When COVID Hits Home

“The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip  and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.”

Leviticus 13:45-46

Torn clothes, messy hair, a mask perhaps, worn like blinking caution lights. Until now I had never sat with the shame that would’ve cloaked those with leprosy. But tears well up as I consider how unworthy, insecure, and rejected the lepers (and others even today with rare conditions), must feel. Yesterday I experienced just a twinge of what they must know all too well when I had to make “the texts of shame” to alert friends that we may have inadvertently affected them with COVID-19.

Thankfully, by and large the response has been overwhelming loving and gracious. Even still when the email went out to the entire neighborhood announcing the pool’s temporary closure and a message to the high school football team that weight training is indefinitely cancelled, you can’t help but feel shame and blame.

I understand people’s panicked reaction, and the questions such blanket announcement create. I would have too! For this reason, our family proactively entered into dialogue hoping to calm fears by assuring others with the fact our infected son had been at camp and nowhere near most people in our community for two weeks. Nevertheless, doing so feels like wearing a sign over our heads and house that says, “Pariah, pariah.” Or, like the lepers, “Unclean, unclean.”

I’ve decided ignorance really is bliss. It is likely we have all come in contact with COVID-positive people and germs, but what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you. Everything changes when you know. It also becomes easy to cast blame and cast out. It is also for increasing awareness, the giving of grace, and living redemptively that I post.

For better or worse, we made the choice to send our son to camp, just as all of us every day make choices to socialize or social distance, wear masks or not. I cannot blame camp, nor any infected persons who unknowingly spread the germs. For those who responded to us with this same grace, thank you. It means more than you know. Feeling as if we purposely sabotaged someone else’s trip heaps shame to our already downtrodden spirits about missing our trip. But like most everyone else, as serious as we’ve taken COVID, until it hits home it doesn’t really hit home.

As one friend encouraged me yesterday, “We are all doing the best we can.” It is not realistic to live inside our houses forever and yet stepping outside comes with some degree of risk. Knowing how to navigate this pandemic is tricky. 

I regret now not wearing a mask on Saturday night in a public place. I regret not keeping both sons home from activities and work. But only hindsight is 20/20. I sure wish my future vision was the same. 

At this point we don’t know if any of the rest of us are positive. We don’t know how mild it might stay or bad it could get. There is a lot fear in not knowing because both my son and husband have asthma. All we can do is pray and wait, trusting that God is on his throne. If he cares even for the sparrows (Matthew 6:26) and apart from his will not a hair on our heads will fall (Luke 21:18), our hope in him is secure. 

Would you pray though along with healing and protection of our bodies that God would guard our minds from worry and feelings of shame? I am praying too for your protection, for the end of this pandemic and discernment as we walk forward. And, please God, normal school and… football:)

Growing together in grace.