This is Handling It?

 Through the lens my eyes sought to capture a moment; my fingers fumbled to bring the scene into focus; sounds of desert life brushed past my ears.  The sun set orange on the hills as darkness covered the desert valley.  Tall Saguaros became ghosts.  In this calm landscape, I chased a disappearing beauty, taking one picture after another.  The desert is alive at night.  All life comes out of hiding as the sun dips below the horizon.  In this desert, night is a time to play, to sing, to breathe the cooler air.  A jack rabbit paused long enough for me to take his picture, while darkness filled the sky.  The light finally gone, I sat still enjoying a beauty now fixed in memory and a peace brought by the evening.  It was a peace of reassurance that was aided by the sights, sounds and smells of the Sonoran Desert.  I wanted to stay in that moment.

Looking back on this moment, and moments like it since, I suddenly remember a worship song from around the same time in my life.  “In the secret, in the quiet place, in the stillness you are there.  In the secret, quiet hour I wait, only for you.  I want to know you more.”  This is exactly the reason I find myself drawn to the quiet, natural beauty in creation.  I always find the spirit of love, the spirit of God, in those places.  Maybe it finds me.  Maybe it is always there around me, but it becomes clearly apparent only when I stop to listen in moments like these.    

At this time, in a desert halfway around the world, we were at war.  During the weeks before my much needed Spring vacation, the television served as a constant reminder of this.  Once, while waiting for my to-go order at my hometown Deli, I couldn’t help but watch as a TV in the corner broadcasted news from Baghdad.  I remember vividly, the scenes of orange fire and cloud-like explosions that filled the night sky inside the square box, even though I sat safe, ending my day like any other Friday before.  With take-out.  Iraq was a long way from the Arizona desert where I sat contemplating though, and while my imagination was littered with images of a barren desert, scattered with men owning tired eyes and sandblasted faces, I stared out on a much quieter, emptier desert, wondering at a God who claimed to have everything under control.  Or at least I thought He did back then.

Years ago, I hardly want to say how many now, my friends and I had a saying that we used frequently throughout the hectic end of our senior year of high school.  We used to say to each other, “God’s got it handled.”  Faced with college prospects and joyful, yet still stressful plans of graduation, we needed a constant reminder that though we couldn’t control all the crazy swirling around us, there was someone much bigger who could.  We have all carried that saying with us through college, into adulthood, and now in the time of a pandemic we never thought we’d experience in our lifetime, I just spoke those words over the phone to one of these very dear friends and heard them repeated back to me.  I remember, though, sitting in the desert that Spring evening, thinking of boys I had grown up with fighting in a war thousands of miles away, and recalling the words of one of my favorite movies.  “While You Were Sleeping,” is one of my beloved Christmastime classics.  We all have our own lists, this one is on mine.  In this movie Sandra Bullock’s character is in a pickle. A friend has promised to help her handle the situation, but isn't doing a very good job. She asks them the question, “THIS is handling it?” That evening I was asking the same question to an ethereal being in the night sky.  “This is handling it?”

Lately, I’ve been asking the same questions as we walk through “unprecedented times.”  As we wade through the “new normal.”  As we fight an enemy we cannot see.  In my personal life, these last few months have brought extreme changes.  It is enough to say that I have had to figure out what is best for myself and my children. Our family will look different when we finally step out of the bubble in which Covid has us trapped.  It will be for good in the end, but a painful change in its process, nonetheless. As these changes have given my life a different shape, I have often cried in my bed at night, asking in the middle of a prayer, “THIS is handling it?”  How can everything seem so out of control, so (insert swear word of your choosing) messed up, and be part of a plan that is IN someone’s, some BEING’S, control?  

Sitting in the desert that long-ago night, wondering similar things about a different conflict, not knowing the ways in which time and passing years would challenge my ideas of just exactly how in control of life I was or wasn’t, I heard a Morning Dove coo in the distant darkness.  I couldn’t see it, but it was there. As the desert breeze blew across my face, I knew the presence of a greater, though invisible love, easing my troubled heart.  That same love wraps itself around me when I feel alone at night in my present darkness.  And though in the last few weeks I’ve  fallen asleep asking the question, “THIS is handling it?” I’ve come to a new conclusion in recent days.

At the risk of sounding sacrilegious, I’ve decided that I’ve been wrong to be comforted by the idea that “God’s got it handled.”  He’s given us too much free will to be idiots for that.  Myself included.  He isn’t handling it.  He’s letting us do that.  In fact, I do believe we were warned that in this life, there would be trouble.  As a young person, I wanted to believe that I would handle things well enough to avoid such trouble, but in the end, life is bound to hand me lemons whether I like lemonade or not.  So, no, I don’t believe God’s got it all handled, and I certainly am realizing that neither do I, try as I may.  What I know is that He sees me.  He knows me.  I don’t hear God looking down at me and saying “I got this.”  What I do hear is “I’ve got you.”