Covid is Weird and so is Posting after 2 Years
What kind of pseudo writer would I be if I didn’t eventually creep on here sometime in 2020. It’s certainly been awhile. I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to find my blog… let alone, navigate posting something. I’ve thought many times of writing—not to share anything helpful or mind blowing—but about things or observations I didn’t want to forget. It’s been one, hasn’t it?
We all have our different takes on the last 8 or so months… and varied experiences because of unique life stages. However, it was the sameness of the world’s experience of what we now refer to so easily as “Covid” that brought us comfort and somewhat a feeling of being unified—almost across the world. Clearly, that was a very fragile façade or possibly a worldwide web deception of the largest kind—and very, VERY short lived. But that’s too sad to dwell on here--- and really just too worn out to want to make any more comments on it. Moving on.
So where were you when Covid “hit”? Where were you when you heard the NBA was cancelling the rest of the season? This is when the Sanders knew things were serious. We were sequestered away in the Rocky Mountains via the generosity of a good friend. Determined to finish a puzzle, Jeff and I had our heads down as Brighton rushed into the room with the news of the NBA. We turned the news on and I feel like we haven’t turned it off since.
Pre-Covid Smiles
The feeling I won’t forget is being at the beginning of something no one on the planet had ever navigated or experienced. There may have been a handful of people still with us with incredible genes who were infants during the Spanish flu, but no one with any wisdom to share or lessons from failures with which to enlighten us. This feeling was weird. Add to that being a parent in it with no experience of anyone from which to draw—which actually with the dawn of the smartphone in the last decade, this wasn’t such a new feeling to me but it did just add to the perpetual floating question in my mind, “How in the world do I handle this??”. Our kids also needed questions answered and decisions made regarding their own plans.
Enter the new-to-me terms “social distancing” and “shelter in place order”. Wow. Who ever thought these would become household words? I knew that this wasn’t going to be over anytime soon when I saw the first commercial that incorporated these terms with mask donning people. However, shelter in place may have been the silver lining for me. With teenage kids, I found myself missing them in their pre-Covid day to day lives. With one announcement from the White House, we were all cocooned again in our home—all day and all night. Maybe a former homeschool mom’s dream come true? I can assure you, it wasn’t a former homeschool kid’s dream come true. HOWEVER- we made up for all the dinners around the table we had been missing. We made sure we had coffee. We had porch visits with friends. We made some progress in the One Year Bible. We laughed at memes. {People are just downright funny. So thankful God made humor.} We ate Easter lunch on the porch. We helped pull off a wedding. We established Take Out Tuesday. We people watched as people walked--- and haven’t seen them since. We watched Some Good News. We went to the lake—a lot- coming to an end in one epic trip. Julia got her sewing machine out of the attic. Brighton most likely improved his Xbox skills—NOT my dream come true, but happy to give him some margin there. {“Happy” might be generous there.} I organized pictures and read lots of books. Jeff led us, kept us stocked with food, checked on people and watched Fox news. And we ALL became Tucker Carlson fans. All of that—I will miss.
And we also had a 2020 Senior--- who bore all of the bad news with grace and dignity. Exaggeration? This mom doesn’t think so. She had a couple of moments… but they were tears, not rants. Her first tears were when she found out Camp Barnabas was cancelled. She was ready to spend two weeks there doing one of the hardest jobs I think there is—she was sad for herself, but she was equally as sad for the kids who feel normal for a week and for their parents who desperately need a break. Those were things she voiced to me. I think the second round of real tears came watching virtual graduation. {She eventually had a live one—masked and socially distanced.} Everything right up to the very present moment has been different for her than any other senior/college freshman experience.
Goodness, it would have been easy for Julia—for any of us- to sink in the last several months of this history—easy to complain, to fear, to rant, to give up, to wrangle for control. But here’s the awesome part-- when literally EVERYTHING around us did change, God did not, so in the Scriptures I sought out this comfort. And guess what? Psalm 46:10 read the same as it did March, 10th 2020. So did Philippians 4:6-7 and so did Isaiah 33:6. The promises were still there. They had not been given new meanings. They had not been distanced from me or hidden in some way. They were certainly not posing some unseen threat to me—but offering peace, life, care, security—ALL of it. Our circumstances were offering NONE of it but God was offering ALL of it---- just as He always has. Pre and Post Everything. His Word delivers all that the world does not and cannot.
Every. Single. Day.
Today on Thursday, November 5th, I walked into Love Field to hop on a plane to go see my Georgia family and in the midst of faces mostly hidden and new signage all about, I was struck by something very normal. Christmas decorations. Traditional dark green garland and bows made of true red ribbon—the fake velvet kind, wired to hold its shape. And it made me happy. Even though I am firmly in the camp of “Let’s not hide Thanksgiving behind the Christmas tree”, the décor made me smile this morning, under my mask. It felt right—maybe that’s too generous a word also—it felt normal. Covid can’t stop the celebration of the event that divided all of history in half. God knew exactly what this half of history would hold and that we would need Jesus. And in keeping with His good character, He sent His Son. And there is NOT a word generous enough to describe that.
While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. Luke 2:6-7a
But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Galatians 4:4-5
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins….. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 1 John 4:9-10, 14
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