How are you doing? Have you asked yourself lately? If I’m being honest things have been a bit of a rollercoaster in these parts. I haven’t written in several weeks because, well life is being lived. I haven’t been writing because I’ve been taking pictures of sweet families and training for my first half marathon. I’ve been taking Cyrus to preschool twice a week and chasing around a very vivacious one year old while my husband navigates the waters of his new job as a Highschool English teacher. Life has been full and exciting and then the text came—Matt was at work and I was on my way to drop Cyrus off at his school when I read:

I can’t smell or taste my coffee. 

Well crap.

We are currently on day four of quarantine after Matt got his brain poked and the test came back positive. Thankfully his symptoms have begun and ended with his disappearing senses and both boys have remained healthy. My symptoms, however, have been…sporadic and indiscriminate. I feel a little bit like I’m in the 12 days of COVID with a new “surprise” every morning. But the hardest part has not been the fatigue or the sickness itself, it’s been the mental and emotional battle. When Matt texted me Tuesday morning I knew I had to turn the car around and take Cyrus back home. 

Our goal this year for our four year old son has been to make it through with as much normalcy as humanly possible. We don’t dwell on the pandemic around him and his preschool has done an incredible job of exercising extreme caution without traumatizing its students. But now we are in strict quarantine for ten days and I’m trying desperately to make the most of a bad situation. If I can level with you for a second, my biggest concern throughout all of this has been how it is affecting our boys and the younger population in general. I know kids are resilient and more adaptable than we often give them credit, but I can’t help but worry about the long term ramifications of obsessive sanitizing, public mask-wearing, and hours a day spent staring at a screen through online learning. I’m not saying these things need to be done away with or that I have a better solution, only that we can all probably agree that the current state of things is less than ideal. 

This is my plea to take some time to consider the battle your neighbor may be facing, whether your politics align or not.

All this to say—everyone is navigating new waters here. If you know someone who feels differently than you do about the pandemic, it’s because they’ve been affected differently. If you are terrified of getting sick and can’t fathom what kind of monster would go on living life as normal and put our elderly/immune-compromised population at risk, please consider their children. Consider their extreme loneliness from being in forced isolation for so long. Consider the fact that many people are losing their jobs and small businesses they have spent years building because of the shut down. (We lost half of our income when Matt was no longer able to perform, ultimately leading to his decision to pursue teaching.)

But on the flip side, if you are calling mask-wearers or concerned citizens “sheeple” and accusing them of falling prey to big government conspiracies trying to strip away our freedoms, take a moment to consider what led them to their place of worry. COVID has been around for over a year, and we still don’t know very much about it or who will be affected. If there is a small chance that wearing a mask or opting for take-out over dining in could save a life, isn’t that a small price to pay? So what if we find out down the road that we were wrong. All we can do is live by our convictions as best as we can and love the people around us.

This is my plea to take some time to consider the battle your neighbor may be facing, whether your politics align or not. I dare suggest it’s not COVID or the election that will be the downfall of our nation, but the division we’ve allowed to ensue. We have a choice. We can dig our heels into the ground and gather our data and keep pointing fingers. Or, we can set aside our differences long enough to see the hurt in our neighbor’s eyes, long enough to share a meal or write a note or offer up a prayer for someone else. So here’s my mental health check in. We’re hanging in there—filling our time with movies and worship and time together. How are you doing? What do you need? What does your neighbor need? Because there is only way we are going to get through this thing in one piece: together.