My hips ache with weighty, heavy pain. It is as though the leaded cannon fodder of fear and concern of the world, my city, my church, my family, has laid down in them.

My lungs yearn to cry. A searing pain with breathe reminds me of the cries of those alone and afraid; the grieving ones who cannot toss dirt on a grave.

My skin erupts. As though the nasty evil of this virus were under my skin and aching to break free through my pores.

My brain acts like a brittle dried out flower. Once glorious and full of life and color, it just looks a little like it once did, but look only with your eyes and do not touch or it will shatter to dust.

My thumbs and wrist twitch and twing with tension as my fingers fly across the keys to ‘try’ to offer comfort and advice; to release the pent up desire to hold anyone’s hand.

My throat is parched. The never ending phone calls and webconferences, the worship online, the checking it- it takes so many WORDS when all I want right now is to be in the body together.

My heart is shell shocked. I find myself mindlessly disappearing as much as I can because this reality is so dream like and I just want someone to wake me.

My body cries out and there is no one to listen but me. So I ask myself, “what is it dear one?”

And I reply, with rain drenched wonder… will I ever be myself again? Even if I get this and live, will I recover, really, who I was and what I thought my life meant? And my spirit says, “no child. But you will turn into a new you and that will be enough.”