Covid-19: Your sadness is valid - even if you're better off than someone else

A lot of us are pretty sad at the moment. It's often said that comparison is the thief of joy. I wholeheartedly agree, and I'd also go further and say comparison is also the thief of sadness - and that is equally, if not more, dangerous.

It is very common to invalidate ours, or others', sadness, by comparing the situation to those who are worse off. For example, the lockdown we are currently experiencing has been frequently compared to the Second World War - and the comparison is almost always used to urge the reader to be grateful it's not worse. Getting perspective is one thing, but using one situation to infer that the genuine difficulties of another are not legitimate is at best irrelevant, and at worst, damaging.

Restricting our need to grieve has become more widely understood as an issue that can cause serious mental health repercussions down the line. Bottling our emotions up inevitably results in them exploding at some point later: whether that's directed at ourselves or to others. We know all this, and it's become far more accepted that emotions need to be explored and felt, but we still struggle to give ourselves permission to mourn the mundane.

What do I mean by that? It is unquestionable that somebody who has suffered a great loss or trauma should be completely validated in their suffering and it's not often that people argue with that. But when it comes to the everyday sorrow, we're less practised at giving space and weight to our feelings.

As I've discussed before, we live in a broken world, where sadness cannot be eradicated (at least not yet), and is an intrinsic part of life. We know this, and yet we resist it. All too often we use the blunt tool of comparison to try and lever ourselves out of a funk. Are our children exhausting? Well, at least we have some. Are we experiencing loneliness? Well, at least we have a house to be lonely in.

As with many fallacies, there is a twisted truth in this. Sometimes gaining some perspective is entirely necessary and relevant in finding emotional healing. We are all familiar with the scenario of a small child (or even adult!) who is given an array of goodies and still manages to throw an almighty tantrum over the one tiny detail that isn't quite right. In this case, drawing their attention to the grander picture is clearly essential - and a pretty regular occurrence in this household.

But there are plenty of sources of sorrow that aren't, and shouldn't, be relegated to the status of 'minor detail', and instead need acknowledging. And ironically, it is only when we acknowledge that it's okay to feel sad about these things that we can truly have a fuller perspective on the situation, because we aren't attempting to obscure part of it with a false positivity.

I'm a big fan of the Disney movie Inside Out which is a great illustration of how all our emotions are necessary. The character Joy spends the movie pushing her colleague Sadness stay well away from their girl, Riley's, emotional control panel; she believes the goal is to only allow joyful experiences and memories into her life. In excluding Sadness, she ends up short circuiting Riley's whole emotional and psychological system so she can't feel anything at all, let alone joy. Joy finally realises that some of Riley's happiest memories have come in the wake of deep sadness, because it was those moments of sorrow that allowed the warmth and joy of human comfort to enter in. If we squash sadness down, we disable the full range of emotions that we need to access in order to fully function.

Another more practical rationale for why comparison is a false way to deal with sadness is that once you start, where do you stop? It's one thing saying "lockdown is really tough, but at least I have a warm house to live in and food on the table", but taken to its extreme, there's always going to be someone who's worse off than you, meaning that using this methodology, no sadness is legitimate. One wouldn't address someone who had just lost all their limbs in a bomb blast with the truism, "at least you have a beating heart".

In terms of the Christian faith, I also think it's important to note that if we don't acknowledge difficulty and pain we cannot rejoice in God's goodness and comfort to us in hard times. If we spend our lives trying to con our hearts into thinking there's no need to ever grieve, we shut them off from receiving God's help. He calls us to acknowledge our weakness and need for him, because he wants to fill our broken hearts with his grace and love. We also need opportunities to show each other love and help, as human beings and as Christian brothers and sisters. We may find it hard to ask for help, but we all love to help somebody else who needs it. To be human is to live in community. If we deny the everyday struggles of that community, we deny the need for each other.

So the next time you feel the weight of life's burdens, you don't have to make excuses for your feelings. Own them. Give yourself permission to grieve. God's waiting to help you, and so are your people. After all, Jesus wept, and so can we.

4 ways the Gospel enables conversations about race (and other awkward things)

Recent world events coupled with the mental health effects of lockdown have created a complex cocktail of emotions and thoughts for many of us. With more time to think, and a plethora of internet opinions to wade through (and sometimes add to), as a nation and a church we have begun to grapple with the issues of race perhaps more than ever before. Personally, I have found this a time of intense self-reflection as I work through my identity as a mixed race woman and Christian within the framework of tumult we are experiencing.

