Usually, I move through my day with the grace and agility of a gazelle…pausing here for laughter…yours, if you know me! From marinara sauce on my white shirt, to kicking table legs with my wayward toes, that’s the way I roll. What I lack in fluid movement, I make up for with speed.
Like many of you, social distancing, a.k.a. quarantining, has been the name of my game for weeks now, and actually the calendar says we can start counting it as ‘months’. However, with an abundance of precautions in place…mask, hand sanitizer, and a healthy respect for the measurement of six feet…this week I ventured out to a store that had some items we required and could not have delivered.
Everything went really well. I never felt endangered by the people around me, most of whom were taking the same precautions. I went. I purchased. I sanitized. I returned home. I sanitized again. It went well.
Then I lost my balance. It was an odd feeling, having been out and about after so long of being in and within. I caught myself, safe and sound back home, feeling a great sense of something…loss…sadness…frustration…surprise at how the world had changed… Not sure any of these words describe it, but it was real and it caused a sensation in my being that reminded me of losing my balance. Like when you stand up too fast, or you forget to eat breakfast and it’s afternoon…my equilibrium just fled for a few minutes. A perfectly normal activity, a quick shopping trip, felt so out of the norm. What was up with that? My spirit was a bit dizzy.
And just like that, balance was restored. A ‘check in’ with someone who loves and understands me reminded me that we all are likely to feel a loss of balance in these extraordinary days. So if you start to lose your balance…there’s help in 1 Peter 5:7; “Give all your worries to Him, because He cares for you.” Gradually we will begin to move about our world more freely, though with changes, for sure. And we will find our balance. Again and again.
Picture This 