A Literacy Narrative There have been many years in my life where I felt I was on top of the world and had it all under control. Even if I didn’t have things under control, I was on my way to fixing things and building myself a nice little platform of protection, safety, security, and comfort, all by myself. However, even though most things in my life never stay consistent for very long, the one thing that has always been consistent is the way the Lord destroys my platforms each time I feel like I’m finally placing the finishing touches on them—feathering my nest of comfortability if you will. This year has been another one of those hard years of the Lord pulling down my self-sufficiency platform and asking me to trust Him. At the beginning of this year, things seemed to be settling into a new comfortable normal. But then, one day I was on my way to school and all of a sudden this overwhelming feeling came over me and I somehow knew that something was about to change. I had no clue what it was. I just knew that it was something that was either going to drastically change my life or drastically affect someone close to me. I felt the feeling so strong that when I got to school I stopped and wrote down what I was thinking and feeling. I knew that I would want to remember that day…even though I didn’t know why. Less than a month later different things began to happen. Things that were strange enough for me to assume that I had gotten that weird feeling a month earlier because God was preparing me for this moment. But what I found was that it wouldn’t just be one thing that would happen that would change my life. It would be several things combined to leave my life looking 100% different than before. A few weeks went by, a few more changes happened and then one week rumors of something called the Coronavirus began to circulate. It was a bit of a joke on Monday, but by Wednesday there was talk at school of the things closing down for a week or two as a precaution but nothing was set in stone. Thursday morning there was more serious talk of closing down but that we would be notified. Only two hours later it was announced that all students had to be off-campus with all of their belongings by 5 pm on Friday, March 13th. The plan was to halt school until the following Wednesday and then continue online until after Spring break. Everyone was in a panic. In just a matter of days the words Coronavirus, COVID-19, quarantine, and social distancing were on everyone's minds. Grocery stores were running out of food, toilet paper, face masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, and thermometers. Because I didn’t have school, I and a friend decided to go to a local park to go walking that Saturday. There was a 5-K happening there that morning and everyone that ran by us was talking about “the virus” and “the shut down” and everyone seemed to be in a frantic panic. As we walked along the trail we came to the top of a hill that overlooked the valley. We paused a moment to take in the view, and I spotted a middle-aged man sitting on a huge rock at the edge of the river. He seemed so incredibly calm and peaceful--a drastic contrast to all the panicked conversation that was happening above him. I looked over at my friend and said “Do you see that man down there? He has it right. He looks so at peace.” She agreed and I didn’t think much more of him except the fleeting thought that something seemed different about him. Different in a good way. My friend and I kept hiking for a bit and then came to another lookout where we stopped to just soak in the views and chat then we headed back up the trail. On our way back I noticed the same man coming back from his perch on the rock. Right away when I saw him I was instantly again struck with the thought that there was something different and special about this man who seemed to be so completely at rest. He headed up the trail in front of us and as I watched him walk up, I looked over at my friend and said “that is that same guy isn’t it?” She said “yes” and I replied, “I think he is a believer.” It was obvious that we were thinking along the same lines and she looked at me and said “I believe in angels.” I wasn’t bold enough at the time to say that but there was definitely something unique about this man who seemed to have been able to block out all the chaos around him. He was, for lack of a better description, contemplatively resting. We ended up passing the man at the top of the hill because he had stopped to look at a historical monument sign. I turned around to catch one more glimpse of him before we left and to my dismay, he was gone. Nowhere to be found. In the exact place where he had been standing, another man was standing in different clothes and holding a camera. I looked around to see if he had gone somewhere else, but I couldn’t find him. He had vanished. There is no doubt in my mind that Saturday the 14th of March 2020, I saw an angel. Over the next several weeks I would think of the angel often. Wishing I had gone to say hi to him, talk to him, find out who exactly he was. But the biggest thing I thought about was the message that I believe the Lord was trying to teach me: Trust in the One who is working all things for good. Rest in the truth that He is in control and use the downtime that has been forced on the entire world to turn to Jesus for healing, sustaining power, patience, and growth. Reflect on and learn from the past, sit in the now, and allow God to speak in the quiet. Amidst the depressing, saddening, scary news reports that were being played in my house every night on the TV, as well as the explosion of