It happened the other night.
After spending the last week barraged by constant news of the impending coronavirus pandemic heading our way, rushing out to Boston to help my son quickly pack and fly home as his college suddenly shut down, working overtime on the weekend in order to keep up with my workload, and various meetings at work to determine how best to respond to this crisis, I came home one evening, headed to the porch, plopped myself in the big brown, cushy office swivel chair (now repurposed as a “porch” chair), took in the warmth of the humidity gifted to us by the light drizzle of rain that had visited us earlier that day, appreciated the unusual silence from the lighter street traffic due to “social distancing,” intermixed with the sound of crickets happily chirping away apparently unaware of the potential calamity us humans faced, and for the next hour I thought about…….nothing.
I needed my nothing moment.
I needed my life to be on pause… just for a moment.
And it was good.
Of course, none of us can truly think about nothing; but with no agenda to accomplish, no pressing questions requiring immediate answers and no media to distract, it at least allows for your brain to sort of reset.
And I couldn’t help but walk away from that moment thinking that perhaps that is exactly what’s going on. Perhaps with all of us forced into solitude and with many of us either forced to stop work or to at least change our usual routines, this is God’s way of putting all of our lives on pause.
And not just my neighborhood or my country, but the whole world.
As a meme I recently read on Facebook stated, “I can’t help but feel this is like the earth sending us to our rooms to think about what we’ve done.”
This is not the first time I’ve had to have a “pause” moment. In fact, it’s become a more routine part of my life lately. I’ve shared openly on this blog about some of the mental health crises my immediate family has struggled through. What I haven’t shared is my own mental health crisis I experienced a little over a year ago. Continue reading
