Hey Friends, Today marks 61 days of quarantine or shelter in place or social distancing or stay at home or whatever the heck you want to call it. 61 days! Whoa.
I remember during that first week when we were advised to not leave our homes and the businesses in our community began to shut their doors, how shocked and devastated I was. But with nowhere to go there was chatter about everything that could be accomplished during our time at home. And people everywhere began talking about their bucket list. On a walk with some girlfriends that first week we were sharing with each other some of the projects we hoped to complete when I announced, “I am going to learn what flowers are edible and then plant them in my garden.” (Something I’ve always wanted to do.)
Well, here we are, 61 days later and I have no idea what flowers are edible nor have I planted a single thing in my garden. Nor do I even have a garden!
Fast forward a couple weeks when we all began to recognize that this stay at home business was not ending anytime soon. It was early in the morning and all three kids had piled into my bed. As the morning conversation unfolded, Josh and I agreed that seeing as things were not going to be opening up anytime soon, it was time to create our own “quarantine bucket list.” So I pulled out a piece of paper and we began to make a list:
Paint the stairs
Set up the spa (PS: it’s on backorder and has not been delivered)
Watch the sunset at the beach (from the car of course)
Clean out the closets
Build an epic fort
Themed movie night
Family sleepover in our room
Just to name a few. And here we are, sitting in our home for 61 days and you want to know how many things we’ve checked off this bucket list? Zero things. Z-E-R-O. And really, look at that list, it’s not like we were shooting for the stars!
As I ride this rollercoaster we call “Worldwide Pandemic,” the one I am screaming to get off of, I go from feeling totally fine with the way our lives have played out these past 61 days, to feeling like a complete failure for abandoning our bucket list and for not knowing the name of a single edible flower.
Why do I share all of this with you? A couple of reasons: I have a feeling I am not the only person who is feeling unaccomplished 61 days into this world-wide-pandemic situation. Surely I’m not the only person looking back on the past 61 days thinking, “What the heck have we been doing this whole time?” Honestly? Somewhere in my deepest heart of hearts is a person who wants to be an adorable, Pinterest-worthy, creator of beautiful bucket lists and then actually checks off the items on the list. But that was not me prior to a worldwide pandemic, and it surely is not me now during one. And you know what...THAT IS OKAY!
It also makes me look back at what I did accomplish these past 61 days and I’ve realized I just needed a different list. One that looked more like this:
Make dinner, 61 times
Oversee kindergarten, 3rd grade and 5th grade school work
Read...a lot
Answer emails
Walk over 200 miles (Yes! I did walk over 200 miles this past 61 days!)
Tell people I love that I love them
Check in on my neighbor
Extend grace
Ask for forgiveness
Show up the best ways I know how
In other words, I have done my very best during this time. And I have a feeling you have too.
So wherever you find yourself on this 61st day of whatever this is, let me tell you: you’re doing a good job. Period. Good night!
Stay healthy, stay safe!
Shouting Their Worth,
Heather
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