Your Life (as is) on Pause
As I write this, everything is over.
Okay, that was dramatic. However, yeah, a lot of things have just stopped. Due to a global pandemic, a silent, invisible killer forced us all to close up shop, work from home if we can work at all, and move traditional brick and mortar schools to the online space. The only places of business essential to survival are open, but something tells me what we deem to be “essential” will continue to change in the coming days.
This virus hit at a peculiar time in my life. Frankly, there wasn’t much to shut down. My academic career, which limped along since graduate school, was already near death. I’d left my church family, which apparently was full of fragile friendships ready to break any way (some, not all, of course). With a husband hustling hard for our family, most days I felt like all I had was my daughters, phone calls to my mom, text messages to far away friends, and my Netflix queue.
Still, it’s interesting to one day find myself at home on purpose with nothing to do but be fully in my life as it is. There’s nowhere to hide from all the questions in my mind about everything. And all I got is time.
The solace I draw is that I’m not alone. Neither are you. For once, I can say this with certainty that if you’re reading this, you’re in this with me. We all are. This virus changed all our lives. It put everything on hold.
So, where were you when life hit pause? What was the status of your goals? Were you already off track or were things running smoothly?
Or, let’s take this our of the realm of career. How did this virus infect your relationships? For some, you’re stuck in the house with a person you married who’s practically a stranger. You found out real quick who your real friends are. For a frazzled few, this is the most hands-on parenting you’ve done in consecutive hours since your kids were infants.
Everything paused, yet life still goes on, right? It’s just not the life you manufactured through your work and social gatherings. Now that the rest of the world has stopped, we’re finally looking at what we have left when you strip it all away.
I can’t be optimistic about the future. Not with this current administration at the helm. I’m still wrestling with my faith in most institutions. What I can be sure of is this…
My daughter’s laugh is absolutely magical, and I’m not sure how I’m just now really hearing it.
As shitty as things were prior to this, I am still extraordinarily lucky in so many ways—from where I live to who I married back to my support system. Had this happened at any other time in my life, I’d be lost.
I learned how to make peach cobbler, and it feels like I just discovered a super power.
Like I said, life is still unfolding even as is… even on pause. I wonder what else I’ll discover in the days ahead. Some of it will be scary, no doubt. At the same time, just maybe, some of it can be wonderful. Perhaps I’ll even come to believe that, yeah, all I got is this little family, but surprisingly, it’s all I need.
~Jennifer.