Our pastors have been preaching (Zooming?) through Matthew 18 during this time and some key elements from this passage have struck me as particularly pertinent to the British church as we seek to love one another more deeply and follow our Saviour more wholeheartedly, even and especially within our different cultures and skin colours.

So here are four ways I think Matthew 18 enables conversations about race (and other awkward things).

1) Matthew 18:1-4 - "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

We enter into God's kingdom as little children. At the time Jesus lived on earth, children had very lowly status. When He says we are to enter God's kingdom as children, that means humbly, knowing that all we bring to the table is our brokenness and our sin, knowing God will forgive us and make us new. Our salvation is all of Him. This means that by professing to be a child of God we are in our very essence acknowledging our faults and our need to be forgiven.

How does this relate to discussions about race?

It means we come to them humbly, ready to hear where we are at fault and where we need to change. If we have led privileged lives, perhaps without realising it, we look at those lives with eyes that are ready to be opened in new and uncomfortable ways. We must be prepared for our pride in our achievements and our sense of self-made success to be viewed through the lens of the privilege we never knew we had. It means that we are ready to listen to brothers and sisters without waiting to tell them our opinion. It means we are willing to hear their experiences and lives without assuming we have the correct, balanced view.

We have already come, humbled, to our Lord and Saviour, confessing our need for forgiveness and repenting. This is who we are and what defines us. Yet how often we bristle at any hint that we may have sinned. We can let go of this and allow ourselves to face the music and self-reflect without fear - for God already knows the fullness of our fallen hearts and has accepted us and loved us.


2) Matthew 18:10-14 - "See that you do not despise one of these little ones... if he finds [the one sheep], truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray".

Our Heavenly Father rejoices deeply over every soul that comes to him because we are precious to Him. We belong to Him and are in his family. This is our identity as Christians - we may be white British, Indian, African American or Chinese - but if we are Christians our identity as God's children is the ultimate identity. That does not wash over our ethnicity, but it does underpin it, and for someone like me who is mixed and struggles with how to reconcile the different parts of my heritage, it's amazing news. I do belong and I do have a family, regardless of how disparate my earthly family may be!

Because our identity is firmly and unshakably rooted in our salvation in Jesus, when we are interacting with issues of race, we do not have to feel threatened. Hearing the British Empire criticised or reading Churchill's not so popular opinions, you don't have to feel outraged and defensive that your nation is being criticised - because we know that our earthly nations are not truly home - that is the "heavenly country" that is infinitely better. Closer to home, if you are starting to feel the fringes of embarrassment and indignation when you sense your identity as 'white' or 'British' being threatened, you can push into our safe place as God's children and allow ourselves to listen and learn without leaping to your own defence.


3) Matthew 18:15-20 - "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone."

The Gospel may unite us all in Christ, but it doesn't serve as a perpetual whitewash for ongoing sin. The New Testament is very real about the sinful nature and its persistence in this life even after we have been born again, and it's adamant that sometimes this sin should be gently exposed and the brother or sister brought to repentance. Racism is a sin, and its evil should not be softened or tucked under the carpet by the church. If we are saved, we sign up to be on the receiving end of this, as well as to go, and show our brother their sin, on occasion. In the British church, this isn't our forté. Our "stiff upper lip" culture often means that conflict nestles just under the surface without ever being resolved in a healthy way. As the church, we must be different. Unity does not mean pretending we agree about everything. It means that we die to self in order to preserve unity in Christ, putting our pride below the purity of the body of Christ. To show our brother their sin, or to have our own sin pointed out to us, both involve dying to self to preserve and nurture true unity.

In the context of race, this sin may not be as serious as overt racism. It may express itself in other more covert ways. We must be ready and willing to accept that sometimes we won't even recognise these in ourselves and receive loving rebuke with humility.


4) Matthew 18:21-35 - "I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?"

These verses were preached after a very turbulent week of protests following the murder of George Floyd. I was reeling and desperately trying to work through the torrent of anger, grief and indignation flowing through me. This passage was so timely. Our pastor explained that the amount of the debt the servant owed equated to millions, almost billions, of pounds - unpayable - and yet the Master wrote it off. The servant then goes and chokes someone who owes him a tiny fraction of this amount. The significance of the word "choke" was not lost on me, literally days after George Floyd died choking for air.

