After a few months passed, one day I picked up the phone, put it to my ear, and heard something. It wasn’t loud; in fact, it was barely audible and notably metallic sounding. My heart leaped with joy and hope! It also heard the message, “THIS is why it’s important to keep trusting.” Never had I been more grateful that I didn’t buy into what the doctor suggested my prognosis would be.
My hearing eventually came back to the point that I could return to school for the very short time that remained of it, see my friends, and have a reasonable semblance of a normal teenager’s life. It never returned fully, but that’s a minor detail in the grand scheme of things. Truth be told, by the time I finally went back to school, my return felt anticlimactic. Everyone was already moving onto discussing and finalising their plans for the following year. It was time to move on.
Why does this matter now?
It matters now for the same reason it mattered then.
We need to keep moving forward and trusting, even when it’s scary. Even when we’re isolated indefinitely. Even when it feels like this is going to last forever.
How can any of us possibly know what the REAL plan is? How this is all going to play out? We can’t.
So yes, listen to the experts. Right now, they’re telling us to stay home. We all need to do that. This is no time to naively think we’re bigger than this pandemic or that “we can handle it.” If you think you’ll be fine, you very well might be fine. A positive outlook is an incredible gift and we should accept it as such! But please stay home for those who might not be as hopeful, or as strong, or as healthy as you are. I was healthy, too, and I see how quickly something I relied on simply changed overnight.
We know we can’t change the school closures or the plans we’d made. We know we can’t attend the activities to which we’d been looking forward. It’s perfectly natural and healthy to grieve those things. I certainly did and I “get” it completely.
Trust me when I say this, though – we can recover from the loss of the plans we thought we had.
We’re on a path that’s different now, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less meaningful than what we’d envisioned. We’ve been given a new map to follow; a new way to find the peace and encouragement that are still very much alive.
Be still for a while. Just be still. Now is our time to hear, but even more than that, it’s our time to listen. There’s hope here.
Originally published here.
Sarah R. Moore is an internationally published writer and the founder of Dandelion Seeds Positive Parenting. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. She’s currently worldschooling her family. Her glass is half full.
