How many blogs are hanging around in the world wide web, abandoned, unattended, possibly even forgotten?
Was there an inspiration disconnect? Life outside the computer became overwhelming? It's an unfortunate state for those of us who are driven to write, one that must be conquered. Showing up yet again for the page is the best of solutions.
I've read explanations for one's blog absence and won't attempt to craft one. The plain truth will do. To borrow a relationship description from Facebook, "it's complicated." Yet it's not; I simply wandered away.
In Pandemica 2020, how many thoughts are lost in the massive stewing pot of word vomitus called social media? In frustration, I deleted every social media account I had. Every.Single.One.
Facebook was filled with covid and political angst, people I hadn't seen in decades going on the attack to anyone who dared think a thought different from one traveling through their own mind.
Instagram, once a haven of domestic loveliness, my account anyway, was turned black in a pathetic act of virtue signaling.
Twitter, ever the body of warm water filled with piranhas seeking to let blood, features the cancel culture hiding pathetically behind a device, deeming people whose achievements they'll never meet no longer in existence, when it is the canceler whose only claim to fame is an altered picture and unasked for opinions he or she has posted online.
We curate and fashion ourselves, marketing our core being to a sea of people we never meet in person. Pandemic survivors have been given over to the place where we lost ourselves, and the irony of writing about it here does not escape me.
We booted God out of school, and after decades of fighting Him, the children were sent home for months. Mothers who'd long left home and hearth in pursuit of personal and intellectual fulfillment were sent back in the place they sought to escape, wondering what to do. To their immense credit, they quickly figured out what needed to be done and set about it--women are like that.
Some of us renewed acquaintance with anxiety, present company included, and after having a belly full of that, determined that is not the company we want to keep.
It's been a tough year, and topping it off on the home front, my beloved Australian shepherd Maggie died, quite possibly a victim of the covid I believe I contracted while traveling in late January/early February. I went through two international airports to meet my third grandchild, but he decided to delay his entrance to the world by a week, and so exists a beautiful seven-month-old grandbabyboy I've never held.
Across the country also resides two beautiful grandbabygirls I haven't seen in months and because of this dastardly virus, a vacation we'd scheduled in Florida to spend a week with them was also canceled.
The one souvenir from my only travel in 2020 ticked off many of the boxes of wildly varied symptoms comprising covid--dry cough so intense a muscle was pulled, fever, chills, throat rash, extreme fatigue for starters.
And then...
My pastor stepped down and I suspected something amiss behind the scenes; I'll call it a coup and leave it at that.
Then covid canceled church.
Like everyone else in the world except Antarctica, somewhere I'd never choose to live, my lifelines were snatched one by one by a microscopic virus. Like everyone else who didn't succumb to covid, I've been treading water madly, and only recently settling into that necessary place of praying for patience while having to wait.
Every bit of this has driven me to the presence of my heavenly Father, my Lord Jesus Christ. It is here I find hope, and to be perfectly honest, am still seeking rest.
There is water in my eyes, not enough to spill on my face, but enough for every human reading this--I know they have a similar story. I have heard some of them, much worse--like friends who cannot go see their parents in assisted living and nursing homes, like relatives who have a category of ailments hauntingly called co-morbidities and must remain in their homes, only venturing out to doctor's appointments, and then in a very real fear for their lives.
More than anything, I miss the freedom to see my friends and family. I know you do, too. Faith over fear is a very real challenge, one I intend to meet, and my prayer is you will join me as we complete this journey together, apart.
