Balancing Acceptance and Hope: How to Make It through a Crisis

I live in Ohio. And in the days of this pandemic our Governor Mike DeWine has had a daily news conference at 2 pm every weekday. He always has alongside him, Dr Amy Acton, Director of the Ohio Department of Health.

Each day, the press conference has been a mixture of warm encouragement, stark facts, helpful information, strong mandates, practical advice, and reports on various aspects and groups of Ohio population and society. Then follows questions by the press, sincerely and clearly answered along with promises of more information to follow if needed.

Well recently, in the midst of it all, a beautiful nugget of emotional and spiritual health was briefly shared by Dr Acton at the end of her report. In referring to a favorite book of hers authored by a Holocaust survivor, she shared that two things kept in balance helped folks survive situations of extreme crisis, such as the Holocaust and others down through the years. The implication was that this same balance can help us survive this present pandemic crisis.

The two things kept in balance are “accepting our present reality” and “holding on to hope” at the same time.

My ears perked up, because I believe this is Truth with a capital T. In fact, I remember coming to the realization years ago, when my kids were still small, that I was spending a lot of emotional energy fighting my own life, resisting circumstances that were my present reality whether I liked them or not. They centered around mysterious allergic reactions that defied understanding. Round and round went agonizing thoughts:

Why do I have to live in OHIO when my health would be better in the desert and mountains of AZ or the coastline of NJ?
Why are other people living there and I’m not?
Why do I have these exotic allergies and sensitivities and mysterious reactions?
Surely this is not God’s will!

How stupid was that -- to fight against my own life? I finally realized that God wanted me to embrace my life, hug it to my breast, thank God for it…brokenness and all, and yes, OHIO and all.  What peace, what fullness unfolded for me…though my state of residence and the state of my health didn’t change. It didn’t mean I couldn’t still hope for a cure or hope that the end would come to my suffering. But I needed to embrace my present reality instead of fight against it.

Paul’s statement became a mantra for me,

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.
1 Corinthians 15:10 ESV

That reminded me of the story of a woman who had fought her own life, Catherine Marshall, wife of Chaplain of the Senate, Rev. Peter Marshall (1947-49).   She was a woman who recognized the Lord speaking to her mind and heart, both through the Scriptures and the Spirit.  Catherine spoke of hearing the Lord and following Him. And more importantly, she spoke of coming to what she called the relinquishment of her will to the Lord.

In the midst of a stubborn case of TB that wouldn’t yield to prayer or medical intervention, Catherine finally came to the point of wanting the Lord more than wanting healing.

In Catherine’s own words:

This is my situation at the moment. I’ll face the reality of it. But I’ll also accept willingly whatever a loving Father sends.

Acceptance, therefore, never slams the door on hope. Yet even with hope our relinquishment must be the real thing, because this giving up of self-will is the hardest thing we human beings are ever called on to do.

What about you, dear brothers and sisters? Can you sincerely say, “By the grace of God, I am what I am” and I am where I am and this is what it is . . . ? 

Are you embracing fully what God has for you right here and right now? For some of us our present circumstances in this pandemic time are more serious than for others. No matter. The acceptance of our present reality is not just for this crisis situation or any other crisis. It’s for every today (crisis or mundane) that we have on this earth. Each of our moments is important to us and to Him. 

There’s a certain acceptance of one’s life that characterizes the person who lives by faith.  And oh what peace and joy will be ours!

My lovely Illinois friend Birdie was reading a book recently by Lynn Austin called Eve’s Daughter. During a really difficult time with tough decisions and uncertainty one of the characters said to his wife: 

“But we never really know our future, Louise, only what our hopes are for it.  All we can do is put our faith in God, then live…just live…one day at a time.”  That is so true.

Justin Gravitt states that we can walk through the “darkness” of this time of pandemic in one of three ways. We can distract ourselves from it. We can deny it. Or we can dwell in it.
Pandemic Disciple Making: Dwelling in Darkness

Brothers and sisters, let’s dwell in it and embrace our today as God’s will for our individual lives. And the beauty of it all is that we will meet Him right there in the midst of it all…the easy and the hard and everything in-between … every today of our lives.

And that is our greatest hope of all!

. . . I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home [dwell] in my love . . . Live in me. Make your home [dwell] in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me.
I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. …
John 15: 9, 4-5 MSG

For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)
Romans 8:22-25 NLT