Times Are Changing

Photo by Sean Thomas on Unsplash

By Jennifer Eliezer

“What is time?” My friends and I have blurted out this question many, many times over the last fifteen months. From the early onset of quarantine when we couldn’t tell the difference between Tuesday and Saturday anymore to the shock of how long our small group has been meeting via Zoom, the way I interpret and measure time has been one of the biggest shifts throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

The impact of the pandemic is vast and broad. I have been hyper focused on looking for work and waiting for a change in my financial circumstances ever since my original vision for 2020, like many others’, was sharply interrupted. Yet even in the midst of deep frustration and unbearable loss, I find this new perspective on the passage of time to have the most glaring impact on me. It is responsible for how I now see, understand, and receive the movement and presence of God in my life. Instead of professional milestones or my next visit home to see family to keep track of the days, two unlikely items are serving as my calendar: mattresses and journals.

In 2014 after college, two friends-turned-roommates and I found a decent apartment and embarked on adulthood together. I’d started working as a full-time academic counselor for a college access program, but because the pay cycle was monthly, I had to make do with an air mattress until I could finally spring (no pun intended) for a mattress. That mattress stayed with me for six years and three apartments.

In 2020, I slept on four different mattresses.

Before COVID-19 even extended its global reach, 2020 was already shaping up to be an atypical year for me. In January, I was preparing to leave my life in Boston behind for a teaching fellowship abroad. Mattress one.

At the end of January, I made it to San Carlos, Costa Rica and settled in with my host family. I spent time getting to know quite a number of students, I began to get the hang of the bus system in a more rural area, and I basked in the tropical sunshine and rain. Mattress two. When COVID-19 finally began dominating daily news headlines in Costa Rica, I still felt distant and protected from the virus. I was away from the city where the very few cases the country was seeing were.

Eventually, my program was suspended, and I was given 48 hours to evacuate. I said some very tearful goodbyes and got on what would be one of the last flights out of San José for months and made my way to Southern California. I was blessed to have friends willing to let me quarantine with them while we “wait this thing out.” Mattress three.

Seven unexpected months later, I was still in California, still unemployed, still without a clear sense of what was next for me or the rest of the world, but also moving into my first apartment on my own. Mattress four.

Without the rigidity of a 9 to 5, academic calendars, MBTA commutes, etc. to mark my days, months, and years, more abstract, seemingly insignificant markers like where I sleep have become representative of not only time elapsing but things changing. The pandemic interrupted “business  as  usual” and forced me to look at life beyond my “normal” measures. So much so that any instinctual defaulting to typical time mapping, like “I’ll be employed by the start of 2021,” left me painfully disappointed.

Another new marker is the number of journals I fill. I’ve journaled for as long as I can remember, with reflections dating back to 2004 if not earlier. Throughout the pandemic, however, it has become more of a regular practice. I have journals whose first pages were written in Boston in 2019 and others that chronicle four short months in California; and because there are so many more words written in a shorter span, I’m revisiting the contents more frequently, again noting the passage of time. Simply put, I have slowed down long enough to see God.

When I’m not panicking in an attempt to make the last train that would get me to work on time, I can indulge in a morning spent listening to music without multitasking. When I no longer see regular days as hurdles on the way to some big day, a midday nap is freeing instead of shaming. Don’t get me wrong; I fought it early on and still struggle. I created to-do lists and daily goals all in the name of maintaining a semblance of structure but really because I didn’t know how to do differently. Over time, the small moments became more noticeable, and I received a new clarity of mind without the false urgency that permeated life pre-pandemic. A new clarity that brightened my view of God. A view I now document often.

May 9th, 2020

Last night, I sat with God and let Him tell me who I am. I asked Him to tell me the truth about me. There were some sharp reminders. The biggest one being that there’s never any reason to shrink or minimize myself. Tonight, I watched Erykah Badu and Jill Scott be free. I watched them share depths of who they are and who they were created to be. It’s like God put their example right in front of me. Piece by piece, I believe I’m getting “there.” Where my heart is open.

My life has been riddled with grief, anxiety, loneliness, hopelessness, and despair this past year. I have fallen into spirals of doubt where I question what I know to be true about myself and the God I serve. I am often frustrated by how long I’ve been searching for work. I have tapped into deep reserves of hope only to be disheartened and stuck in the same spot a year later. Yet like Tamela Mann sings, “still my soul refuses to die.” I can’t help but tell time by the ways God is growing me.

I’m reminded of Job, stripped of everything and sitting in anguish for what probably felt like an eternity. Job’s hope waxed and waned (Job 6:11). He was depressed (10:18-22). He wept before the Lord (16:16-17). We read chapter after chapter of Job wondering where God is, and the Lord finally speaks. Job’s reply shocks me. He responds to God like no time has passed. It’s almost as if nothing has happened, like he hasn’t endured to the degree he has when he says, “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (42:2, NIV). I think Job was also newly able to tell time by how God grew him in that season. “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you” (42:5). Job, committed and faithful to God as he was, engaged with the presence and love of God in a fresh and powerful way after his suffering. Biblical scholars debate exactly how long Job was in turmoil, but no matter how long it actually was, without glorifying his pain, Job shows us how to move from living out a surface-level understanding of God into a more profound experience of God.

For many in the US, the pandemic is over because stay-at-home orders, capacity limitations in public locations, and mask mandates are being lifted. For me, the pandemic is reverberating like I’m stuck in a time loop reliving the trauma, similar to Job listening to his friends lecture on and on about his situation (16:3, 6). When I look at my circumstances today, still unemployed and thousands of miles from almost everyone I love, I’m waiting for God to speak. Using my old ways of telling time, I am long overdue an answer to my desperate prayers. But a quick flip through one of my journals somehow says otherwise.

 October 8th, 2020

My sustenance this week has been the Lord’s care coming through in the people who love me and His quiet whispers and confirmations. Sometimes I get lost in the big showy “sustenance” like large sums of money, getting the job, getting the apartment, winning the grant, that I don’t see the day to day moments where the Lord of my life carries me and shields me from instability. A song or other piece of art that drops in my spirit first thing in the morning. Noticing my expanding ‘fro and enjoying my smile for the first time in a while. Feeling the desire to write deep in my belly and being lit up by it instead of running from it. He is caring for me. It is happening now. His timing is divine and purposeful.

Jennifer Eliezer is a recovering undercover overthinker who thinks, speaks, and writes in lyrics. Jennifer started writing because it was a safe place for her thoughts, and continues to write because it is a healing place. With journals upon journals and blog archives full of musings on music, love, fear, and deep unadulterated joy, Jennifer is committed to the art of storytelling. A U.S.-born Haitian, she hopes that by vulnerably sharing her story, readers of her work, particularly Black women and girls for generations to come, will find a place to anchor themselves.

Jennifer also supports other writers as a freelance editor (https://jennifereliezer.wixsite.com/letscreate) and has worked on a wide variety of projects including marketing copy for PYNRS (a Black-owned performance streetwear brand) and technical support for academics whose research is focused on issues largely impacting Black women.