on losing a year of my life, but not life itself
a chronicle of the waves and breakers of 2020
I looked at my husband’s furrowed brow as he stared at his phone. Our newborn son was in my arms. I had just been wheeled into the hospital room where I’d spend the next two nights after the birth of our fourth child.
“They canceled the NCAA basketball championships,” my husband, Christian, said. Not being much of a sports fan, I asked, “Is that a big deal?” He said something about how it was the first time that had ever happened, and I asked why. “It’s the coronavirus thing,” he responded. “The World Health Organization just declared it a global pandemic.”
It was March 11, 2020. I had just given birth—three weeks early—to our fourth child, Noah. I wasn’t sure how to process what a pandemic even was, and I certainly had no idea how it might affect us. I looked at the eight-pound-wonder in my arms and felt a pang of anxiety. It was too much to try to understand.
The beginning of 2020 hadn’t felt like anything new; rather, it was just a continuation of the difficult things that had been happening for months. I was six months pregnant with Noah. I had gestational diabetes, which required me to test my blood sugar with a finger prick four times a day and give myself daily insulin injections. I was on an extremely restricted, low-carbohydrate diet, which required me to expend a tremendous amount of mental energy on food and meal planning.
We were also dealing with the ramifications of my husband being fired from his job as a pastor the previous September. Out of nowhere, with no satisfactory explanation given, he had been told he had six months left to work at the church. He spent the fall looking for a new job and mercifully, toward the end of January 2020, he was offered a job at a new church a state away. This was good news, except the baby wasn’t due until March and the job was supposed to start as soon as possible. So in February 2020, he began commuting several hours away a few times a week to work at the new church. We would somehow buckle down and survive until the baby came, and then we would move. I remained at home with our 10-year-old son, 8-year-old son, and 2-year-old daughter, in addition to our unborn baby.
I went to my 37-week appointment on a Wednesday morning. Christian was working at the new church. I had been having contractions for weeks and had been in and out of the hospital with potential pre-term labor, dehydration, and a bacterial infection. My doctor said my body looked like it was giving up being pregnant and sent me to labor and delivery, where they broke my water in order to get Noah out quickly. Christian barely made it back in time for the delivery.
It was the birth of our beautiful boy and the birth of the pandemic. We were in the hospital for two nights, and by the time we went home, schools had been shut down and many restaurants and stores were either closed or only doing curbside service. My first meal out of the hospital was a sushi bowl from our favorite restaurant, but we had to call from the car and then they brought our order out to us. It felt so strange, like the first episode of The Walking Dead where Rick wakes up alone in a hospital room to find that everyone is gone and also maybe there are zombies or something out there attacking people?
The next week, when Noah was one week old, we drove to Georgia with him to close on our new house. I turned 34 years old that day, and we ate a birthday meal at a local Mexican restaurant, one of the last times we’d sit in a restaurant for months.
When Noah was ten days old, we moved. It was a week earlier than we had planned, but U-Haul was unable to guarantee that the truck we had reserved would be available due to the uncertainty of the pandemic lockdowns. We enlisted the help of friends and family and packed up everything, including the newborn and the dog and all my husband’s plants, and we moved from South Carolina to Georgia.
I had known we would be moving with a newborn and an almost-three year old. But my mental preparation had also included assuming our older boys would be in school for the first two months we were in Georgia. Of course, by the time we got there, all the schools had closed in-person schooling. In a scenario out of a Kafka novel, the new school district said they couldn’t register our boys to do virtual school, but that perhaps we should check with our old school district in South Carolina to see if they could continue virtual school there. When I checked with our old school district, they said they weren’t doing virtual school; they were handing out weekly packets from the school (2.5 hours away from our new home). I had a two-week-old and a two-year-old. The boys just watched educational shows on Netflix and did a few random math worksheets for the rest of the school year while I tried to survive.
I remember one day, probably just after feeding Noah and getting him down for a nap, when I had a couple minutes of quiet before I had to engage my older kids. I sat on the floor, facing the large window in our room, leaning up against the bed, on the other side of the room from the door. If the kids ventured in, I’d have a moment of warning to pull myself together. I let myself fall apart. I cried until my eyes were dry. I asked the Lord why he had made us move to Georgia. Despite lockdowns and quarantine policies, I knew that if we were back in South Carolina, my parents and friends would have come and provided support. But they were 150 miles away, and my husband was trying to get his footing at a new church that was meeting virtually, and I was sleep deprived, and my older kids were trying to process our recent move, and we couldn’t go anywhere, and we didn’t know anyone, and I was alone. I tried to blame all of it on anyone I could think of—the American government, the leadership at our former church, my husband, the dog? None of it provided any comfort
On Easter Sunday, I pulled out the coordinating clothes I had bought for the kids, including Noah. We were not going to church, but Christian was at the church building helping with the livestream, and despite being home alone, I was determined to get some use out of those clothes. I got everyone dressed, took them outside, and bribed them with candy to smile for a picture.
