COVID-19 brings a different kind of Easter weekend for me and many others around the world. For me, because of a preexisting condition, I am unable to find myself in a church building gathered with others in a sanctuary, but I am wrapped in a wool shawl looking at a body of water as the sun rises.
The ripples that are flowing gently across Hoover Dam are much like my life right now. The pressure of life has my mind spinning, and if I’m not careful, I may find my back up against the wall.
Today is nothing like the excitement I felt crossing over from December 31, 2019, to January 1, 2020, as I sat in the back of the church praying as my husband delivered a New Year’s Eve sermon titled Help Is Already Here.
As I reflect this weekend, I laugh inwardly as I am reading through the notes of that particular sermon. I chuckle because I was standing on my feet with hands raised saying, “Amen!” and what we call in the Black church a call and response, I could be heard yelling, “Help is Already Here!” Oh, how I embraced God’s truth at that particular hour, yet four months later, I am doing all you can just to hold on.
Reading the Bible is easy when things are going well in your life. Today I struggle. I am dealing with too many emotions at this very moment.
My mom was rushed to the hospital on Wednesday before Good Friday. With COVID-19, no one can visit her. We are that family that will rotate sitting at the hospital with our immediate family members until their release. However, in this season, we have to hope and pray that the nurses and doctors are taking great care of her and will reach out to us regularly with updates on the condition of her health. I, on the other hand, am silently caving, unable to ignore that my mom is 84 with prior health challenges. I am unable to show too many emotions because my family calls me the strong one. They have no idea that I am sitting in my prayer room, silently weeping as I speak with them on the telephone to emerge when it’s my time to talk with confidence in my voice.
I am dealing with too many emotions at this very moment.
As I balance my emotions with my mom, I have someone close to me wrestling with some very unsettling health news. As I do all I can to keep my composure when speaking with this person, I have tears streaming down my face trying to withhold expressing too many emotions. Tapping into prayer, all I have is, Lord, hear our prayers, although I have not uttered one word of prayer. This person has no idea that I am sitting in my prayer room looking for something to let me know everything will be alright. I pull a book of prayers from my bookshelf flipping through the pages trying to find a prayer to pray and nothing. I have nothing.
I am dealing with too many emotions at this very moment.
If those two situations were not enough, I am looking at my finances as an entrepreneur and small business owner. What I see with my natural eye is enough to break me. The magazine I co-own with my daughter was brilliantly relaunched in February and gaining significant traction. My daughter and her team took READY Publication to another level. The day after International Women’s Day (March 8, 2020), COVID-19 hit the US at the rate of having to shut down college campuses, small businesses, and so much more if you were not essential. Although we are online in this season, our interns’ lives were disrupted, and all of us had to figure out our new normal. The very plans that were rolling out included high school and college students, teachers, and professors, along with mentorship and civic engagement. Everything came to a halt. Will we recover? Can we recover? Our teams have no idea that I am sitting in my prayer room with them on a conference call trying to speak boldly, although my voice is shaking.
I am dealing with too many emotions at this very moment.
Watching the news and reading articles written by a reputable journalist, I am learning how COVID-19 is hitting the African American community at the speed of light. I have one hand on my chest with my other hand on my smartphone, scrolling and searching the internet, hoping the news is not correct.
Albany, GA.
Detroit.
Chicago.
Louisiana.
New York City
Just a few places, I see the stats as I sit in my prayer room doing everything I can to push back tears and the fear that is trying to take over my life. I am wrestling with God. I don’t get it. Why does it feel that Holy Week, which led me into this Easter weekend, is crushing me on every side? I have cried so much this week that I don’t know if I’m going through a detox experience cleaning out things that are not of God, or if I am being stretched for a greater purpose.
I am dealing with too many emotions at this very moment.
Let’s not forget ministry, my calling as a servant leader and intercessor, where I am at the intersection of prayer, people, and politics. I willfully serve in the trenches every day regardless of what I may face. I choose to lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth (Psalm 121). You cannot see me, but I am sitting in my prayer room, shedding a few tears as I look around and see hope. I smell the anointing oil I often use around the doorpost and on the floor where I circle and pray for so many people daily.
I am dealing with too many emotions at this very moment.
And yet, as I sit looking at the ripples in this body of water, I flip through my Bible, and what falls out are the sermon notes from my husband’s message dated, March 22, 2020, titled, “We Will Get Through This” from Psalm 46.
And so, this is what I will hold onto in this season. I will get through this. You will too!
Call to action. 1) Pray, 2) Sow a seed (right panel PayPal), 3) Enjoy the video below of the ripples, 4) If you are a praying person, pray for me, and 5) Leave a comment letting me know how I can pray for you in this season.
[wpvideo AwuRkwJ1]
You are speaking to, and on behalf of, many right now. Thank you for your transparency, resilience, and strength. Grateful is strength is made perfect in your weakness.
“His” strength is made perfect in your weakness…
Thank you Ms. Gail! I thank God for candid truth. These are unprecedented times and there is no right or wrong way to feel during this season. We’ve all have been impacted differently. The emotions that you are feeling, is the human element of your being. Again there is no right or wrong way to feel during this season. I believe that maybe if it were not for your emotions that maybe you wouldn’t have been call to seek his face as much as you should. In all that I’ve read I continuously see the prayer warrior in you. I speak peace of you in this hour, I pray that God would protect your mother and friend who are faced with health challenges in the season. I pray that God would protest those communities who have been disproportionately affected during this hour. I pray that God would elevate your business to new heights and levels once this time had passed. I pray that God would begin to download into your daughter and interns the vision for the future. God has given us a season of rest during this time. I pray for your and your husbands ministry I believe that’s once this season has passed we will see the church grow and a cry for God like never before and we have to be ready to win souls. For myself I ask that God would continue to strengthen me in this hour in spirit, I private prayer understanding and reading the world. I ask that you pray for my health and against any pestilence. I also ask for prayer for a better relationship with my son and and that God would keep him during this hour. I ask for prayer as future wife and the man that he’s called to be my husband. I ask for prayer for the business venture that we are in the process of launching in spite of. I also ask for prayer for my immediate family those saved and saved my church family and protect and guidance for the leaders who run the origination where I’m currently employed. Thanks You. Praise God! Amen 🙏🏾
Thank you Gail for your transparency. Many of us feeling the same in many different ways.
A verse that I have been praying through the last few days.
“Then the LORD answered me and said, “Record the vision And inscribe it on tablets, That the one who reads it may run.”
Habakkuk 2:2 NASB
Praying for you and your family!
Some amazing things will happen ❤️
Hello Gail! Something about your posts over the weekend stirred me and I began to pray for you. You hold up so much and so many rely on your connectivity and strength, however at some point the test of life gets harder. Those many emotions you write about are genuine and woven by God, unlike the falsehoods we see in the media every day; those who use the scriptures and the name of God to perpetrate their idolistic following. I believe God is weeding out the truly faithful from the wannabes. He is raising up a different level of servants for the last days. You possess the ingredients for what God is calling on in this time of need. He is showing His power over everything and through you the ability to withstand these trials. You are becoming a testimony for these days; through your discipline and undying faith God is using you as a beacon of hope, just like the sunshine reflecting off the rippling waters at Hoover Dam.
I would ask that you pray for my son’s father who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer prior to the pandemic.
You are in my prayers!