posts about the virus on social media, my mind constantly returned to the picture of the man on that huge rock, looking so small, yet so comforting, restful, and peace-filled. Sunday, March 15th, we decided to have one final service at church before closing for what we assumed would be two weeks before reopening. It was a very unique service. There was a sort of hush and sobering atmosphere as if everyone somehow knew that this was way bigger than we could have ever imagined it would become. We only had a morning service and as I got in my car to leave I had no clue that it would be another thirteen weeks before we could have another service in our church building. Monday the 16th was great and felt like a pretty sweet deal. We had the day off school while the school tried to figure out how to do online classes and my bosses were trying to figure out what teaching music lessons would look like for both companies that I worked for. It was actually nice to be home and not have to go anywhere. I had been running 100 miles a minute for so long that my body, and yes, my soul needed to slow down for a break. However, as the week progressed it was clear through news reports, the reaction of people to the media, the empty grocery shelves, and the increasing number of cases and deaths, that my world had been turned upside down once again. Only this time was different. I knew that this was at least a big piece in the puzzle of change that I had felt coming. Though I hadn’t known specifics, I had sort of been expecting it. Because of the confirmation of God’s care for me and that constant reminder of the image of the angel sitting on that rock by the river, I was, for one of the first times in my entire life, ready to face this drastic change of every aspect of my life from a place of peace and rest. I knew that no matter what happened, the Lord was going to take care of me, I would be fine, and God was going to use this worldwide disaster to accomplish His purpose. My faith had found its resting place. It was no longer in the platform of comfortable normality I had built for myself, but it was in the safety and hope of Jesus.
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Journal #4 When I look back over quarantine, there are a few moments that stick out to me. They are small and seemingly insignificant, but they shaped a lot of my processing and thinking about the whole situation. These moments were when I realized how much I took for granted--Things like going to the store and being greeted with a smile instead of a face mask, going to a friend's house, giving hugs, and going to coffee shops. Seeing my students face to face and being able to get through an entire 45-minute lesson without hearing the words “you froze...” and then wondering what face I was making when the glitch happened… On the other side of that whole experience, I’ve come to appreciate all of those things a lot more. Especially being able to hang out with friends and go to coffee shops. As I’ve mentioned in previous journals, other moments of peace and calm made me realize how crazy my life had gotten before quarantine, which made me appreciate the ability to slow down. Then there were and still are moments when I look at the people who are still in a panic over the virus and have no peace or a sound mind, and it makes me grateful that I know my destiny. I know what will ultimately happen to me. There is no political upheaval, virus, media agenda, or lack of home goods such as toilet paper and hand wipes can change the fact that when I die I’ll go to be with Jesus. With Him there is no crying, no political unrest, and the toilet paper is probably triple-ply sheets of gold. Ok…that last part is obviously a joke, but I say all of that to say this: My life is currently starting to return to normal. I’m happy about it. Am I constantly surround by people who are scared to be near me? Yes. Am I currently wearing a mask when I go to work and school? Yes. But not because I feel they are necessary, but because I want to show care for other people. Do I think that the mask is doing much? I don’t really know, but I’m pretty sure my lungs get a little more damaged and the strength of my immune system weakens each time I wear one, but that isn’t the point. The point is to be considerate of the fear that other people are still living every day and show kindness. My prayer is that people will start to calm down a bit and just begin to live life again. Today I went to a park and saw a group of people all hanging out together with no facemasks, smiling, laughing, letting their kids play together, and climb all over the playground and it made my heart happy. That’s how God designed community to interact with each other. Not over a screen, but in person. Those in-person, face-to-face moments are my favorite...espeically when there is coffee involved. Journal Entry #3 There were several things that I learned during the quarantine. I learned what it means to be still. I came to know a new level of the Lord’s care for me and His faithfulness to me. I learned a lot about myself and realized how much I’ve changed over the past few years. I learned a lot about the inner workings of my family and began to realize, on some level, why we do what we do, say what we say, respond the way we respond, and relate to each other the way we do. I could probably write a whole book on some of this stuff. It got deep to some degree. It was uncomfortable and sometimes painful. But the Lord used that discomfort to grow me in my relationship with Him and with my family. Most recently, as we've been slowly resuming some form of normalcy