Our Father has forgiven us much. He has forgiven us for more than we could ever do to one another. Our sin put his Son on the cross. And he has forgiven us for that wrong. How can we, then, fail to forgive one another?

The topic of race and ethnicity can be a thorny one. It is rife with pain and hurt that stretches back lifetimes and centuries. Oppression that is rooted in history is not easy to dig up. But God calls us to forgive: to forgive those who have contributed, even unwittingly, to the problem. He enables us, by his grace, to forgive those who hurt us now by their silence or by their words.

Forgiveness is costly. Forgiveness does not ask us to sweep anything under the carpet. In forgiving, we are at liberty to acknowledge the pain and hurt, and decide to take the hit, to absorb the pain and in doing so be free of bitterness.

Forgiveness does not magic away consequences; and there are many consequences of racial oppression that we need to work through as churches and as nations. But knowing that we have been forgiven our great debt to the Creator of every living human being, who made us all in his image, changes the course of these consequences for us as brothers and sisters. We are set on a path of grace, to walk in the footsteps of the God-man who stayed silent as a lamb before the slaughter even when facing the most heinous injustice the universe has ever seen, in order to save his people and glorify his Father.



I have found these truths to be healing and I hope you do too. I have applied them to the subject of race here, but in actuality these encouragements can season any conversation with grace and love. I'm all too aware there are many occasions when I have not lived up to these saving truths - praise God there is grace still then! I pray that the Holy Spirit would cause us to rest in them more and more, and that in doing so we may truly be a church that is not afraid to go to the difficult places in order to become more united, more forgiving, more humble and more Christ-like.

The statues are a neat distraction from our own hearts

It's laughably shameful that permanent tributes to the men who organised and carried out the shipping of millions of black human beings across the world still exist in the UK, let alone that they are being described as "sacred" by our government. Edward Colston was a man who orchestrated the removal of around 84,000 people from their homes and moved them across the ocean in such squalid and vile circumstances that around 19,000 of them are estimated to die before they even reached their nightmarish destination. The outrageous amounts of money that people like him made from this heinous profession is why these people have permanent monuments to themselves that have far outstayed any welcome some gave them. Now when do we topple Oliver Cromwell, say the Irish?

Nevertheless, the fact that the conversation around race has now shifted to debating the merits of these people and whether Little Britain should be on telly is a downright disappointing shame. We obviously need a serious overhaul of what is considered acceptable (I would absolutely argue that David Walliams in blackface is not), but yet again, any chance we had of actually getting into the uncomfortable dialogue that underlies this is gone - shunted out of the way by Cecil Rhodes' bust.

We were getting into awkward territory for a moment; many white people are starting to grapple with these issues for real for the first time. Self-reflection and checking of privilege is occurring. Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race shot to the top of the Amazon book charts. People are owning their lack of understanding and seeking to get educated.

As I've spoken about before, any progressive dialogue about why black people are still treated as second-class citizens in this country, and how we can change that, has to start with ourselves and our own heart. Racism is not a binary; you are not either racist or not racist. We all have the capacity to be prejudiced and we all have to own our (unwitting or witting) contribution to the systemic racism that still chokes the life chances of millions of people in the UK.

The trouble is, that doesn't feel good. It really doesn't feel good to me that I have literally never considered, until this week, whether my buying power goes to supporting black-owned businesses. It doesn't feel good that I haven't even noticed that my kids' school has barely any non-white staff members.

We are all fallen human beings; the Bible says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. None of us, I hope, would pretend that we'd want our life streaming on Netflix for all to see. It's easy to admit that in broad brush strokes, but actually confronting the fact that I as an individual have contributed to the oppression of black people in this country? No thank you. It's hard work to dismantle this way of thinking and many are recoiling at the prospect.

So what makes it easier to side-step this discussion while still pretending that we really care about Black Lives Matter? A nice distraction over statues of dead men, that's what. The national conversation and the newspapers have now rushed, like bees to a honeypot, to pontificate over how good and how bad Winston Churchill was and avoid the screaming elephant in the room.

Spoiler alert: all human beings are good and bad. Churchill was a great leader who led us to the end of the Second World War. He was also unequivocally a white supremacist who proclaimed that the British were a "stronger race, a higher-grade race" than "Red Indians" and the "black people of Australia" and that he didn't think any wrong had been done to them. The reason the slave traders have had such a visible legacy in cities across the UK is because they poured money into them. Never mind the fact that that money was bloodied with the wounds of black people whose descendants now live in the UK.

