At the beginning of this quarantine, I was overwhelmed. Right before stay-at-home orders were announced, I worked as a freelancing musician and substitute teacher, and when venues, churches, and schools all closed, I swiftly lost all my income streams. It would be another three months before my Pandemic Unemployment Assistance would come through. I felt vocationally and financially uncertain. And to top it off, I was feeling pretty lonely in my singleness while my roommate and her new boyfriend were hanging out all the time at our apartment. I was on EVERY date with them.
During this time, I have turned to prayer. I’ve brought God my fears, my anxieties, my frustrations. Staying connected to my Catholic identity has felt hard sometimes, as I had become so used to singing at Mass every Sunday as a cantor and being gathered in community. Sitting on my couch watching Mass through a screen just isn’t the same. Yet I found it enriching to be able to set aside time to watch Mass with my roommate. We’d pause the livestream after the homily and discuss our thoughts and responses to the preaching and readings before continuing to the liturgy of the Eucharist, something I didn’t normally get to do during Mass. While social distancing led to some feelings of disconnect from Church, I felt this post-homily faith-sharing practice helped me feel more deeply connected to my personal relationship with God and His Word.
I’ve also continued to turn to songwriting as an outlet in this quarantine. My desire to play music for others remained, even with my favorite local venues' closure, so I started playing live-streamed music from home. Quite unexpectedly, I received a number of incredibly generous tips and donations from viewers. Several new patrons joined my Patreon community as monthly subscribers, and people I didn’t even know personally purchased music and band merchandise from my Bandcamp page. It has been truly humbling to see the ways God has been providing for me through my community of friends, family, and people who have been touched by my music that I had no idea I had reached. It has been a grace to recognize this.
Additionally, in response to my loss of income, I felt invited to consider all my other skills and abilities and posted on social media about all the things I could do. To my surprise, I began to get commissions for rosaries, chaplets, and paintings. I found joy in creating visual art and making jewelry again, a pastime that had been dormant, and the fact that it provided some supplemental income was just an added bonus - the abundance of God’s generosity. I could feel a sense of God recognizing my need, and like His eye is on the sparrow, I have felt truly watched over by Him.
Then, the last thing I expected to happen, did. Being around my roommate and her boyfriend and their new relationship “honeymoon” phase, as confined to my home with them as I was, made the ache of my singleness stronger, and I asked God, “How am I supposed to meet a guy if I can’t even go anywhere? How can you satisfy this longing in my heart?” I’d been single for over three years. In that time, I’d done a lot of prayer, interior work, and reflection on what had gone wrong in my past relationships, what red flags I had missed before, what my blind spots were, and I began to identify my feelings and needs more. And then a fellow musician that I’d never met in person reached out to me on Instagram (of all places) and invited me to join him for an Instagram live interview on his profile where we talked about music, spirituality, and vocation. After our conversation, he said we should do it again sometime. So we planned another time to video chat over coffee and continue to get to know each other. This led to weekly video calls for almost three months before we finally met in person. During that time, we had the opportunity to grow in friendship and develop emotional intimacy without the other pressures or expectations of conventional dating. As I prayed about this deepening connection, I felt a sense of God simply inviting me to receive and trust in the unfolding. I felt serenity and peace.
My (now) boyfriend has been such a blessing to me in the midst of all that is going on in the world. He shares my values, makes me laugh, has deep insights and wisdom, is kind and emotionally available, and his energy complements mine. Where I’m expressive and extroverted, he is introspective and poised. His sense of structure brings balance to my spontaneity. But most profoundly, we have found incredible grace in the way that our beholding one another draws us more deeply into receiving God’s loving gaze.
When I bring up my growing affection for my boyfriend in prayer, the Lord continues to encourage me to receive His embrace when I am in my boyfriend’s arms. To allow each expression of love to be one that reminds me of God’s love for me. I feel very aware that this consolation is truly a gift. Not something I earned or that I became “good enough” for God to give me. Simply gift. In prayer, I continue to stay with the grace of taking things one day at a time and thanking God for the daily blessing I find in him.
St. Teresa of Calcutta’s feast day is September 5th, and I am drawn to contemplate her life as I conclude my reflection. She is my Confirmation Saint. Her life was one of deep trust in God’s provision and quenching the thirst of Christ from the Cross through small acts done with great love. In my own life, as the uncertainty of this pandemic, the election season, civil unrest in the country, and economic instability all loom forebodingly, I take comfort in Teresa’s wisdom. She didn’t set out to solve large problems all by herself. She loved the next person in front of her as she loved Christ. One person at a time, one day at a time.
How might you be invited to receive God’s loving and reassuring gaze during this continuing season of uncertainty? In what ways are you called to do small things with great love? How have you noticed God’s gentle, tender provision lately?
Jessica Gerhardt