Category: Uncategorized

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.