THESE DAYS, I gather strength from predictability. Being home from work amid a global pandemic with two children—a toddler and a teenager—has filled my world with inventive ways to press on while working full-time, schooling the kids, and being a graduate student myself.
I have a newfound green thumb—working with my mini-garden, I recount stories from my childhood, stories of triumph, perseverance, and restless hope. I hope my toddler clings to these stories when things seem uncertain. I am also creating new stories to share for years to come. My journal is overflowing with COVID-19 stats, sketches of plants, and day-to-day business. It has become a place I document our lives. When my children grow old, they will look to this time and wonder how we made it through or how we handled this uncertainty because they yearn for a time when things feel hopeful again. I hope my journals will help them remember and understand how we coped with a time when we self-quarantined, socially distanced, stayed six feet apart in masks.
The phrase “once we’re past this” has become commonplace on social media and in virtual meetings, but I’m not so sure it’s right. Do we move past this, or somehow move with this odd reality that surrounds us?
As I wrote this, police choppers were circling overhead after a burglary down the street. Waiting for police to respond wasn’t new in our historically underserved neighborhood, but it was a new thing to wait for the police during a global pandemic. While this was going on, we were on tornado watch; the weather conditions were ripe with uncertainty. Yet, even in that there was a predictable outcome: This could happen, or that. With the pandemic, it feels something could happen that no one has thought of. It’s the definition of unpredictable.
“How can we know the way if we don’t know where you’re going?” Thomas asked Jesus. Jesus answered, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus knows that when we don’t know where our feet will land, we can find a way in him. When we don’t know where the truth lies, or whether we will live to see tomorrow, the answer lies not with Jesus, but in Jesus. Our articulation of this story by way of gardening, schooling, creating, writing, and everything else depends on this truth.
Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros is a Tejana, Chicana, and Mujerista from San Antonio, where she is a graduate student at Our Lady of the Lake University. She is the 2019 recipient of the Rubem Alves Award in Theopoetics.
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