I initially started this blog because I felt prompted by God, and circumstances at the time, to share my thoughts through the written word.  I tried to resist (for 10,000 reasons) but I could not shake that feeling that it was something I was supposed to do.  After great delay and much resistance, I relented, locked in and made it happen earlier this year.  I was terrified, mostly of ridicule and rejection.  I wasn’t sure who it was meant for but I felt truly compelled to write.  Here I am, three months in, and I still don’t know exactly why I am writing or if anyone (other than the few who regularly reach out about it) is actually reading it.  Still, I believe that whoever the writings are meant for will see them eventually (in God’s perfect timing, Ecclesiastes 3:1-10: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven...") even if I never know.  Sort of like when you do something kind for another, you may never know the impact of your actions but, for God, it’s just another piece of the puzzle.  He is forever creating masterpieces, and we are just a small, but significant, part of those greater works.  We don’t need to understand everything to follow God’s calling, even something as simple as treating others with kindness (Ephesians 4:32: Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you).

I think it is safe to say, without too much (any?!?!) opposition, that Covid sucked eggs!  Living through a global epidemic, witnessing the world’s gears grind to an unsettling halt and experiencing the entire world being brought to its knees was mind blowing, to say the very least.  Life as we knew it came to an abrupt and dramatic end; it was a brutal, somewhat surreal, eye-opening slap in the face.  All travel suspended.  Students came home to learn.  Workers came home to work.  Only “essential personnel” physically went into work.  Isolation ruled the day.  Fear gripped people’s hearts.  Businesses folded.  Drive-by celebrations became a thing as cars paraded past the honoree while holding signs, honking their horns and hanging out of the car windows.  Yard signs were abundant.  Masks. Separation by 6’.  Touch nothing!  Fear.  Suspicion.  No visitors for the sick.  Quarantine.  Aggressive nose swabs for testing.   Don’t you dare cough!  So much hand sanitizer that our hands were raw. Widespread fear gripped the hearts of all.  Tragically, there were so many precious lives lost.  It’s doubtful that anyone survived this journey without losing someone to this tragic outbreak or knowing someone who had suffered a loss to it.  No one was left unaffected by this horrific virus. No one.  

As kids, we don’t come with instruction manuals on how to be a kid and how to do everything right without hurting anyone in the process.  Likewise, when we become parents, we are not handed an instruction manual before leaving the hospital.  There’s no book on how to be a good and trusted friend, a sibling, a cousin, an uncle, an aunt, a grandparent, a niece/nephew, etc. What about when you get married?  Is there a training class to equip us for the ups and downs of spending your life with someone?  (Yes. Actually, there are classes but it was a bit of a rhetorical question.) I think you can see where I’m going with this.  Sure, there may be hundreds of self-help books on how to be a better XXX fill in the blank XXX.  But there are really no books or training that prepare us for life in its entirety.  Not really, let alone the complicated interweavings of relationships that come into play along the way.  This area can be considered grey at best.