This isn’t my first rodeo experiencing an Easter in isolation.

When I was in the fourth grade, I had chickenpox on Easter. I remember going out on the front porch to check my basket, scabby little thing that I was. I collected my chocolate rabbit with its bulging blue eyes and went back to bed.

I escaped the pox in the third grade when it swept through my class. It waited until the next year to get me and my sister after a spend-the-night party with the cousins. The silver lining was my mother getting it over with the two of us at the same time.

I was laid up on the couch and in the bed instead of putting on a new dress and white shoes for Easter Sunday.

Oh, the misery! No amount of calamine lotion or oatmeal baths could ease the itch. Today I carry the scars of three of those horrible sores. My fever spiked at 104+. I remember, for the first time, of being afraid of a sickness. Would the fever break? Would the Tylenol work? Or would my temperature blow out the mercury on the thermometer like I had seen on Looney Tunes?

I’ll never have to worry about getting chickenpox a second time because my case was a “good” one. Maybe one day I can relive the experience with the shingles which I’ve also heard is an absolute treat.

There was nothing else to do but to wait it out. There’s not much that can be done to treat chickenpox, a dastardly virus. It can only run its course, or you can get a vaccine and never have to live through it.

Today we find ourselves in similar circumstances. There is no itching, no sores, no fever—not yet, at least, not at my house. But we live under that specter of fear, of wondering where IT will strike next, if that cough is caused by COVID-19 or just tree pollen.

And even better news? The tornadoes are coming for Easter Sunday. We are getting lessons on the news about using our hand sanitizer and masks and gloves at the shelters.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’d rather take my chances with the corona than a tornado. Even Dr. Mark Wilson, health officer of Jefferson County, thinks so. Y’all are welcome to come to my basement. I’ll fix some pimento cheese and deviled eggs and we’ll have a rip-roaring Easter get-together…

…with our masks on, of course.

Suffering is a part of existence on broken planet Earth, no doubt about it. Bad things happen to good people. The innocent are abused. Children die. Accidents maim. Disease kills. Weather destroys.

Some of the most devastating events we even call acts of God. How ironic.

He’s a perfect God, but this sure is an imperfect world. And here’s where I could get preachy and philosophical and say that there is a reason for it all, but I’m not going to do that, because there is sometimes no explanation for the terrible things that happen on this Earth.

But Jesus knows. The One who conquered death itself with His own sacrifice knows pain, knows sorrow, knows suffering. In Him we have an intimate friend who has been in our shoes and knows our hearts and the heartache that pricks us so deeply that we can find no words or way to express it.

And He leaves us with a firm promise:

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!”

John 16:33

Take heart! I have overcome sin!

Take heart! I have overcome suffering!

I have overcome disease, sickness, frustration, separation, and persecution!

His words do not mean that we will not experience any or all of those but that we can trust in Him to be our Overcomer through whatever obstacles we will face in this life.

He can also certainly give us the strength to face tornadoes, the coronavirus, loss of income, and having to stay at home on Easter Sunday.

May this Easter season be a time of being more grateful for the love of God and the relationship we can have with Him through belief in Jesus Christ.

And rest assured, He will never stand six feet apart from us either.