Month: January 2022

Week 1 vs. Week 95: A COVID Retrospective

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“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” –Mark Twain

Well, friends, here we are. Nearly two years into this COVID business, and I can’t help feeling deja vu every single day. COVID persists, people continue to astound me, and the world still seems a bit confused as to which way is up. I did the math, and this is week 95 (95!) since our schools first closed for “Two weeks to flatten the curve” (Oh my, weren’t we precious in March 2020?!).

And even though COVID seems to have signed the HOA agreement and moved in permanently next door, things are different now. I mean, they’re the same…but differently the same. Let me explain:

COVID Week 1:
There’s this new virus, Coronavirus, that the news keeps telling us has the potential to “significantly disrupt daily life”.
COVID Week 95:
There’s this new never-ending virus, Coronavirus COVID, that the news keeps telling us has the potential will continue to “significantly disrupt daily life” for all of eternity forever and ever, Amen.

COVID Week 1:
Wash your hands! Cough into your elbow! Lysol! Lyslol! Lysol!
COVID Week 95:
Stay home and quarantine for somewhere between 5 days-5 years if you cough, sneeze, have a headache, have aches (I’m nearing 40 years old…Is there ever a time again when I won’t have aches? Asking for a friend.), are tired, have a sore throat, have a runny nose or congestion, have diarrhea, feel nauseous, can’t smell well, can’t taste well, can’t breathe well, have recently traveled, or if you have recently been in contact with anyone with the above symptoms. If you cough or sneeze in public you will be publicly shunned and/or deported to a red state. Bathing in Lysol concentrate is recommended no more than three times per week so we can conserve the Lysol supply chain.

COVID Week 1:
Toilet paper becomes a wisp of a dream as store shelves are emptied and black market trading begins. I research bidets and whether our new septic system can handle TP alternatives such as moss or leaves.
COVID week 95:
Toilet paper remains scarce due to supply chain issues and a nationwide employee shortage. Free time activities include stalking neighborhood social media groups for updates on when Costco gets TP shipments and ordering bulk toilet paper from Amazon.

COVID Week 1:
Masks are reserved for Halloween or sterile surgical environments.
COVID Week 95:
Places I have found masks this week include, but are not limited to: The faces of literally every person I interact with outside of my own home, my purse, the gear shift in my car, my rearview mirror, under all 3 car seats, my driveway, inside my washing machine, under the hot tub lid, hanging from bicycle handlebars in our garage, the bottom of my shoe, the slide on the school playground, inside the toy box, and inside a cereal box.

COVID Week 1:
Getting our annual flu shots required four nurses to restrain one of my children; there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.
COVID Week 95:
We celebrated getting our COVID vaccines like we’d won the lottery. There were balloons and prizes and songs and dances and I’m pretty sure I even caught streams of confetti falling in that school gymnasium vaccine clinic.

COVID Week 1:
Limit your contact with other people to reduce the spread of this new and yet-to-be-understood virus.
COVID Week 95:
Limit your contact with other people because you haven’t interacted with people IRL for nearly 2 years and it’s actually kind of dreamy staying home in your pajamas with your new BFF HBO Max.

Here’s to 95 weeks down–may our future be full of increasingly pleasant rhymes!

Let There Be Light

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You guys, today is a day to celebrate!

Not only is today the first day of a new year, but it also marks a special anniversary for this blog: My 10th blog-iversary. Ten years ago today I started this blog on a whim (The whim being due mostly to the fact that I had two babies in diapers and the voices in my head needed an outlet.). A decade ago when I typed those first words on my very first laptop computer (Hey, that was a big deal in 2012!) I had no idea what I wanted to accomplish through my blog or why I was even writing in the first place. But I did it anyway, and here I still am today. Still plugging away–still not quite sure what I’m doing or why I’m doing it–yet still feeling the same pull to write that I did a quarter of my lifetime ago.

And even though I still feel the pull to write, I haven’t been doing it lately. In my early blogging days I was publishing nearly 200 posts per year. Last year I published 2.

My excuse? This year was HARD. Like, harder than I ever thought a year could be. And the year before it? Well, it was even HARDER.

Somewhere between a global pandemic, the utter brokenness of the lives and the community around me, homeschooling 3 children (Which I always said I would never do, by the way), facing disappointment after bitter disappointment, and just plain exhaustion (Actually, not just plain exhaustion–Mother of Young Children During a Pandemic Exhaustion. It’s a clinical crisis. Look it up.) I simply couldn’t find it in me to do one single other thing beyond sheer day-to-day survival.

On the cusp of this new year, however, I have decided I’m ready to do more than just survive. I’m ready to allow myself to be vulnerable (Which is quite different from the forced vulnerability that the pandemic brought upon us all). I’m ready to allow myself the space and the time to process my own thoughts, and maybe even just realize I have thoughts that are unrelated to an external need or crisis. I’m ready to bring back something that brings me joy. I’m ready to write.

In my very first ever blog post, I wrote about my new years resolution that year: finding praise in every complaint. If I were to rewrite that post today, it might go something like this:

Complaint: COVID sucks
Praise: COVID brought my family together at the exact point in time when we all would have begun our biggest year of separateness. We learned how to depend on our unchanging, always and forever God when the world around us constantly shifted like sand blown by a desert storm. We learned to profoundly appreciate Very Important Things that we had become complacent to: our health, our schools and jobs, our relationships.

Complaint: This was supposed to be my first year with all of my children away in school. Instead I’m a homeschool mom.
Praise: What a gift that I was able to step in to teach my children when the need presented itself! With a teaching degree and classroom teaching experience under my belt, I’ve literally been training and practicing for this exact moment for decades. Through the magic of spending literally every waking moment with my own children, I was able to recognize challenges that I had been blind to before–and from there, a series of diagnoses and helpers have been put into place that will literally change my kids’ lives forever. One of our kids NEEDED this change, but I don’t think I ever would have been brave enough to make it happen on my own. (I would, however, still love to know what a quiet house and a nap feel like.)

Complaint: I’m tired.
Praise: I’m tired because I care, and because I care for others. It is a privilege to be the one offering care and able to pour out my love for others. It also helps that I have the world’s comfiest bed and children who finally all sleep through the night (#ptl).

…and on and on.

As we enter 2022, however, I don’t want to simply find the praise in my complaints. I want to focus in another direction. Rather than trying to rectify that which is going wrong–or even finding the good in the bad–I want to start with the positive. I want to find the light.

When I look at a person, I want to do so with care and kindness. I can’t know what they’ve been through or what brought them to this moment, so I will treat them gently.

When I care for my family, I want to do so with a loving heart. Not because I have to, but because of the outpouring of my love I am able to.

When I think of myself, I want to do so with purpose. I don’t want to be an afterthought on my own to-do list.

When I go out into the world, I want to do so with reverence. I want to see first the beauty and creativity of creation.

So this year, let there be light. May we all feel the warmth of this moment and see the bright spots in our future. Because no matter how dark the past may have felt, there is always light to be found.

Happy 2022, friends!