Tag Archives: COVID19

Carpe Diem

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Disclaimer: What follows is me trying my best to be honest about something that is very hard to get my head around. There are no good, perfect answers for any of it, but I just needed to write. Thanks for reading.

Life passes at a dizzying pace. The days, weeks, months, and almost a year now of waiting for COVID19 and its accompanying lockdowns and restrictions to be over. Waiting for life to go back to normal. Waiting not to worry, to eat inside without fear, to get on the airplane without a mask and multiple testing, to go to a concert, to hug people at will.

The past week or two, I have kind of hit some sort of wall. The “I’ve had it with this crap” wall, to put it very bluntly. There needs to be joy, there needs to be life, there needs to be hope.

I am so thankful that Jesus Christ is my Savior, because He gives me a hope and a future that no government, no leader, no disease can take away. I can guarantee you there will be no masks and plenty of hugging in heaven. 🙂

But right now, right here on this earth…..Jesus has left me and you here for a reason. To smile, to laugh, to share joy with others who are losing hope fast. I look around me and I am seeing a loss of hope in many eyes….even my own at times. There needs to be a balance to all this crazy caution and protection….we still need to look for and find and seek joy in this life. To maintain and nurture the human relationships and interactions that actually make us human. I am not against masks and disease protection…I have asthma and have to be careful. But there has to be balance, and my fear has to be countered by my faith.

And this seizing of joy goes way beyond COVID19 and mask-wearing. It extends to every aspect of this life. The sad aspect of all these lockdowns is that we are forgetting how to be joyful, to laugh, to touch, to connect person-to-person.

So, what is the answer to all this? The only thing I have found, other than my faith and praying under my breath almost all day, is CARPE DIEM. “Seize the day.” Live in the immediate moment. Look people straight in the eyes, smile at them with your eyes. Don’t think so much. Don’t try to fix unfixable problems. Just look out the window. Feel the sun on my face. Or the strong wind lift my hair. Or hug my husband or my child or my doggie. Read an amazing book, and not one that makes me nervous or scared. Watch movies/shows that celebrate traditional family values, make me laugh, make me realize that life here is a gift from God, it is good. Do something, anything, that makes you feel creative, makes you feel alive, brings you joy.

Carpe Diem. Seize the day. We cannot get it back. This day, this life. And seriously, if you have faith in God, in His Son Jesus Christ, who is the author of hope….share it. So many people need hope right now.

Stepping off the soapbox now…..thanks for listening, my sweet readers. Love, Lisa

Limitless Imagination

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Rendezvous Bay, Anguilla

“To shut your eyes is to travel.” – Emily Dickinson

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Laughter is timeless, imagination has no age, and dreams are forever.” – Walt Disney

I am so thankful for my imagination. It provides endless entertainment, thoughts, and travel. Imagination is not bound by the body’s constraints, monetary concerns, or COVID19 restrictions.

Books can fuel the imagination, as do movies set in wonderful locales. Even looking outside my window and noticing what my local yard birds are doing, provide endless “scope for imagination.” (Anne of Green Gables 🙂 ) Listening to their tweeting on this wintery, icy morning gets me imagining the conversation and the plan they have to find food and warmth. Maybe they are plotting a trip to a Florida beach as I type this. 🙂

As the weekend comes, I will be traveling and adventuring. In my imagination for now, and hopefully in reality in the months to come.

Love, Lisa

Please feel free to comment below and share your imaginings, your dream travel locations, your favorite travel memories….anything. We can share them together.

True Confessions of Pandemic Endeavors

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Ok, I am a little late on the bandwagon, but the first months of the pandemic had me rather stunned. Like a small rabbit who is scared, I just sat, stayed very still, and waited for it to hopefully pass quickly.

The months passed, and by May, I did something I said I would never, ever do. I went and bought houseplants! Any houseplant that had ever had the misfortune of crossing our threshold before COVID19 met its untimely death shortly thereafter. But….I was overcome with the urge for green living things in our home, even if it would be just a temporary gladness. Miracle of miracles…..all seven of them are still alive at this writing. Even poor little Niamh, our African violet. (Yes, we named them all. 🙂 ) She is not looking too grand, but I have great faith that she will pull through…..just make it to the springtime!

We then passed into the “let’s try to cook from scratch” phase, which is another thing that I am the very worst at. Let’s just say….that phase has passed, sadly for my long-suffering husband. We are back to the “walking to the refrigerator/freezer stage, holding the doors open for far too long, whilst we pray for something amazing, different, and easy to present itself for dinner.”

I also decided about summer time 2020 that I needed to learn new things, to stimulate my languishing/stressed out brain. Enter Duolingo Russian. All was going well until I needed to type Cyrillic on my nonCyrillic keyboard, use much copy/pasting from a Russian typing site, and you guessed it….it’s over. I have now decided that Swedish might be the way to go, but I will keep you posted. haha

I keep toying with the idea of learning to sew on a real sewing machine. But I have no sewing machine, and seeing the above patterns of my language learning and cooking, I have no desire to see an expensive purchase sit around my house unused. Any of you sew out there? How hard is it to learn how to use the machine from a YouTube video? (I think I just answered my own question. lol)

Anyway…..just wanted to document this Pandemic journey a bit. To talk about what is the elephant in the room for all of us.

Thankfully, God has made us to be creative creatures, like He is. He will keep us going, day by day, until this time in our history has passed. Enjoy whatever is keeping you interested today.

Write below…..tell me what has been your best/worst pandemic endeavors and experiments.

Love, Lisa