Everything’s OK #reverb10

Everything is going to be OK. Everything is going to be OK. Everything is going to be OK.

I didn’t learn this lesson this year, but I continue to be reminded of it on occassion.

I really learned this lesson almost ten years ago. Shortly after September 11th, when the world seemed to have been knocked off its axis, my father became suddenly, inexplicably, critically ill. A simple cold became pneumonia that landed him in the ICU of Georgetown University hospital for over two weeks.

I had two young children and a job that required my presence daily and for long hours. My father was over 2 hours away fighting for his life.

He had never really been sick before, so this was new territiory. I had to work, but found myself dropping everything to drive into the nation’s capitol as military helicopters patrolled over every bridge into the city and stories of anthrax unfolded on the nightly news.

It was surreal. The national and global crisis was merely an enlargement of my own personal family cirisis. How could my tower of strength and stability be so suddenly brought low?

On September 11th, I was working at a childcare center. I took a call from an unidentified parent that morning who asked if we would be closing early. I did’t know what he was talking about. He said, “A plane has flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and we are under attack.” I called the police to report a crank call. An officer came in person shortly thereafter to inform us that this call was no hoax.

Waves of incomprehension, fear, disbelief. Everything I thought was important, everyting I thought was absolutely necessary, every ball I thought was my sole responsibility to keep in the air – I walked away from it. The river kept rushing by, and I just stepped out of it, virtually unnoticed.

It was then I realized, “Everything is going to be OK. I don’t have to hold the world up.”

So even now, as I get caught up in waves of anxiety about my obligations, committments, and expectations, I am reminded: everything is going to be OK. When I am completely and utterly stripped down to nothing, I know nothing can separate me from the love of God (or my husband, children, parents, siblings). For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God. [Romans 8:38,39]

Yeah, I have love, so everything is going to be OK.

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