If we keep running from the darkness in our hearts, we can never change it. Pretending we are getting this right by looking at people who were worse is not the answer. It's hard to swallow the humble pie we all need to eat to actually get anywhere dismantling current white privilege. Those conversations need to start at a personal level, not with tweets about Cecil Rhodes' stoney-faced imperialism.

The good news is that once we do face up to our own culpability, there is grace. God promises in the Bible that when we say sorry for our wrongdoing, he is faithful and just to forgive us. His forgiveness gives us spiritual peace, but it doesn't mean we can escape from the complex consequences of racism, or injustice in any shape or form. But it does mean we can stop hiding behind statues and get to the crux of the issue: our own hearts.

White supremacy is in my blood; we need to get uncomfortable fast to defeat it

I wouldn't be here without white supremacists. My ancestors were 17th century, Eton-educated colonials. My ancestors were also poor Indian women, taken as mistresses by the English and Portuguese upper classes whose wives remained in Britain, kept in silks and butlers thanks to the treasures bled from the colonies by the Empire. This is the history of my Anglo-Indian maternal family, who lived in Calcutta until the 1960s, when my mother and her family moved to Britain courtesy of their British passports, only to be greeted by "No Dogs, No Irish, No Coloured" signs and a cold shoulder from the supposed "Motherland".

My mum met and married my dad, an Englishman who is pretty much as white as they come, and along came I and my brother. Growing up in a mixed race marriage was something I'm really grateful for. It showed me what it looked like for different cultures and backgrounds to meet and blend. When I was growing up, I didn't notice that my mum had brown skin. I don't even really understand this since I'm not blind, but I remember a clear moment when I was around 11 years old when I realised that the woman I simply saw as my mum might be seen as "the lady with the dark skin" by other people. Race and racism were discussed around our dinner table and experienced first-hand.

I came out freakishly white, considering the gene pool I emerged from. My brother has far darker skin than I. Perhaps for this reason, it took me a long time to embrace or be curious about my Indian identity and heritage. I've always felt like a fraud. Many people look at me and think I'm "a bit..." (their words, not mine), but I don't clearly look Indian and as such I've struggled to feel like I can openly own all the facets of my ethnic background. 

Reading one of the books below, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race, liberated me from this imposter syndrome by showing me that race is about far more than the colour your skin turned out. But the fact that I pale in comparison to most BAME people means that I too share the same privilege as white people in this country and the US and all around the world. I speak for myself and my experience but I cannot speak for anyone in the black community or any other individual from any ethnic group. It means that for me, the tears that have fallen in the past week do sting more personally, but it does not mean that I can deny my privilege or understand the difficulties and obstacles and threats that black people and minority groups face every single day all around the world.

Me, my Mum and my brother... back when you could get haircuts

It took me a while to decide whether I should write this blog. I don't want to compound the ignorance and I know I'm all too capable of being ignorant on these matters. But then I realised that if I blog about anything, I need to blog about this. Whatever forms of communication we use, whether it's face to face conversation, the phone, or social media - we need to be talking about this right now, and for good. For good. 

The trouble is that we are so scared of getting it wrong that we don't get it at all. I'm sure I've phrased things clumsily in this piece. But this afternoon, having stood in my kitchen crying tears of rage over Trump's proclamation that "today is a great day for George Floyd", I knew that I must say something. We all must.

So here are some of my thoughts on how those of us who don't experience difficulty because of our skin colour can act positively moving forward:

1) We need to get prepared to get uncomfortable 

It's not comfortable to discover that Britain pillaged the rest of the world and is built on the backs of slaves. The British school curriculum has serious gaps in its content on racial history, teaching the "greatest hits" of US black civil rights and the abolition of slavery. There is a gaping hole swallowing up that whole embarrassing Empire thing. We do not teach our children why India and Pakistan are two separate countries and why we are responsible, or why the "Windrush generation", so recently newsworthy again, had British passports. No wonder, then, that so much resentment and ignorance is being bred even among younger generations, when the structures of education do not breed understanding and historical context in its place.

Fact: when slavery was abolished, the British government agreed to pay a giant chunk of compensation... not to the slaves, but to slave owners. This was finally paid off in total in 2015, meaning our taxes have been going towards paying slave owners off until 5 years ago. Source here and thank you to Reni Eddo-Lodge's excellent book Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race for educating me on this.

