If I am being honest, I haven't written this week because I've been in a kind of a funk. A funk brought on because of my health and exacerbated by the preeminent condition of the wildfire spread of the virus in the last few weeks. My head and my heart just plain hurt at this time!
My treatment yesterday means isolation for a couple of days. Normal for this time in my life. But, add that to the fact that sooo many people I know are either suffering from the virus or exposed and now isolated themselves, even going to work, where I have been alone for 3 weeks now, feels like being a prisoner. When my boys were young, my pediatrician, as I would cry over something I couldn't control with them, would always say, 'and this too shall pass.'
I think of that often these days, and yet this time only continues to divide us as a people rather than unite us as fellow human beings, brothers and sisters in this life and planet we share. As an example, my son's college decided the other day to postpone in person learning until the first Monday in February. This was posted on the official parent FB page and the vitriol responses from one parent to another, on both sides of the fence, were startling to say the least. No words were minced through the wrath and anger expressed by people in this group.
What happened to us? Why can't we treat each other with kindness and compassion in a time such as this? Yes, this is absolutely another bump in the road, a big one, in a long line of setbacks over the last two years, but we are all in this together. We are all tired of going one step forward to only have to go two steps back.
What has helped jumpstart me today was reading the post of a FB friend, Jennifer Perez, who wrote that she has chosen the word "BEAUTIFUL" for 2022. She writes of all the things she will focus on because of adopting that word to live her life this year. This is a woman who lost her husband, the love of her life, to this unapologetic virus. She is choosing kindness and compassion and love for her fellow human beings. She is choosing to live today and walk into the future with courage, strength and bravery by seeing all that is beautiful. That is how I am choosing to walk through my time here as well. Isn't that how we all should live?
Jennifer, I am going to follow in your footsteps and adopt "BEAUTIFUL" as my word to live by for 2022 and beyond. May it remind us of who we are, who we can be, who God has designed us to be, how we can reflect the light to others and how it teaches us to embrace all we have been given from the God who loves us more than life itself!
Jennifer, I dedicate my devotional poem to you today and thank you for sharing yourself so openly for all of us and I offer blessings for all who reflect and journal through this today:
"Shall we pass unscathed?
Beautiful life to embrace,
Live your future now."
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