I’m sure I’m not the only one whose social media accounts are flooded with flashbacks from when we were all thrust into our first official pandemic a year ago.

I know that I personally was so blessed that the pandemic didn’t affect us anywhere near as badly as it did thousands of other people. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t struggle or feel scared and miserable at times! It was all so overwhelming. March- May was a very difficult time for me and as I encounter so many “seasonal” reminders of last year it makes me flinch a little.

It’s surreal to remember what that moment in time was like. I really thought the pandemic was only going to last a couple of months and here we are a full YEAR later.

Here is an excerpt of what I wrote on March 20th about my first week of social distancing.

“last week life was normal for us. I had a conversation with my parents in a Chick-fil-A on Monday (March 9th) talking about the Coronavirus and how in my little town in Ohio it wasn’t affecting us. My exact words were “we’ve been doing business as usual”. Then on Thursday (March 12) everything came to a screeching halt. As in- slam the breaks, no seatbelt, we are all ejected into an alternate universe. I was actually looking at my phone scrolling through hairstyles for my daughter to choose for the father daughter dance the next night. She was so excited. Then I got the text that it was canceled. I couldn’t believe it. It was 24 hours away, what had changed? Then I got the next update that school would be closed for 4 weeks. Tears welled up in my eyes and I even started to get angry…”

“Friday (March 13) was the last day of school for the kids. One thing after another was being canceled. First church, then restaurants, gymnastics, the roller rink where my daughter’s birthday party was scheduled to happen, dentist appointments and pretty much everything else. It really was like a real life apocalyptic sci-fi movie. I went to the grocery store to find rows and rows of empty shelves. I bought things I never would have like cans of peaches, and high priced paper towels because that was all that was left.

I had to pinch myself to see if this was really happening. I have daily to-do lists on an app and every morning I go through and delete the previous week’s list to add new ones. Here are some of the things that I did last week:

Go to the library

Dentist appointment

Meeting at church

SJ’s Gymnastics class

Pick Z up from Lego League

Make invitations for SJ’s Birthday

So every day (up until now) I looked at a snapshot of the week before, when those things were all very normal. Every day I was reminded that last week I was living my life not knowing my whole world was about to be turned upside down. I was devastated.”

 

 

Remembering all of that is difficult, and even though a lot of restrictions are still in place and people are still being affected by the Coronavirus I am seeing subtle changes. For example that birthday party that was cancelled actually happened a week ago!

The skating rink honored our deposit and I invited a whole new group of girls and we gathered together to celebrate.

I shared the photos on Facebook acknowledging that it felt very redemptive. I am hoping to see more and more redeeming moments like that. Last year we were all at home for Easter but this year we will be celebrating in person! My family is going to come over for our traditional egg hunt and lunch. Easter is all about redemption. Obviously Christ’s act of redemption is way bigger than something like getting to go to a concert that you previously missed because of Covid. However, sometimes when you see significance in the little details it sheds more light on the big things. I keep digger deeper into what it means for something to be redeemed.

We had so many things stolen from us last year, from relationships, to loved ones, to jobs and celebrations and the list goes on. My prayer is that this would be the year of redemption in all kinds of ways!

I feel like this FedEx commercial does a beautiful job of expressing these thoughts through their commercial. I’m not talking about the part about FedEx or the vaccine, but I do love how they are highlighting and reminding us of all the things that we’ve gone backwards on and how it’s time to start moving forward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQYDcR3YAUo