We asked some of our staff and Dream Team to write a letter to their “March 1st Selves”. There’s something healing about taking time to acknowledge both the pain and the joys of this season, and constructing them into a meaningful narrative. This has been a hopeful exercise, and we hope you enjoy reading them as we post them over the next little while. If you’re up for it, grab a pen and paper and try writing one to yourself! What comes up may surprise you. - Relate
Hey Chele!
Wondering if you’d like a wee bit of a heads up about what’s in store for you in the coming weeks. Knowing you as I do, I’m pretty sure you’re gonna want to know, cuz the unknown tends to freak you out a bit, don’t worry though, it’s nothing dire.
I know you’ve heard the rumblings about COVID-19 and are shaking your head at the shenanigans around Lysol wipes and toilet paper. If not... just wait. Seriously... just wait.
By now you cling to Psalms 91 like a lifeline and will tell everyone that they need to claim the promises there over their households. You feel settled, almost peaceful about the state of affairs and while you get the anxiety and fears that seem to run rampant through the media and your coworkers, you really don’t feel it nor are you giving room to it. Good on ya.
Your college student daughter will move home a month or more sooner than planned. Remember that there’s a learning curve, an adaptation, once she does. New space has to be made within the household rhythm and you know that the ambient noise within these four walls will increase by at least 50% once she settles in.
By the end of March you’ll be working from home with a company laptop. Can I just say that working from home in your bedroom is going to be a bad idea? Don’t do it. You won’t be able to sleep if you do and we all know what you’re like when you get sleep deprived... it ain’t pretty. The training and the phone calls will be a tad annoying but at least you’re still getting paid and everyone who was slowly freaking out will calm down at bit.
You’ll soon find out that working from home isn’t all that it’s made out to be. You’ll be inundated with the kind of noise that you’re not used to and as you eventually set up at the kitchen table, you’ll find that there’s all sorts of distractions that you hadn’t counted on or are used to from an office environment. People wandering in and out fetching food, coffee, asking questions, playing their music and shows loudly, etc.
In the weeks to come you’ll learn some of the ins and outs of Zoom, you’ll join a book study, volunteer to host a virtual home group, and carve some time out for a bible study hosted by one of your pastors, and prayer group. You’re going to lean hard into all things God and you’re going to juggle it well with things from home... mostly.
You’ll be able to maintain for quite sometime, but there will come a day that you will absolutely lose your cool. I’m warning you now, you’ll be looked at with blank faces and the question, “Why are you yelling?” It’ll be over something completely dumb, and you won’t be prepared for it or be able to adequately explain it (and you’ll try) and it’ll be the beginning of about a week where your emotions are going to sit at the surface, you’ll be teary eyed over little things, and you’ll bump up against walls you didn’t know you had.
And that’s OKAY.
There will be an ugly cry that’ll take you completely by surprise. Chest heaving sobs will erupt, and it’ll come out of seemingly no where. You’ll try to maintain it within the privacy of your room and you’ll go to bed with gritty eyes and no one but your hubs knowing, but he won’t understand completely.
And that’s OKAY.
Your hubs will score some of those precious Lysol wipes for your mom & dad and you’ll head over there with an early mother’s day gift and the wipes. This too will trigger something. Your normally undemonstrative mother will give you a brief but fierce hug about the neck and your demonstrative father who always has a big body enfolding hug for you, will take a step back from you. You’ll get into your car and the tears will flow.
And that’s OKAY.
You’re allowed to cry, and you should. Let it out. Let yourself mourn. It doesn’t matter what you’re mourning and that it’ll set you to wondering (okay, freak out a bit) but let it out. Seriously. Just let it out. Everything will be okay. The world will not end because you weren’t strong the whole way through. You don’t have to be. Strong, that is; at least not all the time.
In the end you’ll come through this with dignity (mostly) and perhaps a deeper understanding of God, yourself, others, and your family. And best of all you’ll have traded the garments of mourning for a mantle of praise and traded ashes for the oil of joy. I promise.
Love,
Chele
