Another exciting byproduct during our time in quarantine is family worship. Because we cannot get out and go to church, we have Sunday church services at home and share and swapping devotionals at home. In the past, we exchanged texts and emails that were overlooked or forgotten, but here, in the house, we are doing this together as a unit. Because without Sunday services, there are no sending kids to Sunday school classes. There are no Youth Group classes. There are no adults only in the sanctuary. There is only everyone together worshipping and learning the same way at the same time. And in these home’s services, it is fascinating to find out what each of us prefers and what we take in.
One of the things we have done in our house is each week, and a person gets to choose a network or online church service that they will share with the rest of the household sanctuary worshipers. My youngest son and I have had an opportunity to share a preaching style the opposite of the more seasoned and structured services that my husband, a pastor, prefers. My husband swears by the expository method of preaching the word. A structured verse by verse method of a section of the bible to him is the only way to share the teachings of the bible. So my husband is getting an education as we share with him some of the people and the message styles that brings the message by topic or concepts, reaching across multiple books of the bible to get the message across.
But the most startling thing to learn is our son and his peers that they look up to in worship. And we did not recognize any of them. There have been times when we thought our doctrinal teaching was passing him by, but in learning whose messages he values and the message they are bringing, even though it may have more flair and flash than we prefer, it is has been doctrinally sound. And I have been proud of each choice because we see our values and spiritual training has not been wasted. And when it is our son’s turn to be the worship leader, we get to understand a new generation of worship and praise music. We get to see what the next generation of the church.
Quarantine has given us something we had forgotten or never learned firsthand, being together with Christ. My grandmother lived it. My mother knew of it. But in my time, we never knew what it was like to worship together in one place, under one God, and the chapel is our home.
Author: mommyrivers
Q Gift 8 Working From Home
In the Zoom meetings, everyone wants to see you. Everyone wants to get a peek at your backdrop in the hope of finding some hidden character not seen at the office. Your home and new parts of you are on display and can be dissected for current or future office banter.
So my bathroom has become my makeup studio where I use more makeup than my previous daily routine. But the drive behind the increase has helped appreciate how these layers of cosmetics provide artificial armor that Dolly Parton says she is never without. Lots of time is spent studying camera angles and backdrop props, setting the scene as if I were Hitchcock filming another version of the movie Rear Window. Lighting and shadows are tested. And when the day is filled with multiple zoom meetings, you are exhausted from holding the mask in place. Your escape value of going back to your office to scream is gone. There is no refuge. The invaders are in your sanctuary – your home.
Telework has robbed us of a haven from away from office stress and coworkers. The entire household is on the same hamster wheel because school is being taught (maybe) with Zoom too. The Zoom screen has created an unexpected backwash in our lives.
Q Gift 7 Library Books
Doctor Seuss was my language tutor with all of the twists and turns in his rhymes that are still with me. The book Petunia. I love you, taught me about friendship and honesty. And Aesops Fables helped me understand so many values in life. The Dr. Zim books opened my mind to the detailed workings of space, zoology, rocks and minerals, the universe, anything that crawled, crept, or flew in my backyard or playground.
And so in quarantine, I have rediscovered the joy of finding books in the online library. I’ve set up search scenarios all of my favorite authors put together documents to keep me in order of reading when I hit a series. I have broadened my sci-fi authors and experimented with new romantic ideas. And so, I would say quarantine has given me the extra time to read and explore beyond my walls and spend time in new places and with new people.
Q Gift 6 Gardening
I have always loved yard work. There’s something soothing and often therapeutic about pulling weeds. Often each weed is an unspoken substitute from a bitter or restless verbal encounters. The effigy of many coworkers or church members has ended up in the pile of dandelions and crabgrass. With great gusto, I can finally spout responses that were withheld for not being politically correct or biblically sanitized.
With the extra time and access from the quarantine, I’ve come to a new love for trimming my hedges as I review data tables, project timelines, strategy outlines, and zoom meeting notes in my head.
And when all of the aggression is spent, the soil and sun give me a creative outlet. I have been redesigning the flower beds, vegetable pots, and how to put my solar lights into evenly spaced rows so that in the evenings, I can come out and sit and enjoy campfire light setting with my Samsung tablet as I read.
I have reclaimed my backyard as a sanctuary. My own little Garden of Eden.
Q Gift 5 Watching nature
Because the native wildlife for this area has long ago been forced out of this habitat, city life has left little of nature to observe beyond our domesticated furry friends.
Quarantine has given me an opportunity to watch birds and squirrels and all those other creatures we ignore, and an occasional fox. Most days, I watch the birds. I have seen birds I had forgotten that were even part of this area. Like the Blue Jay. I have tried to follow the rat-a-tat-tat noise of a woodpecker that must be new to the neighborhood. And lately, I can actually recognize the different brown birds that fly around throughout my yard.
Thankfully with two cats, I have not seen any mice or rats everyone says the urban environment is overrun with. But because I have two super-predators disguised as house cats, the squirrels that cross into my yard are even at risk. But I do love my National Geographic moments. It is fun to see how God’s creations live and work together. And in some ways, they do it better than us humans.