What's even more uncomfortable is sitting and listening to, or reading, or watching, somebody who tells you of the struggles they daily face and how you can be part of the problem - if not by being actively racist, by failing to see the ordinary everyday issues and confront them; by not even noticing that every birthday card has only white people on it, that plasters only come in peachy-pink and that foundation shades are few and far between if you have dark skin. It's uncomfortable realising you didn't even realise. It's uncomfortable discovering that black explorers, NASA scientists and doctors have been edited out of our history books. It's uncomfortable checking our privilege. But it's absolutely essential. Comfort is not our goal. Justice and equity is. 

2) We need to get prepared to get it wrong and be called out

I was pretty shocked when one of my heroes, Emily Maitlis, got it so wrong on this week's Newsnight. Interviewing George the Poet (George Mpanga), she stated,

"‘You’re not putting America and the UK on the same footing… our police aren’t armed, they don’t have guns, the legacy of slavery is not the same."

Mpanga's bowed head said it all and he called her out on it respectfully and firmly. So many of us are capable of this kind of well-intentioned lack of understanding. We have to recognise we have no entitlement to get upset if we are told that we are asking the wrong questions and taking the wrong approach. Learning curves are best travelled with humility. If you want to correct me or challenge me on anything I've written here, please do. Tell me what could be better and what I need to change.

If we are starting with a statement, we need to turn it into a question. Sentences like "Racism isn't that bad in Britain" should be rethought as, "Please tell me what your experiences are of racism in Britain". A white person proclaiming the lack of racism in Britain is the same as a perfectly able-bodied person declaring all infrastructure wheelchair-friendly. It seems like there is no problem if you are not the one suffering the consequences.

Fact: if you are black you are twice as likely to die in police custody. If you are black you are 40 times more likely to be stopped and searched in the UK. BAME groups are twice as likely to die from Covid-19.

I can't speak for all POC but from my point of view, I find it hard that so few people have ever asked me about my ethnic background. It is just as much a part of me as having children is - and boy do you get asked about that if you have them. Not everyone will feel exactly the same about this, of course, but the idea that "we don't see colour" is at best unhelpful and at worst dangerous because it tells us not to see people for who they truly are. Colour is a part of who we are. It is not something to pretend doesn't exist because then you eradicate the problems around it as well as the joy of diversity. You're far more likely to make someone feel uncomfortable and offended by never ever touching on a subject that is highly important to them, than asking sensitively about it. And as in the above point, it's better to try and get it wrong and take it on the chin than not ever move things forward.

This story is a beautiful example of how more understanding can be fostered from these conversations.

The idea that we risk being villified for "political incorrectness" if we talk about race and racism is, in my view, just another form of white supremacy in the guise of white people who want to call the shots on what counts as acceptable. It's a way to silence the discussion and hide the structural injustices that people face every day because of their skin colour. The idea that POC will take offence and attack those who respectfully engage with us in this discussion is a fallacy that is in itself racist and perpetuates and protects racism.


3) We need to be pro-actively anti-racist

We want our children to see all people as equal, regardless of the colour of their skin... but how many books on our shelves have ethnically diverse characters? How many films have we watched with black or brown heroes? How colourful is our friendship circle? Do our kids know who George Floyd was and why he died? If we live in quiet, white villages, do we go out of our way to take them on trips to more ethnically diverse towns and cities? If we see racist incidents occurring, whether it's on the internet, in public or in private, do we call them out? Will we?


4) We need to be educating ourselves by listening to black and minority voices and then amplifying the black voice and the black community

Here are some ideas of where to start:

Why I'm no Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire - Akala

White Fragility: Why It's so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism - Robin Diangelo

Episode 102: Empire State of Mind on the Reasons to be Cheerful Podcast

George the Poet

About Race Podcast with Reni Eddo-Lodge

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Becoming by Michelle Obama (this is now a documentary series on Netflix too)

Engage with these - there is plenty on all forms of media - and other voices and information. Only once we have begun to listen and understand and truly hear can we be true allies: standing alongside, sharing the message and widening the platform.

5) We need to be fighting for structural change

All people can be and generally are prejudiced. Black people can be prejudiced against white people, but it doesn't generally reduce their life chances. Conversely, when white prejudice exists it is twinned with power to form societal structures that drive people down and force them to the bottom of the pile; that take away opportunity, health, wealth and ultimately life. To fight racism we must challenge and dismantle these structures.

