There are things I want to do right now but I can’t.

For instance, I really, really, really want to plant out my flowers, but the coming frost prevents me from fully embracing the planting bug.

I really want to go camping, but our trailer isn’t ready for the season yet.

More than anything I want to see my mom.

I want to do things and go places, but there are reasons, good reasons, why I can’t.

It sometimes makes my world feel kind of small. Limited and hemmed in.

I don’t like that feeling. Yet, that is the place we’re in sometimes and not just in times of Covid. Sometimes we find ourselves hemmed in by our own expectations, our own ideas of what we want the world and our situations to look like, but they just don’t. 

Those are frustrating times. When I look around me and think, ‘Is this what it’s going to be?’

Then I start to look backwards and long for things that were. The times when I was free to visit family as I pleased. The times when we could all meet together as we wished. Filling my house with all of the people and feeding their faces off.

Longing is a bittersweet place where, if we linger, can become a place of bitterness. Like the biblical Naomi returning to the place that was once home with bitterness on her tongue and in her name.

I wonder if Naomi, as she was encouraged by Ruth, ever wanted Ruth to just stop. If she wanted to sit in her bitterness because it took too much courage to look at a future that was changed and unknown. Or maybe not unknown. Naomi probably had a pretty good idea of what the future would look like. A future without husband or sons to care for her, keep her safe in a world violent and hostile. Without sons to provide for her as she aged in a culture where her survival was dependent on the kindness of kin.

Maybe it was more comfortable for Naomi to feel and sit in her bitterness than to have hope. Especially when the originator of her hope seemed silent, or was it powerless or unwilling to intervene?

Oh, I fall into that trap myself, Seeing narrowness of possibility and grieving what was. Crying out, but it’s just not the same!

Yes, it’s not, and it’s ok to grieve and feel the bittersweet ache of what was.

But what isn’t ok is for me to sink into the bitterness.

Because, God is always moving, even when I don’t see.

God isn’t thwarted, perplexed, silent, overthrown, or overcome.

Naomi didn’t see the movement of God until she allowed herself to hope. Until she allowed herself to come out of the haze of her bitterness and see that there was always more. Unexpectedly more.

One of these mores came into clear focus for me last night. During this time of restrictions, I had signed up to journey with a group of people through some spiritual exercises. It was to be a 9 month long experience that I imagine was intended to be in person. But, like so many things, it was held virtually.

As we had our last session yesterday, I came to a beautiful realization. That had this been in person, yes, it would have been wonderful and meaningful. However, I likely wouldn’t have been able to spiritually get to know people from Texas, Israel, Ontario, and all across the province.

My world got bigger as I was more restricted.

My understanding and experience of how we work together as the body of Christ, the Universal Church, expanded.

In all of this, we can cling to what we feel we’ve lost, or we can seek to step into the expansiveness of God.

Are we willing to change and grow? Be less comfortable but grow in ways we might not expect?

It’s not easy and there are difficult times. Grief comes and goes and comes again. But what if, what if, we were willing to exhale and see further, wider, deeper? To recognize that though we feel limited, God is limitless. Limitless in imagination and ability, in power and love.

If we trust, if we are willing, our bitterness fades into hope, when we focus not on what is closed to us, but what God might be opening. If we are willing to see.