One of my sister’s brother’s-in-law responded to a medical emergency involving complications due to Covid-19. We’re grateful for his service. The hard thing is the subsequent exposure to him by my sister’s family and then my whole family to my sister’s family led us to feeling the need to quarantine ourselves from my family for two weeks. It felt like we had just started being able to see people and since 80% of the people the girls and I spend time with outside of ourselves are my family it was a major shut down for us. Being isolated has shown me a few things.
First, it highlights the holes and weaknesses of my relationship with God. In Him we are never alone. But, I have become dependent on people to be my sounding board and comfort to get through hard things. When that support system is physically removed, I am actually in a better place to create real change in my situation. But it feels the opposite! It feels like I am alone and my problems are bigger and I get stuck in my head a LOT more often. And in my head things a HUGE mess right now! I am learning to rely on God and use Him as my sounding board. That’s a much better thing anyway. Since in talking with Him I’m not gossiping. Since He alone can do something about most of the things I am concerned about and struggling with. And since He is perfect and, though I may hurt His feelings, He forgives more easily than people can. I know all these TRUTHS! I am grateful for the scripture I’ve been taught and have read and memorized and taught and helped the girls memorize. I just have to practice rehearsing the truth over and over in my mind instead of my problems. I am working on it, but it remains a struggle and truly a work in process.
I have also learned it is the little things that matter. It is taking the time to visit with my daughters. It is playing Go Fish and laughing at nothing. It is watching their flips and tricks and taking pictures and making videos to send to cousins they can’t see because of Covid and great grandmas they can’t see due to distance. It is being creative about birthday celebrations and vacations because of the virus and closed businesses. It’s a chance to expand our circle of people and strength other friendships. It’s finally painting the bunk beds their daddy and uncle built them for Christmas. It is about celebrating a replacement car even if it isn’t the one I wanted. It is celebrating healthier tomato plants even if I don’t know if we’ll get more than our one tomato. You see this road is rocky and these circumstances are fibrous (no pun intended), but it is what I ruminate on (to borrow an illustration from the way cows eat) that feed my soul. A cow has 7 stomachs and their food has to go through a lot of digestion to give the cows the nutrients they need. The nutrients are in the grass, but the cows have to really let that grass sit and they have to chew it and ruminate it to get to those nutrients. I can ruminate on the hard things and poison my soul with all the hard there is today. Or I can ruminate on all the blessings and nourish my soul with all the good there is today. This is a choice that is honestly so hard to make right now it barely feels like a choice. I honestly want to wallow in self-pity and cry and throw a big old hissy fit. But, I won’t feel better when that’s done because it won’t change anything. So, I am choosing instead to feed myself truths even when they seem patronizing and useless because the truth will set me free. By focusing on it, I will eventually be freed from this grouchy, negative place of hard and revel in the beauty that surrounds me. At least that’s the truth I read in the Bible and it’s what I’m clinging to in this long season of helplessness to change my situation.
This past week, and the one ahead, where I can’t see my family have been and will be hard. They will all be together tomorrow for the 4th of July. All except us! Just like it was all except us at Easter. And I’ll probably cry about it. But, I do have these three amazing human beings I do get to see, and a chance to see my Nanna outside during some fireworks tomorrow night. And that is the good I am striving to focus on. The sunshine on my cloudy day!
I fear what the school year holds for my daughters and for me. But again that is something I cannot control. I have talked to some other teachers about some of the possibilities, I have checked my email every day hoping for any inkling of what is coming. But none of that really helps me feel better. Today my intention will be to pray or speak a truth whenever I start to worry or pity myself. I will remind myself that God is the only one REALLY in charge of school this fall. I will be grateful for the fact that several of our board members and our superintendent know that and rely Him for their direction. I will mess up today and grumble and worry, but if I set and reset my intention to focus on and ruminate on truth then I will have a more positive outlook and will see more of the sun in my partly cloudy skies instead of just the clouds.
That is where I am today in my isolation from people and my invitation to the throne room of grace. Where are you today? What things can I pray with you about?
