An unprecedented event has called us to unprecedented action. One of my LIFE Council brothers jokingly referred to this odd time as a fight with an “invisible enemy”. We don’t know where it is, who has it with them, and we can only fight it with a sort of invisibility as we stay home and away from our regular worlds. He may have said it in jest, but he was really on to something.
It’s true that this current global crisis from COVID-19 is invisible. We can’t see the virus with our eyes, we can’t listen for it with our ears, we can’t smell it with our noses, we sure don’t want to taste it in any way, and we can’t touch it with intention. It truly is an invisible enemy – floating through the air seemingly wherever it feels like going.
But it is also increasingly tangible.
We can see the virus on the faces of those who are living with it. We can see the tired eyes of healthcare workers on the frontlines of a battle their leaders weren’t prepared for. We see it in the empty parking lots of usually packed event centers.
We can hear the battle rage in the deafening fear blasted through TV and social media. It is heard in conversations as people jokingly but not jokingly ask others to give them space in lines at the grocery store. It is the background noise to virtual meetings for businesses and between teachers and students across the United States.
What I’ve come to see is that most of our enemies are similar to this one – invisible but strikingly tangible. Anxiety, depression, fear, addiction, ego. Invisible themselves but tangible in their effects. This virus is a proxy in ways, for so many of the things that we often let define us. It spreads from person to person with force just as negativity does. It robs people of their joy like depression and peace like anxiety. It can steal physical life of someone in the same way as addiction. But that’s not the end of the story.
This virus and its’ invisible coalition also share their own unexpected foes. Fellowship, positivity, and love win every war they wage.
Fellowship Defeats Isolation
Fellowship and connection have been fighting our enemies for centuries. Programs for depression, anxiety, and addiction have always leaned on connection to fight the loneliness of illness. A close man in my family battled addiction alone and unsuccessfully for years until he locked arms with others who had the same experience and change took hold. My anxiety began to bow down only when I accepted faith of connection to a God who always stands at my side. Our isolation is the training ground for the enemy forces but our fellowship is where our own soldiers get together and grow stronger.
The virus can keep us physically distant but it has lost the war to keep us apart. Churches have made the internet their front porch instead of the back door. Students are interacting with teachers in a more individual setting than ever through technology. Families aren’t leaving one event 10 minutes early to get to another 10 minutes late; they are together with nowhere to be. This isolation is the opportunity for fellowship and connection. Is it ideal? No. Is it meaningful? Absolutely.
Positive Defies Negative
Positivity at a time like this can almost seem to get us in trouble. How can we be positive when people are suffering, fear is rampant, and we can’t get out of our homes? We choose it. We choose positive energy in our lives and for how we project to the world around us. Negativity seems more powerful than positivity only because people choose to feed it. For every positive thought and conversation, they balance it out with five negative ones. Stop doing that and you’ll see, pound-for-pound positivity is stronger. In battling my invisible enemy of anxiety, I had to realize that anxiety existed because I fed it negative thoughts and negative self-talk. I had to fight back with positive thoughts and they take hold quickly.
COVID-19 is negative. It destroys. It kills. It has carried fear to every corner of the earth in just a couple of months. I wonder though if you as an individual have intentionally acted toward positivity or if you’ve simply poured fuel on the fire. Are you trying to learn more about your kids and spouse or do you watch the news and then regurgitate the crap to them? Are you choosing to remember the amazing moments in history that rose from adversity or to sit in your own fear and hopelessness?
Love Always Wins
Love is the ultimate warrior in the battles on invisible enemies. Not the fluffy rom-com style of love. I’m talking about the true form of love in which we are willing to sacrifice our own for the good of another. To harp back on my own experience with anxiety, finding ways to love others has been one of the key ways to move me beyond the panic moments. When my friend struggled with addiction, he found the love of his friends to stand by his side, a main force of motivation to overcome. Love builds courage we never knew we were capable of having. After all, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Our current enemy can do a lot of damage and I do not want to diminish any of it. This is a serious situation and we should do all we can to minimize it – stay home, flatten the curve, and be smart. And I challenge you to love people through it. Isolate physically but still love emotionally and actively. Love always wins and it will defeat this invisible enemy too.
The crux of all of this are your choices. As I wrote about last week, control of the situation itself is impossible and we need to accept that. However, control of our responses is absolutely ours to have and we need to accept that too. Take control of the fellowship in your life, choose to find and share positivity, and operate with love in your speech and actions. COVID-19 is a serious and imminent invisible enemy but it shows itself tangibly all around us. Go to war with what you can see to defeat what you can’t. Call the friend who is feeling isolated or anxious. Share a positive story on social media instead of adding to the flames of negative news. Use this time to love your family, as you’ve never had the chance to before.
The enemy is here, how will you fight back? Don’t be naïve and say this whole virus thing isn’t a big deal – it is. Respond, but respond well.
Weekend Challenge
This weekend, I challenge you to take time (which you have now so no excuses) and identify the invisible enemies in your life. Write them down and then think of 3 action-oriented “weapons” you can use to fight each. For example, if I wrote down anxiety my three weapons could be: start every morning with my Bible in hand to lean on promises bigger than me; find one person I can help and take steps to do so; and find something positive to share with my close friends (if you can’t find it, create it.)
Side note challenge: use this time as an opportunity to learn as much as possible about yourself and the people closest to you. It’s amazing what we don’t know about the people in our own home because we never pause to ask real questions. No excuses now, guys. Take the lead and grow in this adversity.