire this year. In unexpected ways, this became a year that tested my faith. Granted, I went back to church, and eagerly so, but I sat there today in a congregation of only 17 people and wondered where everyone else was. I am starting to wonder if I am the problem, if God is silent because of me. Without other people or distractions or activities, I’m all that remains that I can actually affect.
The pandemic continues, much to my shock, awe, and dismay. Back in March, I expected it to blow over soon and that we’d return to normal for fall term. I was wrong. In November, our moron governor increased limits on gatherings, and all of our classes were pushed online, and I was sequestered alone in my house again. During April, the prophet asked us to pray and fast for relief from Covid, and yet the virus continues, or at least the fear and panic does. I look at the data, I remember what I learned about the Coronavirus family when teaching Microbiology, and I think of how months passed before I even knew anyone infected. I see them fudge numbers to count Covid deaths and marvel how Covid cured everything except cancer. Nobody dies of heart disease, diabetes, gunshot wounds, car crashes, or even old age enymore. It’s all Covid. Why is it still here? Even the election didn’t end the covid hysteria.
All year, my personal hopes have been dashed. Even before Covid, I was passed over for another promotion. The message seems to be “Hitherto art thou come, but no further.” I watch people around me who are less qualified, capable, virtuous, or motivated treated better, and I watch as the governor cut everyone’s pay equally, without regard for the fact that some of us were “essential” and continued to work for our pay while others sat ahome and watched Jerry Springer in their pajamas. I pray, and I ask God for things, and even last week, the message came as ‘I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request”. Why do I bother to pray? If I don’t pray, I “receive not because [I] ask not” but when I pray and say “Thy will be done,” it’s as if God says, “Good, you weren’t going to get that anyway.” Plus, this summer, our last family dog died, and I couldn’t be with her when they put her to sleep because of Covid. I watched the last of our family dogs die, and I couldn’t be with them at their end. I finished the remodel I started back in January by the end of June, but now there’s nobody here with whom to enjoy the new house. It’s a pretty place that nobody may ever see.
My sister thanked me last week for “always reminding [her] to inquire of the Lord”, but I wonder how adept I am. Does God talk to me or do I hear what I want to hear? Did I misunderstand Him? Did He talk to me at all? This is not a new phenomenon; I have at other times felt adrift and alone. In truth, 2010 was the worst year of my life. I took a paycut then too during a budget crisis, got accused of crimes I didn’t commit, got in a car wreck, lost more money to my ex wife, had to give up on a house I really liked and cover for a coworker when she took 15 weeks off and didn’t tell us why, without any increase in pay. Back then a friend suggested that I start my own church, “with beer and hookers”, and when I told him I would not, he told me that this made my faith more noble, continuing to believe without any evidence that I was in the right. Another old and dear friend told me that it impressed her that I keep on doing what is right no matter what. Am I just some crackpot? Or is God just too busy with essential workers and dire circumstances to bother with my first world problems? Does He love me? I used to have this amazing dog in my house as a tangible reminder, but it is not good for man to be alone.
That’s exactly my problem. What happened to hope in the "season of perpetual hope"? Now as before, I’m not sure what’s right or if I have any idea. I’m alone, not just literally but figuratively speaking. Over the last decade, I pursued job opportunities, relationships, causes, friendships, and recreational activities, and in the end, even a pandemic wasn’t enough to make any of those people desperate enough to reach out to me. I teach other people’s kids in Sunday School, and they move on with their lives, and now I live alone in a house where I am forced by command of the governor to stay except for “essential trips”. I determined myself that for my own psychological well-being that bimonthly hikes on the mountain were “essential”. But nobody I meet there or at work or at church seems to be significant to my story, and so 2020 has been an isolating year for me like none other. I don’t know if God talks to me, or if He cares about me. I don’t have anything obvious to evince that like I used to. I don’t know why I pray when the heavens appear to remain silent. Just now I went and knelt anyway, knowing that it’s possible God will deny my requests. At least that way I can say I tried. At least then I can say I fought a good fight, finished my course and kept the faith. Hopefully it will keep me.
