No, I never wished for a pandemic, and I hope that we never have to go through another one again, but I did wish for other things.

When my kids were young we were busy, very busy, like all of our friends and family.  Our kids had schedules; we had schedules, my husband traveled for work on average 40 weeks per year, during those weeks I was a single mom of three, I was exhausted.  We lived in a small town so we traveled to go the mall, and we traveled to go shopping, and we traveled to visit family.  There was always something to do and somewhere to go.  There were some nights I lived on four hours of sleep, a lot of nights come to think of it.  There were whole years when the garden didn’t get watered regularly, and the home projects didn’t get completed.  There were things that I dreamt of doing with the kids, crafts, travel, volunteering, we just simply didn’t have time for, nor could we afford, come to think of it because our schedules kept us moving from here to there.  No, I never wished for a pandemic and I hope we never have to go through one again, but I did wish for other things….

Change of pace! 

Sometimes I wished for a way to get out of our schedules, for time to stop, for the world to slow down, for an opportunity to catch up, a chance to lock the world outside our door if only for a brief moment.  I wished for a change of pace.

No I never wished for a pandemic, but what I did wish for other things….

Reconnection! 

As children grow they change so fast and with our busy schedules it was hard to keep up with those changes.  I wished for time to get to know them all over again, to look into their eyes, and see the world from their perspective once again. I wished for reconnection.

No, I never wished for a pandemic, but what I did wish for other things… 

Boredom!  

We were so busy; boredom was not something that happened often.  There was always somewhere to go and someplace to be.  Boredom breeds imagination.  Boredom breeds adventure.  Boredom breeds discoveries.  I wished for boredom. 

No, I never wished for a pandemic, but what I did wish for other things…. 

No schedules/deadlines!  

We never slept in on Sunday’s because there was church.  We rarely slept in on Saturday’s because there was soccer.  We rarely ate dinner before 8:00pm because we had practice and games.  Even on Sunday afternoon lake days, we squeezed it in between church in the morning and youth group in the evening.  Then had to hurry home, because there was packing for my husbands out of town trip, and the last bit of laundry and homework to complete. 

No, I never wished for a pandemic and I hope, hope, and hope we never have to go through this again. 

I understand….

I remember being in the midst of chaos and I know that when you’re in the middle of it all it’s hard to see the end, it’s hard to see the blessing. 

 I understand that right now in the middle of this pandemic there is stress and there is worry.  Some parents have to work with no school or day care to care for the children.  Some folks are out of work temporarily and aren’t sure how to keep up with the bills.  Some folks have lost jobs all together and don’t know if and when they will work again.  

Some people are sick and will recover; some people are sick and won’t recover.  

This is a scary time. I understand the stress, but from where I stand today, with my kids grown, and reflecting on their busy childhood and how fast it really did slip by, I can also see that this is an opportunity.  

An opportunity to reconnect, an opportunity to find imagination, discovery, and adventure through boredom, an opportunity to live with no schedule, to shut the world outside, to look into the beautiful eyes of the children and live the wonder of the young ones, give reassurance to the tween ones, and to explore the hearts of the teen ones, and to just be still, even in the midst of this stress.  

Soon the world will come back, it may look a little different, but that might be okay.  Hopefully we will never have a pandemic again, but also hopefully we have learned to take advantage of time. Time is non-renewable, we never get it back once it has slipped passed, maybe through this we can learn to cherish time regardless of the circumstance that we receive it through.  

No, I never wished for a pandemic, and I hope we never have to go through this again, but I did wish for other things….