Unpacking the Pandemic: the Bad Days
By Michaela Lawrence Jeffery
At the thought of bad days, my mind immediately draws a blank. Did I have any bad days during the thick of the pandemic? I must have. So what were they?
How about this one? You may have received a similar phone call. Or maybe the conversation took place as you stood in a member’s driveway, six feet away from their perch on a porch swing. It went something like this:
“Pastor, church should be back in the building by now!”
I tried to help her understand that still holding worship on our church lawn had nothing to do with a lack of faith and everything to do with keeping everyone safe. So many of our members are 65 and older with health conditions that make them high-risk. We ended the conversation agreeing to disagree, without using those words.
But that wasn’t a bad day, just an awkward moment.
In truth, aside from making the call to close our doors, I don’t remember any bad days. Well, there was Monday, May 24, 2021 when the adult son of one member died around 11:45am and a member died at 6:30pm. Both had cancer. I was visiting the latter when I got news of the former. I remember wishing I could be somewhere else so that I could cry.
Months later, a member’s toddler died, cause unknown. She had cute cheeks, beautiful big eyes, and a keen independence. My then 4-year-old and I worked on a puzzle as I explained what had happened as best I could. At one point in the conversation she said, “Mommy, can you say ‘passed away’ instead of ‘died’?” There’d been so much death and somehow she understood the preferred gentle feel of the euphemism.
There were no bad days, though.
Both of my grandmothers died. That’s still hard to wrap my mind around. I got to attend their funerals, jumping through all the hoops of COVID testing beforehand and after arrival and before leaving the UK. Their homes were the only homes I knew in London, homes to which I’ll now never return except maybe to show my girls from the sidewalk, as I tell them tales of cakes, stir fry, family gatherings, and appliances covered in bubble wrap.
It seems I’ve packed away the bad days into old metal chests that must be pried open. Each loss tucked between doilies and other keepsakes, already holding the scent of mothballs. The bad days had their moment and then I moved on, not with the desire to block grief but with the often unconscious conclusion that since the earth doesn’t stop for me, I can’t either. Sermons need to be prepped and preached. Children need new clothes. People in the hospital need a visit, need a prayer.
Perhaps the more accessible memories of the good days are less about denying grief and more about grace, the unmerited holding of our hearts by a Divine hand, the unceasing invitation to come, “Come to me, all of you who are tired, so tired, and I will give you rest. Trust me.”
Michaela Lawrence Jeffery pastors the Athens Seventh-day Adventist Church in Athens, GA and she is the managing editor for Best Practices for Adventist Ministry.