If you're in management or leadership at work, do you have diverse representation, especially in positions of power? Does your board actively seek to find people of different backgrounds to provide a voice? This isn't just about providing a voice for people of all communities, it's about the fact that diversity of experience and opinion enriches everything and makes us all better and stronger together. Do you have a good mix of ethnic backgrounds in your workforce, and if not, why not? That might mean quotas for interview; it might mean looking into your job application processes to find out why no one is applying who isn't white; and it might mean being really honest about whether applicants with names you can't pronounce are equally considered, consciously.

Fact: 69% of FTSE companies have no ethnic diversity on their boards and this BBC study shows that you are three times more likely to get a job interview if you have an English-sounding name than a Muslim name.

We can write to the powers that be and demand answers. Adidas currently has 5 white men and 1 white woman on the board. Nike has 7 white men and 3 white women. Let's ask why. Ask your employer. Ask your kids' school.

Let's support black-owned businesses. Let's support black female-owned businesses (black women are the victims of intersectionality, discriminated against by both their gender and race and struggling against the most obstacles to health, solvency and opportunity). Let's read books by a range of authors, watch movies and TV series that you might not naturally choose, and take the time to watch that Facebook video by Black Lives Matter that we would normally scroll past.

Let's get out of our comfort zone. Because every day, millions of people in the UK and around the world have to live in a world that's uncomfortable at best and fatal at worst. George Floyd's family know that; and so does every ordinary black and brown family in the UK.

Covid-19: keeping schools shut will risk more lives than opening them

I have read more articles and social media posts than I can count recently about whether schools should reopen. Nearly all of them are sentimental, poignant and designed to pull at the heartstrings. Nearly all of them have in common that it's impossible to expect small children to social distance, that their mental and emotional health will be in jeopardy from the new systems, and that teachers and pupils would be risking their lives to return to a formal education setting. And most of them describe unrealistic scenarios that will not happen in practice.

As the wife of a Deputy Head I have found these posts painful and difficult to read. My husband does not actually have a choice about whether his school reopens (and incidentally, the schools never closed: they've always remained open to keyworker and vulnerable children). It doesn't matter whether he thinks it's right or wrong: his job is purely to facilitate it in the best way possible. This is a stressful, emotional and simultaneously incredibly tedious task.

While he sits in his makeshift office upstairs on call after call, going into school to walk around and hone procedures and painstakingly formulating and tweaking all these very high-stakes plans, the media, government and general public spend their time making known their opinions, which are not always very well informed or even well-intentioned.

Teachers are lazy, teachers should be "heroes", the unions are communists, schools should be refusing to open... there's something for everyone.

And meanwhile the actual teachers on the ground are just having to get on with the job of figuring it out.

I would urge anyone reading this to refrain from posting sentimental and ill-informed posts about the morals of children returning to school.

The fact is that schools NOT reopening will risk as many lives, if not more, as opening will. The proportion of the population not in care homes or hospitals who have Covid is currently projected at 0.24%. RO is under 1. The curve is dropping.

The curve that is shooting up exponentially, the disease that is catching faster than at any point in my lifetime now is poverty.

People talk of everything "going back to normal". There is not going to be a normal for a long, long time. We are entering a huge recession which will mean millions of UK families being plunged under the breadline. And schools are a lifeline for these children and their parents, who cannot return to work unless they have childcare.

Schools mean somewhere warm during the winter, a hot meal in a child's belly, a kind and friendly adult looking after them and being safe. It's a long time since schools were merely there to provide education. They are another branch of the NHS. Schools are where neglect and abuse is disclosed, where additional educational needs are discovered and referred to the experts, where children are safe, where they are given clean clothes, a healthy breakfast and love.

There are estimated to be 2,259,000 vulnerable children with "complex family needs" around the UK right now. There are around 831,000 living in homes where domestic abuse occurs. There are families who have struggled for weeks to access the free school meal vouchers. Food bank usage doubled at the Trussell Trust in just the first week of lockdown. At the start of April an extra 950,000 people had applied for Universal Credit in the space of two weeks.

Aside from the respite that a caring school offers to a child, there are many other millions of families who don't have any income now coming in because they cannot return to work while they have children at home. I have seen people scoff at the motivation of the government for reopening schools and workplaces first and foremost: but the economy is not always a bad motivation. The economy is what keeps us alive. We need people back to work if we are to save lives; and most people cannot work if the schools are not open.

