My daughter’s Facebook note on the above picture: “We left the dog for the first time in a couple months, earlier today. This is how Lily set up the pen to keep her comfortable. Yes, that is a framed picture of my parents.”
I’ll be honest– it touched our hearts! Personal distancing from our grandkids has been ‘getting old’ and we are feeling the separation deeply. We wondered how the kids felt about it all. Did it even phase them? It seems they simply go on with life and make the most of any situation. Papa and Grandma on the other hand, had a love/hate relationship with ‘hunkering down’. Loved being able to focus on our own agendas 24/7. Hated the seclusion and the loss of contact with the delights of our earthly life— our family — here in Indy and across the country on the west coast.
Then Facebook (of all things), raised our spirits, revealing the slightest suggestion that the kids missed us as well. This will be one of the many memories of COVID19 that I will treasure!
Those were the good old days, when a picture, a teddy bear, a blanket or the presence of a loved one, made our world safe and secure. Wouldn’t it be nice if our world today could be the same —that a simple picture could make all the craziness go away and allow us to feel safe and secure in our shelter? When the presence of Mom or Dad or Grandma & Papa could make our world safe?
COVID 19 is dramatically revealing in living color how very temporal, often faulty, our earthly support systems truly are. This pandemic vividly reveals the fractures that abound in every area of our 21st century lives. Most significantly, however, it has also revealed the weaknesses of our personal lives, those inner areas of our being that significantly let us down when the going gets rough.
If nothing else, this pandemic causes each one to ask some questions, “On what do I base my security? When all else is taken away— my job, my family, my health, my spouse, my retirement, my friends, my shopping, my eating out, my Friday nite jaunts with friends…when it is all taken away and I am to stay home— am I OK? And if not, why not? Where is my emotional, physical, spiritual life malnourished, leading to a dependency on something more? What is it that grounds me when I need emotional support and soothing?
Before we get caught up with the opening up processes of our economy— before we return to life as it will be for awhile (at least until the next wave of the Covid onslaught) I intend to take the opportunity to do a self assessment.
With a little personal self examination and honesty, we can come out of this Covid shutdown having learned something about ourselves! And if we are willing—with God’s help—we can make changes! 2020 can become a year of personal growth, IN SPITE of all the challenges—maybe BECAUSE of all the challenges! When might we ever have a better opportunity?
“We say, then, to anyone who is under trial,
give Him (God) time to steep the soul in His eternal truth.
Go into the open air, look up into the depths of the sky,
or out upon the wideness of the sea,
or on the strength of the hills that is His also;
or, if bound in the body, go forth in the spirit; spirit is not bound.
Give Him time and, as surely as dawn follows night,
there will break upon the heart a sense of certainty
that cannot be shaken.”
Amy Carmichael