Powelessness in the Face of Covid-19

BY MAJOR SUE HAY

Like many people, I had the year 2020 loosely mapped out by the end have choices is enough to dissipate that of January: a visit from my son in April, a trip to Australia in July, work crushing weight of powerlessness. trips dotted across the year, a work action plan I was looking forward to implementing. But that was before Covid-19 became a thing. That was before Covid-19 forced us all to recognise how powerless we really are over our lives, plans, hopes and dreams.

As life returned to normal following the first lockdown, we started to make new plans, assuming we were in charge of our own lives again. We arranged gatherings and holidays, booked tickets and acted as if we were back in control. But then Covid-19 resurfaced. This second disruption has been hard to take. Our sense of personal safety is threatened, our certainty that all will be well is destroyed and our intent to take back control of our present and future has been thwarted. Yet again we are forced to face up to how powerless we really are over so much of our day-to-day existence.

The Blame Game

Many have looked to blame God, the Prime Minister, the Government, the family at the centre of this outbreak, immigrants or people connected to quarantine sites. Blaming takes the focus off ourselves and our internal distress. Blaming others is a very human response to feelings of powerlessness. It reflects just how distressed we are. Blaming is something we resort to when we feel like a victim of our circumstances.

Melody Beattie has written a number of books about recovery from the challenge of co-dependency. Her perspective on recovery can be applied to recovery from anything we feel powerless over. I came across a line in one of her prayers recently where she owned her tendency to fall into a victim mentality. She prayed, ‘God help me let go of my need to feel victimised’. How I resonate with her honest plea! In the face of Covid-19 this is a very helpful prayer.

I am grateful for the reminder that there is a difference between being a victim and remaining victimised. The reminder was enough to point me to the tools we use to find recovery from addiction. These tools help us break out of the passive helplessness we can fall into whenever we feel like a victim.

Overcoming Powerlessness

The first thing to do is face up to our powerlessness. For me, powerlessness can feel like an all-consuming thick cloak of fog. It is dense and dark and impossible to see a way through. But the truth is, we are actually only ever powerless over specific things. The first step of the Twelve Steps states: ‘We are powerless over alcohol’—not everything. Just one thing. Certainly this one thing can make our lives very unmanageable, but having defined the issue, we can work with it. There is a limit to this cloak of darkness. Once we describe the extent of the struggle, we create handles we can grasp hold of with both hands. This is how we start to dispel the fog around us. It shifts the problem from being vague, overwhelming and impossible to tackle to something specific, more manageable and significantly smaller. When we name what we can’t control, we start to understand what we can control.

THE PAIN OF POWERLESSNESS REVEALS ALL WE HAVE EVER HAD WAS AN ALLUSION OF CONTROL.

I find it incredibly helpful to turn to the words of The Serenity Prayer whenever I experience a sense of personal powerlessness:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference (Reinhold Niebuhr).

By praying the Serenity Prayer slowly and thoughtfully, I find God really does help me understand that I still have options—there are things I can change. Between this prayer and the naming of powerlessness I begin to regain a sense of my own agency: I start to see how to respond, where I can act and how to rely on God. Often, just recognising I have choices is enough to dissipate that crushing weight of powerlessness.

You Choose

Even when at our most powerless, we never lose our personal power to make choices. In the face of Covid-19 we can still choose how we react and how to make the most of enforced restrictions. We can choose to wash our hands, socially distance and be grateful for what we do have. Making choices is the best way to break free of feeling victimised.

Sometimes, in the face of powerlessness our attitude is the only thing we can change. So let’s choose to work through any blaming of God or others by recognising every single person on the planet is impacted by this virus. If we can transform our thinking from ‘Why me?’ to ‘Why not me?’, we start to reduce the emotional energy we are investing in being a victim. Jesus would say to us: ‘God gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike’ (Matt 5:45, NLT). In other words, we are all in the same boat. All of us are experiencing distress and powerlessness as a result of Covid-19.

Shattering Illusions of Control

New Zealand author Mike Riddle has penned one of the most deeply theological declarations I have ever read. He states in stronger language than this, that bad things happen: ‘God. In surprising places, amid inexcusable circumstances, in the presence of raw pain, beneath the deepest anguish, within the simplest joy, there is God the companion, quietly awaiting recognition’. The pain of powerlessness reveals all we have ever had was an illusion of control. Times of powerlessness thus become an invitation to recognise the limits of our own human resources and turn to God as our true source. May we know the reality of God with us in these most challenging of days.