A Life In Review

It’s day 53468342837 of “quarantine” and I have just about had enough. I am a homebody and a big time introvert, but I miss long walks down the Target aisles. I also miss having a concrete plan for the next few months. My color coordinated calendar is all messed up now and I feel like I should just throw it out and start from the beginning. The only problem is that we are indefinitely confined to our homes for the sake of our health and the health of those around us, so I wouldn’t even have a place to start.

So I wallow. I wallow over the things that I am missing out on. I wallow over shift changes and uncertainty. I am almost positive that I am not the only one. Yeah, there are those peppy people who post all over social media about making the best of things and staying positive, but there have to also be people like me, wallowing over this situation that we are in, but still living life. That doesn’t mean that we wallowers (I don’t think that’s a real word) aren’t living our lives too, it just means that we are here for the pep.

This post is not me trying to dismiss your very valid feelings. There is a lot going on right now. People are sick, people are losing their jobs, people are working overtime and people are actively dying. Kids are out of school, routines are thrown off and everyone is a bit antsy. I was super positive in the beginning. In fact, I tried to blow this off like nothing was going to come of it. It was easy for me to be thankful for a few extra days to be locked in the house with the baby. Those days inside have turned into weeks and I find myself not so thankful anymore. In fact, I find myself frustrated and overwhelmed.

I lay in bed awake a lot at night right now just thinking. I must have had a God moment (you know like when God lays something specific on your heart and you can’t shake the thought), because I found myself thinking back to a challenge that I completed in 2017. It was something that I stumbled across in a little booklet about thankfulness. The goal was that for a whole year, you would write down one thing a day that you were thankful for. So for me that was sitting down at my desk at the end of each day and scribbling down what I was thankful for.

Some days, it was really easy to come up with something I was thankful for, and I would be done in 5 minutes. Other days, the only thing I was thankful for was the fact that I survived the day and was about to climb into bed (and that’s okay too, because it was something I was truly thankful for that day). For a year I kept filling a bucket (like a literal bucket) full of sticky notes until December 31^st, 2017 when I had written down 365 different things I was thankful for. Sometimes I will still go back to those little notes, to remind myself that things are always changing, and that if I look hard enough I can find something positive that has come out of each day.

2017 threw me for some pretty big highs and lows, but I was able to find a bit more joy by intentionally seeking the good in my days. So here’s my challenge, for the next however many days we are “quarantined” write down one thing a day that you are thankful for. Get your kids involved too. You can make it a family thing, or each of you can write your own. I have decided to post mine on the wall in the kitchen (I’m in there a lot these days, it’s where the comfort food is kept). I am using them as visual reminders that things will be okay, and that there is good coming out of this global pandemic.

Here are some ways to make this more fun (especially for the kids):

• Use an old amazon box (I’m sure one is laying around) decorate it and make it the designated place for the thankful notes.
• Post the notes all around the house for visual reminders: bathroom mirrors, the coffee pot, the TV stand, the laundry room etc.
• Add a pop of color to the notes, use colored paper, or find some fun markers to make them stick out
• Sit around the dinner table and talk about what you are thankful for (kinda like what people do on Thanksgiving) before writing it down.
• Make a game out of it: have each person write down on a piece of paper what they are thankful for that day, mix them up in a hat and then pass them around and guess who wrote what.

This challenge is supposed to be fun and something to take your mind off of the negative for five minutes. If you don’t have time, there is no pressure to add this to your day. If you decided to join me in doing this and you feel comfortable, post your fun. Share with others what you are thankful for and I will try to do the same.

Good Luck, and today, I am thankful that you took the time to support my blog and read my thoughts.

#quarantinethankfulnesschallenge