I confess – I like to read fiction. Maybe it’s because I grew up on fables and fairytales, princesses and kings and queens and magic dragons and such. Reality pales in comparison to enchanted kingdoms and heroic narratives. Reality is where I live but as a child it was nice to escape into a different world from time to time through books and imagination. Reality can be harsh and hard at times but sometimes reality becomes a bit too real. I see reality on the TV news every day but when that reality becomes my personal reality, then it has become too real for my fantasy preferring tastes.

Such is the case today. I have learned that my son cannot return home from his honeymoon trip to Mexico because he has tested COVID positive and therefore he is unable to enter his own country. He would be a danger to others.

I find it ironic that I wrote a recent post about our southern border crisis (“questions of the curious”) and now my own son cannot enter his own country at the moment. All because he tested positive for COVID, he cannot come home. Meanwhile one million plus non-citizens, illegal, unknown, undocumented people have entered our country since late in January and more continue to enter our country everyday. These people are not tested, quarantined, nor required to get vaccinated but my son (who is vaccinated and still had to be tested to come home) is required to comply with all these rules and regulations.

The rules and regulations are fine. They are in place to protect us all. But only a few people are being made subject to these rules and regulations, namely U.S. citizens. The vast number of people entering our country are not citizens of the U.S. but of other countries, and they are free to enter our country and to go wherever they wish within our country, with no vaccinations, no passports (vaccine or otherwise) no COVID tests, no quarantine before entering, nothing . . . where is the fairness, where is the equity and justice we are constantly told must be brought into every situation? We as citizens must comply with all these rules to enter into our own country but those who are unknown, unidentified, undocumented, illegal aliens can enter freely without being tested, quarantined, required to show proof of vaccination or to get vaccinated as a condition of being allowed to enter this country.

Not so for my son, who is a tax paying citizen of this country with a passport and a vaccination record and a job and an address – he was tested, he has to quarantine, he might be a danger to others. But the thousands of untested, unknown people that cross our southern border and come into our country illegally every day from places all around the globe, aren’t a COVID danger to others? This makes no sense to me nor to any rational, thinking person, I would guess. Is this what “following the science” looks like? – admitting more than a million non-citizens into our country while simultaneously keeping our own citizens out, stopping them from returning home by denying them entrance into their own country.

They are requiring us to be vaccinated. Why aren’t they requiring those individuals at our southern border to receive the vaccination as a condition of their entrance into the U.S.? My son is ill, but does not have access to his doctor or the medical care he would have were he home. Truth really is stranger than fiction. We are living under mask mandates, vaccine mandates and constant testing requirements – all intended to protect us from the deadly COVID. Meanwhile, at the exact same time, thousands of unmasked, untested, unquarantined, unvaccinated, many COVID positive people pour into our country across our southern border every day – unchallenged, unchecked, unmonitored, unrestricted – much freer than we as U.S. citizens are at the moment. Sometimes reality is just too real. And often it doesn’t make any sense.

That’s why it’s good that my trust is in God and not in man. Man’s solutions to problems fall so far short and usually, like now, make things worse, not better. God always has a better plan, if only I would –

“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret – it leads only to evil. For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.” (Psalm 37:7-9) Today I am praying these words for my son,

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ Surely He will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. . . . ‘Because he loves Me,’ says the Lord, ‘I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges My name. He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him My salvation.’ ” (Psalm 91:1-6 &14-16)

my Heavenly Father is with me in this too real circumstance, He is with you in yours, He is with my son in Mexico,

sincerely, Grace Day