Define YOUR New Normal

Yesterday a prize appeared in my mailbox. It came from my internet friend Sheri, with a note telling me she appreciates my work.

How awesome is that?

I call Sheri my internet friend because we’ve never met, but she’s a vocal and helpful member of the Girl Catch Fire community, so it feels like we have. She owns a t-shirt company in Texas and the prize she sent was the most perfect-for-me-t-shirt ever. 

Faith over Fear is my COVID Mantra.

Every morning I ask Jesus: How can I show up in faith and not fear today? How can I see the Coronavirus as a portal and not a hole?

The answer is always the same and Sheri provides the perfect object lesson.

Use what’s in your hands to love and support other people.

For example, have you been watching Some Good News with Jon Krasinski? If not, you should. It’s such a tonic for sick and scary times.

Not only is it fresh, clever and funny, but it presents us at our aspirational best. It feels so good to know what we’re capable of as a species - especially in a crisis. I wonder though are we capable of behaving like this when we’re not in crisis?

Some ideas for being an awesome human - COVID and beyond.

🍀 Define for yourself what your new normal is. Don't leave that to anybody else - the government, the marketplace, the media.

🍀 Be like Sheri and use whatever is in your hands to encourage people around you.

🍀 When someone is overwhelmed by big emotions, don’t try to fix it or blue-sky it for them. Just sit quietly with them and witness it. 

🍀 Give as much money as you can to food banks because they always need it. Here’s Manna in Pensacola.

🍀 If you mow your lawn today, mow someone else’s too. 

🍀 Write love letters to people you don’t see much and drop them in the mail. 

🍀 Walk barefoot outside and say hello to everyone who passes, maybe even introduce yourself. 

🍀 Visit your local park and pick up trash. 

🍀 When you have the choice, drive less and rest more.

🍀 Make cards with your kids for nursing home residents who can’t or don’t see their families. 

🍀 Ask your essential worker neighbors how you can support them. Don’t assume they’re ok because they haven’t asked for help. ASK THEM!

The Aspirational Gap

Most of us know we live with a gap between the person we are and the one we want to be. It seems Coronavirus has invited us to take a hard look at that gap and how we might begin closing it.

♥️ Maybe when we do reopen, we’ll choose not to pick up our old frenetic ways.

♥️ Maybe we will sit longer, rest more and dwell in the presence of God, rather than filling every second with busy-ness.

♥️ Maybe we’ll maintain some of the rhythms we’ve developed with our kids.

♥️ Maybe we’ll be more mindful with our spending, I know economists don’t like that, but our consumer habits are part of what makes us rush around in a panic.

♥️ Maybe without that pressure, we’ll even be more patient with each other.

♥️ Maybe we’ll keep singing from our porches, just to encourage those struggling among us. 

This is portal thinking.

How has the Coronavirus grown and changed you? What solutions to chronic injustice has it exposed for you, in your neighborhood, your community? How can you engage those solutions? How can we keep giving mother earth the blessed break she’s had while we’ve all been locked down? 

And what will your “new normal” look like? What parts of the quarantine have recalibrated your thinking? What empirically positive behaviors have you developed that you might choose to keep forever?

Good. Do it. Let us each define our new normal based on what we’ve learned during this reset, and see what changes.