Q Gift 4 Kids with dads
One of the things I have noticed lately is kids with dads. We expect to see kids with moms, kids with aunts, kids with grandmothers, and kids with older siblings. But the quarantine has given us another scene, kids with dads. It is so refreshing to see the shining faces of little girls and boys as they grasp their dad’s hands when crossing streets, coming in and out of stores, and crossing parking lots. The kids know they have been given an unexpected bonus. Like a sudden ice cream cone. And it is amusing to watch the dads diligently watching and stalking through the parking lot to make sure they’ve collected all of their little ones is a little bit of a throwback to simpler times.
We have grown so accustomed to seeing the swim team mom, the soccer mom, the baseball mom, the football mom, and lacrosse mom, and the only one of those mom titles I missed was lacrosse mom. And I can add stage mom to my resume since my son has done a few school plays. ‘Blank mom’ is an official title in every sport.
Quarantine is causing dads to know their kids without the mother translations in between. The sight of dads at street corners performing the mother bear move before crossing a street, joining their kids as the lead bike of the group, biting their nails as they help with training wheels, cheering their kids as a conquer staying on a skateboard, and watching them successfully dunk a basketball is priceless.
Our children are a gift from God. And being a parent who invests in their gift should never be taken for granted.
Q Gift 3 Cooking
In our compressed and stressed lives, we’ve grown dependent on getting our food faster than microwaves, and carry-out has become the cooking method of choice. Because we have mastered the art of carry-out, the current need to cook has people scrambling through supermarkets for ingredients in dust-covered cookbooks or mentioned in forgotten instructions in a grandmother’s kitchen. Behind toilet paper, cooking staples like flour, sugar, cornmeal, dried beans, and cooking oil have disappeared.
As a grandmother who cooks, the emails, texts, and calls for cooking help has been fun. There have been requests for ideas what how to cook the chicken or do a new thing with it. Some want my bean soup recipe. Others have called for breakfast ideas, baking cakes from scratch, and ways to use oodles of noodles. The need to feed has given seniors access to the lives of their children and grandchildren as ignored kitchen skills are being requested. With technology and distractions of extracurricular activities on hold, something as simple as baking cookies has become an adventure in many households.
Yes, cooking has always been more than making a meal. It was a crossroads of family history and family values. It set the stage for family worship as we gave thanks.
Thank God for the Q3 Gift of cooking, giving us back our families.
Q Gift 2 Boundaries
Quarantine has brought us boundaries in a new way. From a toddler, boundaries are one of the things that we learn to recognize and respect. We learn and later teach what lines should not be crossed. With the close quarters that we’ve had to live in lately, means we must not only recognize the line but also reconcile. In this day and age, where people can pick up, leave and walk away at any time, walk out on a conversation or fight as it means to diffuse or ignore a situation, have lost their hall pass.
Now we have to learn to do something we have forgotten—tolerance with respect and patience without being patronizing. We are heading back to class to relearn the wisdom of knowing when to speak and when to keep our mouth shut. We are being forced to accept the impact of our differences with grace and sometimes do it with mercy. God has made each of us different for a reason, so for now, we have to roll with it.
Q Gift 1, Walking
Besides the words, quick, quiet, queer, or queen, the average person could not think of any word that began with Q. And most would not be using three-syllable words in their everyday chatter. But now we have one that fits both categories – Quarantine. It turns out to be a big word, with -big consequences, and when it rolls back into the Webster archives, it will have made a big impact on many levels of our society.
As a verb, the definition is imposed isolation for hygienic reasons. As a noun, it is a system maintained by a governmental authority for preventing the spread of disease. Neither definition is likable. But being restricted from public gatherings like movie theaters, sporting events, and restaurants has given us a new look at an old pastime, walking. Walking is not only good for our bodies; it is good for our minds. And that means it’s going to be good for our souls as well.
While walking, we can see anew what God has created for us and what He continues to give us every day in spite of how well we manage or mismanage it. As we walk, we can finally hear the hopes and dreams planted by God that get drowned out by scurrying lifestyles. I am seeing neighbors and getting to know my neighborhood instead of just driving through it. The freedom of leaving the house without the daily luggage or purse, computer bag, and lunch box is invigorating. The mommy version of Call of Duty dashing through yellow traffic lights and dodging yellow school buses is paused. Everything is slower, quieter, and unhampered. I like it a lot.
Familiarity Breeds Contempt, but does it have to?
I have heard this saying, and it is often used in a negative way. It portrays the parties involved as snappish and unloving. In fact, every definition of the word contempt is unflattering and ugly. And in our fourth week of Quarantine 2020, being confined to our homes brings this phrase to mind. It worries me that human nature being the finicky and sometimes most vicious part of our character, I wonder what even the best of us can evolve into.
Some are calling it cabin fever. And again, fever in a word linked with the unpleasant vision of disease and emotional distress. And for those with a militant frame of mind, our quarantine is like house arrest. With mask as the ankle bracelet. It brings to mind the more modern idea of being detained. But this AKA is more truthful to what has happened. Because “arrest” is to slow down and take stock of where you are.
The more confined we are, without the option of escape, the more likely we are to get on each other’s nerves. But this arrested time could be a wonderful blessing. We can take this opportunity to see each other more clearly. This can be a time to relearn the lessons of forgiveness, mercy, and grace. Mercy, we thought we should be getting, and now learn that we were not. Grace, we felt we were giving and now learn it has been rejected by hurt. The forgiveness we expect to receive only to discover that neither of us has fully understood its value. So, this is a time of reflection and growth and a fantastic opportunity to relearn kindness.
Just a few Words... 