Adaptability and the Root in the Rock

I shuffled into a line at my daughter’s school behind other parents, each concealing our emotions over the coronavirus with varying degrees of success. One woman barely made eye contact while murmuring, “I can’t believe this is happening.” Some were quiet; others, like myself, were chattering away to make life feel as normal as possible.

I periodically turned to glance behind me to make sure my boys weren’t vandalizing school property in the corner I’d left them, and my daughter followed next to me, excited to pick up her school chromebook, which would allow her to complete our district’s distance learning requirements.

As the conversation lulled, I looked up at the reception office walls, noting that there were positive words written all along the upper border: EMPATHY, CREATIVITY, COMMUNITY…

I stopped short when I got the word ADAPTABILITY.

I turned to my daughter and quietly said, “Well, you will certainly be learning about adaptability in the next couple weeks.”

“Oh, well, we already learned about that word last month.” She retorted matter-of-factly.

I laughed inside at the moment, but her words actually dig a bit deeper into my soul as I sit to write tonight.

Adaptability is something I thought I learned about too. I know that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. (Or, in my house, when life gives you frozen meat and picky eaters at 5:30pm you make breakfast for dinner because thank God eggs don’t need to be thawed.)

Adaptability sounds almost fun when we’re improvising meals or games with the kids; when we’re making unplanned pit stops at a park on a long road trip; or when we’re breathing in the rush of possibilities at a new school, home or community.

But this. THIS? Quarantine and fear, sickness and forced homeschool? (And to top it all off- everyone keeps buying up all the damn eggs so I’m going to have to adult after all for dinner.)

I admit that my reaction in the last week has been all over the map. Sometimes I’ve felt like a brave pioneer woman, rallying my young and standing firm against adversity. I’ve had moments of creativity and joy and hope laced in the sunshine.

But if I’m honest, I’ve also been a bit depressed. I’ve had way more questions for God than answers from Him. I’m more fearful than I want to admit, more lost than I imagined, and angrier with my kids than I planned. Well…because I really didn’t get to plan this, did I? And neither did you.

And I’ve wanted to be helpful, to love others, to reach out, but I’ve found myself retreating and not really knowing how to handle my own fears let alone anyone else’s. I’ve had the mentality that I need to survive this; and that is a terribly limiting place to be.

Survival is focused on what is already lost and preventing more from being taken. Survival mentality makes me fearful, hoarding and irritable, believing that I’m no longer meant to create but to conserve.

In survival mode, I’m too busy creating a robust military strategy against the lemons to realize that I could repurpose their sourness into a treat.

But today, as I was walking on a trail with my boys outside (where everyone seemed alarmingly normal) we arrived at a place with high rock walls. Though strong and seemingly impenetrable, I found so much hope in the trees that grew all up in the rocks.

Some trees had grown in a shallow soil on top of the rocks; but one tree in particular caught my eye. Some crazy seed had grown in a crevice of soil, stretching out into trunk and root that wrapped itself around a rock on it’s climb upwards to the light.

Adaptability.

The roots didn’t retreat from the rock, though it definitely shaped their path. But their story is somehow more beautiful, more hopeful and resilient for the obstacle they wrapped themselves around. Hm.

So I’m asking God to change my perspective so I stop cowering and to start cultivating; to not forget that my identity is to CREATE because I reflect my CREATOR. The obstacles aren’t going away soon, and they are legitimate. I don’t need to minimize the fear or the struggle, but I also don’t have to believe that the rock gets to erase the beauty or goodness from my story…or yours.

Those very rocks might be a platform to grow something we’d never have had the eyes to see in our normal way of life.

So I’m setting health goals for myself, even if it’s running around my yard like a mad-woman. I’m learning a new way to be extroverted, and a new way to order coffee. I’m looking at the possibilities that isolation (or sabbatical, as my mom is calling it) has to offer. And yes, I’m even planting some seedlings, hoping to literally grow something in these weeks as well.

What are your hopes? Your goals for these weeks? Where have you seen a stillness that is positive or a chaotic but much-needed time with your family? What less-important things have been weeded out of your life, and what most-important things can you still work towards?

Not even the craziest of seasons can define our lives- we are defined by our source of hope that is deeper than circumstances. And, in fact, when everything else around us falls away, we are left without a doubt that our confidence can only be in God.

He’s the God who created from nothing- who splits the sea when there’s no way through- who leads us to places where only He is big enough- and He’s the God who still calls us to see hope and create within the chaos.

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
⁸ They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.”

Jeremiah 17:7-8