When Christian got home, he could tell I was not doing well. He said that things at church would be quiet for the next few days, so maybe I should go see my parents in South Carolina. They would be able to help with Noah so I could sleep, and I wouldn’t have to worry about the big kids for 48 hours. Noah and I drove to South Carolina that night. I didn’t tell anyone except my parents, for fear of being judged for violating the lockdown, but I was even more afraid that I was losing my mind and knew I had to have some relief or I would fall over the edge.
What happened in April? What did we do in May? Was June a thing? I only know that we existed in those months because of the myriad photos I took of the most mundane things. Playing games with the kids. Zoe dressing up. Lots and lots of walks. A blessed trip to the library once it reopened.
That summer, Christian and I somehow managed to get out of the house alone for a date. Some restaurants were open again and I don’t even remember who kept the kids. We had as much time as Noah would last before he needed to nurse again. We ate somewhere I don’t remember and then we sat in the car in the parking lot. I remember telling Christian everyone would be better off without me. Nothing I did mattered. I was a terrible mom and a terrible wife. There was no point in my continued existence.
I didn’t want to die. It just felt so hard to be alive.
The next day, Christian sat with me and helped me find a doctor who took our insurance. I called and they had an appointment the next day. The doctor said it sounded like postpartum depression, and she prescribed Zoloft. I didn’t bother trying to explain everything else. She had enough information to try to help me, and I was desperate. By God’s grace, the medicine began to work.
We kept surviving. Once a week we would load up the van and drive to Chick-fil-a, go through the drive thru, park in the parking lot, and eat the Lord’s chicken in the back of the van with the trunk open.
In July, it still wasn’t clear if the local schools would be reopening in-person in August. As I imagined what life with a breastfeeding infant, a 3-year-old, and two elementary school students learning virtually, I knew it would be too much for my fragile brain to juggle. I began weaning Noah. There was so much I couldn’t control, but I could limit how much energy and time I had to expend on feeding him.
After nursing all of my kids, I can say without shame that I’ve never been a mother who is overly attached to breastfeeding. I know it’s good for them, it always came easily for my babies, and I never struggled with supply. But I was never sad when it was over. With Noah, however, I was angry because it felt like the choice had been taken from me. He was five months old, and barring the circumstances I was in, I would have kept nursing.
Fall 2020 is blurry. The older two boys did, mercifully, go back to school in the fall of 2020. The number of children I had to keep alive for most of the day was cut in half, and I lived in a much more stressful version of Groundhog Day that involved a three-year-old and a baby.
On Christmas morning, Christian made biscuits and gravy. I hadn’t been feeling well. I put the fork to my mouth, anticipating the familiar taste of warm, chewy biscuit and salty, creamy gravy and tasted—nothing. We had wondered if I had Covid, but because it was the holidays none of the testing sites were open. I quickly watched the kids open presents, and then retreated to our bedroom indefinitely. I spent the rest of the year in bed or wearing a mask around my family. I did eventually regain the ability to taste, but after four years, my sense of smell has never fully returned.
I have had the bones of this post written out, waiting to be expanded into a story of a year that began with grief and ended with grief. Sandwiched in between were a thousand memories my brain has chosen to forget. I don’t have a way to tie this up with a neat bow. It was a terrible year. All of the memes about the hobbies people started in 2020 have never been relatable. I did not learn how to make sourdough. I did not learn a new craft. I just tried to survive the nightmare, some of which was created by my situation and some of which was created by my broken brain.
It wasn’t until I went back and looked at all the pictures I took in 2020 that I even remembered half of what I shared here. Whatever part of the brain that stores memories was too busy trying to keep me alive to pay attention. That is why the entire year feels lost to me, only preserved in snapshots; the things I do remember are the most painful moments.
I don’t know how to find the overarching meaning of 2020. All I can see is a single thread. It laces through the pain of leaving our former church and all the relationships we lost; through house hunting and preterm labor; through Noah’s birth and Covid’s arrival; through crying alone and wishing I could melt into the floor; through four children who continued to grow and thrive even when I was not at my best; through a husband who heard the desperation in my voice.
The thread is this: I lost many things that year, some of which I am still grieving, but Jesus did not lose me. He preserved my life and gave me back my sanity, and I was always safe with him. This is a thread to which I still cling—not that I am guaranteed prosperity or sanity, but that Jesus will keep me forever and ever. Amen.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. — John 10:27-29
Thanks for sharing! Learned some new things about you. I love you my friend! I can see how your suffering has been used for good. You are a blessing! Your experiences are a blessing.
So many people did not have a pick-a-new-hobby year that year, and sharing your story is what sometimes people need to hear. We need to remember the humanness of that time, not just wrangle about power struggles and blow it off.