when your to-do list goes up in flames: facing crisis

I had a to-do list that would make even the most organized person jealous. It was color-coded, prioritized, divided into segments. It was the reminder that I could never get it all done, and I never felt like I was enough.

It hung on my Japanese fridge for months, perhaps even a year or more.
I thought about it every single time I walked past it. Every time I opened the fridge. Every time I cooked dinner. There it was, reminding me that I could never accomplish all I needed to do.

It was suffocating.

331 days ago I learned I’d be leaving Japan. In one night, everything changed. I walked up to the to-do list that had been weighing on me for so long, and tore it down. I ceremoniously ripped it in half, and crumpled it into a ball.

It made me sick and equally relieved, how something that had such control over me had become a list of meaningless words in a minute’s time. How could years worth of pressure become completely inconsequential in an instant?

But isn’t that life? Last year, in one days time, I lost almost everything. Everything changed. My job, my sense of security, my daily life, my friends, my church, my children’s school, my doctors, my neighbors, my co-workers, my friends…everything changed in an instant. I left the country 8 days later. I had no idea what I’d do for money (more than a few months away), where I’d live, where my kids would go to school, or what our family life would look like.

In just a moment, it all changed.

This story isn’t about that. It’s about how quickly I tend to forget what God did in the months after I had to re-build my life. Scratch that, God re-built my life.

Flash forward 331 days later, and I sit here in the midst of a global health crisis. I sat down to delete all of the outdated schedule information off of my work calendar: kids school pick up times, classes, church activities, appointments, sports, all just….gone. In an instant.

I was transported to last year, standing in front of my to do-list, and wondering how everything changed so quickly, and why I had put so much mental stock into a life plan that could change in an instant. And yet, 331 days later, I did the same thing again.

Hadn’t I learned my lesson?

I had to be reminded that God does not promise us more than today. Or even the rest of the day. Some might say that’s eerie and haunting, but I think it’s comforting.

So I’m here to remind you of some easy things you can do to help you process life in the midst of a major transition or crisis.

Take it one day at a time.
This was without a shadow of a doubt, the best advice my dear friend T-chan gave me. It carried me for hundreds of days, and it still does. Don’t think about the weeks or months that’s to come. Think about today.

It’s funny, because that idea isn’t original to the year 2019 or 2020. It comes straight from Scripture:

Matthew 6:25-27 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. … Matthew 6:34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Trust the Lord’s provision.
I have been through a LOT periods of financial insecurities in my life, due to the industry my husband works in but also due to the fact we were supported missionaries. God has provided for us in miraculous ways. Yet every time I face a new scary time, I tend to forget that God always comes through and provides. It just may not be in the way I imagined.

Now is probably a great time to get re-acquainted with so many accounts in Scripture of how God provided in big ways for His people. My all time favorite reminder is God providing manna and quail in Exodus 16.
What are some of your favorites?

So as we sit here, watching the numbers of covid-19 cases creep up, watching businesses close, wondering if we’ll have a paycheck in a few weeks time or if our loved ones will be okay, let’s remember how God cares for us. Let’s remember that He is here to cover us in His peace and grace, and carry us, one day at a time.