This does not mean that everyone should send their children back to school. It is an individual choice and frankly, schools could not achieve the staffing necessary to welcome every child back into school on June 1st. This blog is not about whether you or I should choose to send our children in. It is about the UK-wide risks of either reopening fully or not.

The risks of Coronavirus will peter away. But the risks of poverty and vulnerability are only going to increase and they will kill far more, in the long term, than Covid. Whatever you think about the morality of schools reopening, the fact is that the economy collapsing is an equally morally weighted issue and one that we must pay swift attention to. Money, as well as medicine, saves lives.

Covid-19: There is no good way out of this and here is why

The morning after Boris Johnson's much-awaited speech last night, social media feeds and newspaper headlines are full of outrage, cynicism and indignation. A widely held view is that the Prime Minister was unclear, unwise and incompetent in what he said, lacking the necessary clarity and direction that we as a nation are currently craving. There are those who are frustrated at the ostensible contradictions in measures, and those who assert that Mr Johnson and his cabinet are doing the best they can with a horrendously difficult situation.

I don't know where you stand on all this. I do know that while we all yearn for a good way out of this pandemic, there isn't one.

There isn't a good way out of an impossible situation. To keep the lockdown in place for many more weeks will cost jobs, livelihoods and mental health. To relax it too soon will mean the Covid-19 death rate soaring sky high again.

We're all looking for the middle way; the right way; the way that will mean the perfect balance of sensibly eased restrictions with the necessary caution to protect lives.

There is no such thing. And yet we expect it, somehow.

We're right to want this impossibility. We feel the pain and injustice of families struggling to put bread on the table and nurses stretched to breaking point in ICU wards simultaneously, and we care. We want a way out that serves all of us fairly. It would be wrong not to feel angry and grieve over the mistakes that have been made - some deliberately - in this tangled, twisted situation.

The problem is, we live in a world where everything about this pandemic is so messed up that no one is getting out unscathed. We can try and minimise the damage, but damage there will be. This is true of most human stories, and Covid-19 has only served to bring this into relief. It's a giant magnifying glass to the brokenness and bruisedness of life as a human being. There is no joyful birth without pain, no marriage without conflict, no grief without the sweet notes of comfort from a loved one. Being human means to experience all these things, often at once.

There has never been a political leader who was perfect. There has never been a philosopher who has found the answer. There has never been a democratic system that has served its citizens in complete justice.

Yet we still continue to long for something better. Why is this? Because we were made for something better. We were made for a world where death was not present and Coronavirus an impossibility. That is why we mourn the separation of our body and soul so fervently - it is unnatural. It feels wrong, because it is. We were created to be in a world where there is no pain and no death and no tears. Yet it has become marred and so although our souls and hearts are still hard-wired to expect better, we are constantly disappointed.

Hebrews 11:16 describes Abraham and other Old Testament believers in this way:

"Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."

There is a better country.

We long for that better country to be now: for our leaders to be just, and fair, and compassionate, and wise. And so we are constantly disappointed, if not surprised.

There is only one leader who will not disappoint. He is Jesus. He didn't come to abuse his power and trample the vulnerable for the sake of profit - instead, he gave up his life and died for his people. He didn't come to impress the PR departments and spin his message - he was brutally honest about how difficult life is but how it's worth it to be on his team. He didn't ever mess up - he lived a perfect life here on earth, showing compassion to the needy, standing up to the corrupt leaders and showing us God's plan. He invites us all to be part of his family and share in that sure hope for a better world in eternity.

So let's stop expecting anything more of Boris Johnson, because he is not capable of more and we should not even come close to putting our trust in him. Yes, we must hold our leaders to account - and there is plenty of that to be done at all times and especially in these times. Yes, we must fight for justice and peace wherever it can be won. But we mustn't kid ourselves that we can navigate our way out of this one without a lot of collateral damage. To imagine that is possible would be a denial of the very world we find ourselves in, and a distraction from the better world we can have an eternal place in.

Covid-19: How do we UNlockdown?

First of all, give yourselves a virtual medal. We are now 6-8 weeks into isolating depending on when we started. Those of us with children have spent the equivalent of the summer holidays in the same space with nowhere to go and no one to see. Those of us on our own have slogged through nearly 2 months of just our own company. Let's face it, it's getting pretty old.

