It wasn't my Day Month or even my Year in 2020

Yes, I am aware that it has been a year and a quarter since my last post. And I am laying full blame on these unprecedented, unusual pandemic times. It has taken me this long to even wrap my brain around being in my house with my people twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This is my journey thru the last year. 

It began at the end of February 2020. There were rumblings and rumors of this new sickness. Just something else to be endured thru the winter months and early spring if winter really held. Surely not something that would have any impact on me personally. Then the emails from the school and the phone call from my husband that everyone would be working "remotely" for the remainder of all time. We were going to "flatten the curve". Terms like Fauci, CDC, Covid-19 and quarantine became a regular part of conversation. Mask-up and social distancing were added to our national and global lexicons. It was a year of campaigning, a rising tide of unrest for racial issues. Social issues like divorce, domestic violence, poverty all are past critical on their way to epidemic levels. 

I myself was facing the hormonal tide of a tween and two teenagers in my home with no where else to process their feelings. All the space and quiet I had relished for the last three years was obliterated. All the normal ways of coping I had cultivated- eating out, coffee with friends, silence in my home were suddenly ripped from my hands. I began to panic. Maybe I should have been journaling and sharing it. But instead, I shut down. 

The old fears of having to much noise and not being enough for those that need me were a shouting torrent in my mind. I cut my interactions with anyone not in my immediate vicinity to zero. I just couldn't handle any more information or anyone needing pieces of me. I was holding on to the unspooling threads of my normal and didn't feel as if I could hold anyone else's hands either. All the controlled calm I had built around me that I thought would sustain me evaporated away. There were regular bouts of tears, Netflix binging, escapism into phone games and lots and lots of carbs. 

My way forward seemed lost. It felt like I was at the side of the abyss. One gentle feather push would send me spiraling down into darkness. But, as always, the hand of light pulled me back. As I shared and opened up with those around me, the darkness got less intense. As I was reminded that I wasn't alone and never had been, I was filled up enough to spread that message to others one or two at a
time. I was given a lantern to navigate my troubled waters.

As 2020 has unfolded, God has been sweet to me. He has shown me I do not need to build my own fortress of solitude to maintain my equilibrium. Jesus will bring me into His strong tower. I may not be enough in my own strength, but it is not in my own strength that I do this life. It is by the gift and power of the Holy Spirit. That is what has brought me thru 2020. Therein is where I will continue to rest walking into and thru 2021.