It's hard to believe it's been six years since the COVID pandemic hit. In many ways it feels like yesterday, and in other ways it feels like a lifetime ago. A season where we couldn't be in public. We couldn't see anyone and had to isolate ourselves at home. I endured those days with so much dread and so many wishes to just get out.

Which is why I was caught off guard the other day when I found myself in a conversation and heard the words: "I miss that about COVID."

Something I never thought I'd hear. Something I never thought I'd agree with. And yet there I was fully present, and fully agreeing.

It's had me wondering ever since: How could there be any longing for a season I resisted so deeply?

Especially in a season filled with so much loss - the loss of normalcy, people, relationships.. Everything I knew felt stripped away. I wanted out of it so badly. And yet here I am, years later, noticing the subtle gifts that were hidden inside it.

I think it's just what we as humans do. We romanticize the past. I see it in conversations like this one. And honestly, I see it all throughout Scripture too - the Israelites in the wilderness longing for Egypt, the very place they'd begged God to deliver them from.

We look back at seasons that were genuinely hard and somehow what rises to the surface isn't the hard parts. It's the stability. The community. The little moments of unexpected joy. 

And I think what's really happening beneath the surface is this: we don't notice the good things until they're gone. We can't always see the gift while we're inside of it. That’s just the nature of living in the middle of something.

I've been guilty of it in small ways too. I think about how hard it is to maintain a routine — to get up early, to push through the mental resistance to work out or sit with the Lord in the morning. In the thick of it, it feels like a battle. But looking back? It feels easy. I forget the effort it actually took and then wonder why I can't seem to get back there.

The more I sit with this, the more I believe it's not just a quirk of human nature. Scripture says the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy and I think one of his quietest strategies is exactly this: to rob you of the joy that exists in your current season while simultaneously convincing you that what you had before is gone forever. He keeps you too distracted to notice what's good right now, and too afraid to believe it could ever come back.

And maybe that's where grief lives, too. COVID was grief. We lost everything we knew to be true. Suddenly every aspect of life was up for questioning — Will my family be okay? Can I trust this? When will life feel normal again? Those questions barely scratch the surface of what was stirring underneath.

And I wonder if that's what's really at the root of romanticizing the past: fear. Will I ever feel that again? Will I ever have that kind of community, that kind of simplicity, that kind of peace? Fear has a way of holding us in place in every way - physically, mentally, emotionally. It's that powerful.

So what do we do with it?

What I'm finding is that the first step is simply to acknowledge it. When we name the fear and when we actually say out loud, "I'm afraid I'll never have that again" something begins to shift. Naming it doesn't fix it. But it unlocks something.

Suddenly you can see what you're actually navigating. You can label the grief. And when you can label it, you can begin to move through it rather than being moved by it. You can't make a choice about something you don't know you're carrying.

The Lord meets us in that place of acknowledgment. I've experienced that firsthand in the way He shoes up when I get honest and name what's actually going on, not when I have it figured out. 

So maybe this is where I leave you today.

What do you long for? Where do you find yourself quietly asking, "Will I ever _____ again?"

If any of this resonates with you, try spending some time with those questions in your journal, or even in prayer. You might uncover more than you expect.