It was just the beginning, the whisperings starting that this virus might be more than we had imagined. I had made what I thought would be a normal trip to the grocery store, only to find shelves cleared of paper goods, freezers once full of chicken now bare. I drove home shaken and concerned and entered the house, planning to start, as I do approximately 53 times a week, a simple load of laundry. Until the washer began flashing an error message and sounding an alarm I’d never heard before.
This would have been an annoyance except for the fact that, days earlier, my dryer had tumbled its last. I might have said a few non-spiritual words and kicked the machine once or 18 times. You know. In case it helped it work again.
Here’s what I’m learning: Life doesn’t stop during a pandemic.
Babies are still born.
People we love pass away, and we can’t grieve them with the closure that a funeral provides.
Bills still must be paid, appliances break, dogs need to go to the vet. Hair still grows and we can’t get it trimmed. Our people still want to eat chicken, Lord help them.
Homework must be turned in. Jobs, for many of us who are thankful to be working, must be completed.
But my body and my brain feel as though I am pushing through mud, swimming through sand. Everything I used to do quickly, efficiently, is taking a beat longer. Emails I used to type perfectly now have mistakes. Words seem to blur together on the pages of the books I thought I’d be zipping through. Movies seem too long to hold my now toddler-sized attention span.
I don’t know the answer. This is untested ground for all of us. What I do know is that this feels very similar to the times I went through a birthing experience and my body and brain need to recover while still taking care of a helpless baby. In that season of life, I did not try to train for a marathon. I did not attempt to bake pie crust from scratch. Come to think of it, I still don’t. I did not worry about the weight I needed to lose. I didn’t write a book.
I was gentle with myself, just as I was with that new baby. I gave myself time to recover from this new life I had both birthed and entered into.
This, too, is a new life for all of us. We are feeling bruised, tender, aching in places we never knew were possible. We are weary. We are moving a bit slower these days.
There will be time to run that long distance. To bake that incredible dessert that the Food Network assured us was worth the twenty-seven steps. To craft a beautiful story. To reach our reading goals. To turn off Netflix. Today is not that day.
Be gentle to yourself, to your new life. Take a warm bath. Take a breath. Take the time you need to adjust, to give the wound some air and space.
It will eventually be well. It doesn’t have to be well now. Hold on to the eventually.
”All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Julian of Norwich
