Just Another Day in COVID Time

In the morning Lord we do look to you
For the strength we need just to make it through
Have mercy

Some mornings I wake up empty, weary before my feet hit the floor and another day in COVID time begins. I think about the jubilation that will come when this nightmare has passed, and wonder about the toll self-isolation is demanding even as it’s saving our lives.

Looking for delight is more challenging now. That’s why we practice looking for gifts in good times—so our vision is attuned to see them in not-so-good times. Especially unprecedented times like these.

Online groups are springing up to help people who need it. Caremongering, they call it. Shopping, sharing, virtual hands extended to help one another. Encouraging words written on sidewalks in chalk. A legion working to make face masks for our frontline hospital workers. A sense that we’re in this together prevails.

Around here we’re playing board games and made up games and doing jigsaw puzzles. We’re doing Wii Fit. We bounce a basketball and play 21 in an empty schoolyard where playground equipment is cordoned off with yellow tape. We photograph buttercups and take afternoon drives past houses with construction paper hearts in the windows. I wash my hands and silently sing the doxology.

My granddaughter and I work together in my writing-room-turned-sewing room making face masks from my mountain of quilting cotton. It’s surreal, this task we’ve taken on, but the gift of companionable hours spent chatting and working is priceless. One of those beautiful and terrible things that coexist seamlessly.

In the evening Lord we look back and say
It was in your strength that we made our way
Have mercy

By evening, we’re weary from carrying the weight of it all and we curl up under blankets allowing an hour of light-hearted television to distract us. We turn in early with books, looking back over the past twenty-four hours to take note of delights. We sleep deep.

And morning comes and the nightmare plays on and we carry on with the business of walking another day in COVID time and resume our practice of looking for gifts.

You are everything we need
Feed us Lord

(Quotations from the song, Everything We Need, by Gord Johnson)