Quarantine Writing Project (QWP)-1

As promised here is my first journal entry about our time in Quarantine. If you want to join me in this Quarantine Writing Project, you can join the link party down below or link back to this post so we can all check out your blog and read what you have written (or drawn, painted, whatever)! Don’t have a blog? Feel free to post your writing in the comments.

April 7, 2020:   It’s hard to know what to do with myself. For years I’ve run around saying, “If only I had the time, I’d …” But now that I have nothing but time I find I don’t know what to do with myself. There are days it is even hard to make myself get off the couch and clean the kitchen, and I hate a dirty kitchen!

Even my prayer life has been affected. My devotion to God seems to be dependent on other people—I only mean that I need people to remind me of who He is, to challenge me. I need people to serve.  We were never meant to live lives of isolation. Following Christ necessitates being in relationships with other people.

I went to get groceries today. Each time I do, I am appalled at how selfish people can be. It’s painful to see people hoarding or stealing supplies or scoffing at regulations to socially distance ourselves from one another. I am then appalled at how judgmental I can be. I try to remind myself that I don’t know each person’s story. I don’t know what fears and anxieties they suffer that cause them to make the decisions they have made. I want to be more compassionate, but it is hard. I wonder what fear is within me that makes it so hard at times for me be compassionate.

I’ve seen people making great sacrifices for others. Members in my church bought six new iPads for refugee families so their children could complete their online assignments for school. I know of a mother whose children are grown and no longer live in her home. She spends her day homeschooling refugee children so their parents can go to work. I know people who spend their days buying groceries for sick and elderly neighbors. I received an email from the mother of one of my students in China. She’d been reading about the virus spreading across America and was very worried about us. She wanted to make sure we had what we needed to stay safe. All of this reminds me of how beautiful people can be. How beautiful God is. I want to be good like this.

Join the link party! Click the button below and add your blog address to link readers to your blog. I can’t wait to read what you’ve written!

Author: Rebekah Durham

Rebekah Durham lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her three children.  She is a graduate of Columbia Theological Seminary and has written for numerous publications. She is an avid reader and in particular an admirer of C.S. Lewis, Thomas Merton, G.K. Chesterton, Henri Nouwen, and Dorothy L. Sayers (in no certain order). She'd also blindly follow Miss Marple (Agatha Christie's famous spinster sleuth) anywhere she wanted to go. View all posts by Rebekah Durham