But a recurring theme amongst friends I speak to is that there are elements of lockdown we have all enjoyed and want to take away with us. That first week my overwhelming feeling was relief that I'd got off the hamster wheel. The feeling of having nowhere to go, no meetings, no pushing the kids out of the door for school and no hustle and bustle was so peaceful. Granted, our life was exceptionally busy, and I think we needed a break. (Also granted, I now feel like I'm on an even bigger hamster wheel, but that's another story!)

• I've learnt that our home and garden provides far more entertainment than I ever could have realised.
• I've learnt that my children can use their imaginations when they aren't overstimulated. They've spent hours this lockdown just tending some snails and inventing imaginary games.
• I've learnt that when I'm short with them and irritated, it's generally because of the pressures of 100 other things in my head rather than their behaviour or me lacking the skills and compassion to parent them.
• I've learnt that we don't need to go out to loads of places to be happy.
• I've learnt that I love cooking and actually enjoy cleaning my house when I feel relaxed and have more time.
• I've learnt that we can save hundreds by not doing lots of the activities that we do to 'get out' because we feel stressed.
• I've learnt that my (probably autistic) middle child is much happier and settled at homeschool than going to school, where she expends all her energy masking and then explodes when she comes home.
• I've learnt that my children can rise to the challenge of taking on far more responsibility than I used to give them credit for - they can now hoover the whole house, load and unload the dishwasher, do the washing, clean the windows, keep their rooms tidy, fold washing, dust, take the compost and recycling out, and steam mop.
• I've learnt that there are loads of lovely walks around here that we hadn't discovered - and that the girls are now easily able to walk for a couple of hours without complaining.
• I've learnt that I don't miss my job half as much as I thought I would, and I really don't miss spending evenings and weekends working. 
• I've learnt that the small things can bring so much pleasure - wild flowers, our view, a cup of tea enjoyed at leisure, a card from a friend.

The question is, how much can and should we take away into 'normality' with us from lockdown? And how do we work that out? I've spent the last few weeks trying to work through this.

Here are some thoughts I've had.

1) We can't, and shouldn't, try and emulate all of this when lockdown finishes. We were given this time for a reason, but it's not real life. It's an artificial and temporary situation. While we can think through our priorities, it's unrealistic to put pressure on ourselves to take all the good things away with us. We need to work our jobs, most of us think our kids should be in school rather than homeschool, and we need to spend time meeting people and celebrating things and going to appointments and just doing life. We can be thankful for the gifts of this time without feeling like we have to figure out how to integrate them all into post-lockdown life.

2) We can, and should, take some of these things with us. As Matt Haig points out, though some mental health issues are escalating during lockdown, we cannot possibly pretend that pre-Covid life was a 'mental health utopia'. A huge number of us felt overwhelmed, overbusy, overstressed and overworked before Coronavirus. So let's learn the lessons we've been taught during this time and figure out what can and should change.

3) Let's think through what this time has taught us about what we really do miss. Here are some other things I've learnt:

• That having people in my home, cooking for and with them and eating with them is an essential part of life.
• That meeting together as a church, and especially singing together, is precious and definitely worth all the hard work that goes into practical set up for it.
• That face to face, bodily present communication makes Zoom pale in comparison. 
• That we actually take pleasure in working hard in our home and garden, even the really difficult jobs!
• That we can stay in touch with people who are far away via tech all the time, not just in lockdown. We live far apart from a lot of family - I definitely want to carry on playing games online with them and Zooming even when normality resumes.

Aidan and I want to take these priorities and rebuild life around these, figuring out how we can adapt to put the important things at the centre. Number 1 is very dear to our hearts. When it is safe again, we want our home to be open to our family and friends a LOT. I've realised it's not having an immaculate home and special dinners that matters, it's just having people in our midst and living life together - mess and all. I'm not sure how this will work when my husband goes back to his intense and stressful job, but I definitely think we have changed our outlook on how we manage that stress - and I think it will involve more gardening and fewer trips to cafés...

Again, I'm fully aware that the privileges of a garden, spacious home and each other mean that this is a blog post I am completely blessed to even write. I know that for many, lockdown has presented only difficulties and that the sooner it ends the better. This is just our experience and one we are grateful for. And don't get me wrong, I am really struggling with a lot of aspects of it. 5 people under one roof exclusively for 8 weeks is not a pretty sight at times.

Have you enjoyed anything about lockdown? Is there anything you want to take away with you? And how will you do that?