and schedules are starting to fill up to full capacity, I'm realizing that I was/am just WAY too busy. When life slowed down because of quarantine my schedule became simpler. I didn't feel rushed. Though I was busy doing school online and still teaching lessons online, I had cut many things out of my schedule and had time to sit and breathe. With school starting back and jumping back into teaching full time in addition to the aspect of half of my life being virtual and the other half being in person, I'm driving even more than I was before. I find myself stressing out about assignments, music to be learned, time schedules to keep. About a week and a half into this new schedule of mine, I realized why I had been so miserable over the past three years. I remember having a conversation with a teacher of mine about my schedule, and I remember expressing that I was so busy that I literally had every minute of my day planned out and there was always something that I had to be doing. The teacher responded by telling me that it was a good thing to be busy and that I would be a better person for it. Somewhere deep down I knew that there was something wrong with that statement. Now, after spending four months living life much more simply, I know that he was dead wrong. Yes. It is good to have goals. Yes. It is good to have a schedule and rhythms. But, I'm finding that the overcrowded schedule I once had was unhealthy. The current schedule I have is on the edge of unhealthy. I told a friend just the other day that I am realizing why I was so unhealthy, had fringing nerves, and hardly ever felt awake. It is all because of an over-busy life. To put it succinctly, the biggest thing that I learned during quarantine is that life could be much simpler. All the busy tends to put our relationships with people and God on the back burner. Even from the beginning, God designed a day of rest. In the world in which we live, that day of rest has somehow gotten lost. In turn, relationships with people get damaged, and hearing from the Lord becomes more difficult. Satan loves to use our business to his advantage. If we are too busy to spend quality time with the Lord and to fill our minds with His truth, Satan has the upper hand in our daily battle against the world. So here's to an uncrowded schedule, taking a step back, saying no to unnecessary hustle and bustle, returning to a more simple way of living, and having time to breathe and be thankful for the little things God has given us. Journal Entry #2 This semester, my class's focus is literacy...what it is, and what it means to be literate. When I see the word literacy, two things come to mind. First I think of literature in general and how many books are out there to be read. Thousands upon thousands of books that I’ve never even seen, much less read. There is so much information that I don’t know. To be informed is to be literate. Though I know a lot of information, I am definitely not literate in all areas and topics. The second thing that comes to mind is all the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation about the importance of schooling. I think of people like my granddaddy who was unable to finish school because of having to work to help keep his family alive. I think of the slaves who were not allowed to get an education so that after the civil war, even if they went to a place where they were welcomed and accepted as the humans that they were, they couldn’t get a job because of not being able to read. I’ve heard and read so many stories about how these slaves were starved for education. They craved the ability to read and write. All of these thoughts make me feel extremely grateful for the opportunity to be educated, to learn, to read, to write, and be able to get a job. It is often easy to take these things for granted but if I went back in history and talked to my granddaddy or those dear people who were treated so horribly just because of their skin color and robbed of the opportunity to be literate, I feel that learning, education, and literacy would suddenly become much more valuable to me. We've been asked to develop a literacy narrative based on a few different lenses of thinking. The first lens is that of quarantine, the second is based on literature that I've read, and the third has been coined as "the lens of race." For my literacy narrative, I think I will be using a mixture of the three lenses given to us. In thinking about the last few months during the pandemic, and because of the relevancy of it and of how our lives are still being affected, I will be using thoughts from quarantine. I also did some good reading and thinking during quarantine which brings the lens literature into view. The "lens of race" is a lens that I will use, but I hesitate to call it the lens of race. I believe that there is one human race. We are all human and should be treated as such. Though we come from different ethnic backgrounds, some of us have more pigment in our skin than others, and we all look a little different from each other, we are all still just human beings, made in the image of God. All equal in His eyes, all immeasurably loved by God, and all uniquely gifted in different areas. That is the beauty of diversity, no one looks the same, thinks exactly the same, experiences things the same, or processes the same. So to call the lens of my writing, the "lens of race" would be a travesty, unless I am simply speaking of the human race in general. The topic implied by the words “lens of race” really is speaking of the lens of a fallen and broken world in need of the Love of Jesus. The class that I'm taking is