Choosing Grace in the Midst of a Pandemic
by Christie Gardiner
It’s 4:55 on a Friday. It’s week six of quarantine during the Covid-19 pandemic and I’m sitting among the clutter of a house that’s held five people with nowhere to go. Six weeks ago feels like another lifetime.
I went to the theater exactly one week before the lockdown to see a lovely play. It’s a night I’ve repeated over and over in my mind. In years to come, it will be the night I look back on to remind me of who I was “before.” The novel Coronavirus was definitely on my radar that night but I was mostly oblivious. I got dressed in a white blouse and some new-to-me, thrifted high-waist jeans and high heels, excited for a night away. The theater was imposing and glittery, the way theaters are, and I remember thinking as I watched the play that there were few shows, even on Broadway, I had loved as much as I was loving this one. When it was over I skipped through the parking lot and laughed with my husband. I don’t know if it was truly so magical or if the memory is romanticized from six weeks isolated from the world, but if you asked me today I would surely say it was nothing short of a dream.
And now here I am, looking out my window thinking of the woman that went to the theater. “Sweet girl,” I think (with a touch of snark), remembering the smell of the playbill, the bluegrass music’s twang and the version of me who watched the show transfixed, “she has no idea what’s coming.” Did any of us?
Do you have a vision of your “before?” If you were to ask your “before” self if she could face the things you have had to face in the past months, would she have believed she could? My before self would have offered an emphatic “no.” No, I cannot homeschool. No, I cannot grieve for my friend who will lose her father. No, I cannot watch my children lose so many things that matters to them. No, I cannot lose 20 percent of my savings. And yet, I have. I’ve faced these and many more challenges. You too have faced your own set of unbelievable trials. Yet, we’ve done it haven’t we? In spite of our fear and grumbling, we’ve done it, thanks to the grace of Jesus Christ, one day at a time.
Grace is the great enabling power that, through Christ’s Atonement, steps in when we are spent and bridges the gap between who we are and who we need to be in order to survive. When I’ve done all that I can do, I hope for grace. Sometimes I erroneously think that grace means I get to know the end from the beginning, but that isn’t how it works. It isn’t something we can stockpile. We are required to come back to the feet of Christ time and time again, seeking it.
In Exodus 16, we read about the children of Israel. They had no idea how to face their trials in the wilderness. Like us, they didn’t know what was coming and didn’t think they could handle it on their own. Their strength alone was not enough. They needed grace. God heard their prayers and even their human murmurings about their circumstances and He answered them by giving them manna to survive in the wilderness. When they left their tents each morning to collect this manna, they were instructed to store only enough for one day (and enough for two days on the Sabbath). It was hard work to keep going out time and time again, so some didn’t listen and gathered more than they needed for the very day. Doing so, their manna became rotten and bug-filled. Could God have given them enough for more than daily use? Of course! But would they have returned to Him?
My thoughts bring me back to my here and now; back to my view out the window, where the crabapple tree’s blossoms outside know nothing of a virus, only of spring. Some states in the United States and countries worldwide are talking about lifting restrictions while some experts say it will be two years before we see any version of life we thought of as normal. I don’t know what’s coming next. I don’t know how any of us make it through. I can’t answer what to do about your job, when you’ll get to hold your grand-babies again, if you’ll have to homeschool next year, how to control roommates who refuse to social distance, or what life will look like in a day, week, month or even year. But I do know that we have a choice. We either choose to wallow in fear or to rise through grace by choosing Him every day.
The “before” you didn’t know about all the hard and scary things she would have to face in this trial, but she also didn’t know that she would rise. She couldn’t have anticipated the laughter of family game nights, how she’d come to love her daily walks or that she’d remember the deep love she has for her parents. Her fear would not have allowed her to understand that in the midst of a pandemic, she could also find peace and a deeper ability to Hear Him.
There was a lyric in the play I watched that night in early March. One of the lead characters, a mother, looked at her husband and daughter from a distance on the stage. The two characters were reuniting and offering each other grace after a long estrangement… “The sun is gonna shine again…” the mother character sang, full of hope and the promise of a good life to come. I know the next part of our lives looks daunting. I also know that because we have chosen grace offered by a Savior who came to this world, lived for us, suffered our pain, purchased us with his blood, then rose from death, we too can sing—no matter what comes next—“The sun is gonna shine again.”
To read these and more thoughts about grace, pick up the booklet Motherhood: Empowered by Love, Saved by Grace, available now at Seagull Book and Deseret Book for only 2.99!