Forgiveness in the COVID era
For us to heal as a state and country, we need to start asking for forgiveness for unkind words and deeds.
Ginger L Savage, Executive Director of Crossroads Carnegie Art Center in Baker City, OR. Lifelong Central and Eastern Oregonian.
It’s funny how COVID has impacted our lives. Everyone is different.
I have friends who are tearful and crying regularly. Others stressed to brittleness. Some are energizer bunnies of work, cleaning, and simplifying their lives. A few barely can get out of bed.
I have learned to extend grace to all of these folks. Only I can walk a mile in my shoes. For us to navigate this time we need to understand and fully accept how each of us is managing this day to day. Recently, I began to recognize how I am handling, or not handling the COVID crisis.
For me, COVID should have been treated like the Second World War. I remember my grandma telling me about ration cards, victory gardens, about going to a grocery store where the shelves might be bare. How they conserved every drop of flour, sugar, and oil. How every scrap of metal or rubber would go to the collective war effort. Ford stopped producing cars for years to build the jeeps and transports that would win the War. Americans simply had to fix the car they had, no new one was available. I viewed COVID from that lens of shared sacrifice.
I found out that I was standing alone, or at least it felt like it. I was ready to share a cup of sugar with my neighbor, but nobody wanted one. They just wanted to get their sugar NOW delivered to their door from Amazon!
I have not cried since the beginning of the pandemic. Maybe shed a tear but no gut-wrenching bawling that always makes you feel better after. I believe if I start to cry I am not sure I will be able to stop. So I have bottled this all up. I was shocked that my dentist didn’t find fractures in my molars from clinching my jaw.
I have always been a worker. Now it is all I do. Running a non-profit is more than a job—it is a calling, but in last year it has taken an unhealthy direction. Survival of my non-profit created a “fight” reaction in me that has saved my organization but cost me a lot personally. Survival of my business and my family has left me even more overweight than I was before, physically in pain, and a stressed-out, anxious and spiritually-lost person.
Then I found The Oregon Way, and I thought that maybe I might have something to say as an outlet. I had a Zoom Chat with Kevin Frazier and we talked about what it was like for me having grown up in Rural Oregon. The challenges we still face in Oregon are only getting worse because of the lack of a shared sacrifice. Kevin is a bright, talented, and energetic young person who wants to fix the urban/rural divide—an ally at long last.
He asked me to write a letter to our future Governor about what they need to know about Rural Oregon. I will be honest: the first draft written was a “mess” where I had wrung out all the 55 years of hurt, pain, frustration and anger of being a rural Oregonian. I laid it all on the line. I sent it to Kevin with a note to edit away, because I knew it needed editing.
Kevin shot me back an edited version and I saw red. Kevin cleaned it up but he also took away, quite inadvertently, the soul of the piece—the anger. Kevin “whitewashed” my rural voice. In that moment I felt voiceless—a stressed out, bottled up, unhealthy mess of a human.
I did the one thing I know how to do…get mad.
I sent Kevin an email telling him to print the new version which I had removed any language that might make urban folks uncomfortable about rural Oregon. Leaving a sterilized version. God forbid we upset anybodies apple cart by telling folks the truth. I told him that we needed to not do this anymore. Life was too hard right now without losing the one true thing I had…being a rural Oregonian. Kevin apologized all over the top of this. Heartfelt, sincere apologies.
I just couldn’t do it. Grant deadlines, work stress, anxiety about getting vaccines, and just the physical and spiritual misery.
I WAS WRONG!
Kevin, I apologize for being hurtful to you. I now recognize that I was taking all that “other stuff’ out on you and I was wrong. I am deeply sorry. I was out of line.
I think we ought to be saying I am sorry more as Oregonians. There are a lot of mean-spirited words, deeds, and actions throughout everything in Oregon. Right now it just adds more pressure when none is needed. We are not our best selves right now and it shows. Take a good hard look in the mirror—did you yell at the checker or clerk? Have you been unkind or hurtful?
So for us to heal as a state and country, we need to start asking for forgiveness for unkind words and deeds. First step, recognize the times during the last year that we were rude or unkind. Second step, go apologize. Simple but meaningful. With this simple act of forgiveness we can forge a path to gratitude and healing of our communities.
Sorry, Kevin.
Editor’s Note: I’m sorry, too, Ginger. Thank you so much for this vulnerable and impactful post!
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