requiring us to spend some time journaling about all the different things that are happening in our world today. Part of the journalism is based on articles given to us to read. Sharing these particular assignments are optional for us, but I've decide to go ahead and share because I feel that most of the articles that I've read are part of the reality of what people are going through. It took me a while to decided that I would share my thoughts here on the blog, so this one is actually from a few weeks ago. The first journal is in response to an article linked here: "Will COVID-19 Strengthen Our Bonds" -Jennifer Stitt Journal Entry #1 As I read through the article, my biggest observation was the number of unanswered questions, thoughts of the unpredictable future, intake of media, and the lack of community and human connection, all bound together with chains of fear. The writer of this article has obviously had a pretty difficult life, and my heart goes out to her. Not just because of her difficult circumstances, but because of her lack of hope. In her eyes, her future is somewhat bleak. Though I don’t have a chronic illness, this pandemic has definitely changed my life in a huge way and has made many aspects of the future of my earthly life rather unpredictable. However, my ultimate future is set. I know that no matter what happens in this life I will one day be rejoicing with Jesus. This life is difficult and situations will arise that will shake us to the core but I am of a mind that those situations are an opportunity to turn to the Lord and bring our trust in Him to a new level. The Bible says that God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. If we live our days on a steady diet of the media, fear-based thinking, and a fatalistic view of the world, we can easily become consumed with fear. That fear is not from the Lord. He commands us to take no thought of tomorrow but rather seek after righteousness and He will provide for our needs. Ultimately, He is in control of the outcome of this pandemic. From the very beginning of the pandemic making its way to the U.S., He clearly let me know that He was going to take care of me. Because of His promises, the experience of quarantine, solitude, and the complete change of every area of my life, was a very restful experience. There was no fear. People all around me were in a panic but He had given me peace. I say this, not to pat myself on the back for “being so calm, cool, and collected” but to say that it was completely because He made his presence tangible to me, and asked me to trust Him in a way that I never had before. He gave me clarity, hope for the future, and peace in the present. Coming out of quarantine was a welcome because I believe that God has designed humans to be in person with each other and not just have community through a screen. The media has taken this COVID thing to a whole new level. It has ceased to be a push for personal safety and the safety of others and has become a platform for political agenda, monetary gain, and a way to keep people living in fear. The enemy is loving it because it is destroying churches and community between believers. My thoughts on the pandemic are: Yes. Many people’s lives have been affected by the pandemic. Yes. Lives have been lost due to the pandemic. Yes. I’m open to the idea that there might still be a select few who are desperately ill. However, from personal observation, and experiences shared by friends who have experienced the virus, most cases are nothing more than a bad head cold. Once more there has been a treatment discovered to treat the virus effectively. The moment when social media platforms began to openly mark facts as false information, block the truth from being spoken, and only keep the bad news in the public eye was the moment I realized that this global pandemic is no longer a medical pandemic but rather a political control pandemic. Speaking from an educator's perspective, I have been back in the classroom for about three weeks now. In communicating with my students, many of them have stated that none of their friends are wearing masks at school, and none of my students have gotten sick. With the exception of one student, their classes have been meeting this whole time. That one student was in a class that was shut down due to a positive COVID test. However, though exposed to the virus, that student never got sick. With these statistics, I question the “dangers” that are being propagated on social media. Yes, be careful. Yes, care about your neighbor. If you’re not feeling well, stay home. I’ve been told that my whole life. Coming to work or school sick is just inconsiderate, pandemic, or no pandemic. If you aren’t feeling sick, go live your life. Be ready to fight; not with face shields, M-99 masks, and social distancing, but with prayer, truth, humility, repentance, and kindness. We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins, and will heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14 |
About Me
Hi! My name is Bethany. I'm so glad you've stopped in at my little corner of the internet! By way of introduction, I am a wife, musician, teacher, coffee lover, baker, nature lover, writer, and most importantly, I am a follower of Jesus. I'm super thankful that the Lord has given me this little outlet to share some of the things He has taught me, things that have inspired me, changed me or just gotten me excited about living life. My prayer is that what you read and see here will be an encouragement to your heart, bring you joy, and maybe even inspire you! Archives
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