*I have been thinking a lot about the blog lately. Sometimes I feel like I'm the last person on the planet still using this old thing, and being a creature of habit, I'm okay with that. It has been a fun source to keep family and friends up to date on our lives, and sometimes it's also been a personal place to vent. I've been writing on this thing since we got married and it holds a lot of memories that I don't even remember anymore. It has become a memoir. I've decided I would like to find a way to save it or publish it so someday my kids or maybe even grandkids can read it someday (if they want). With that being said, I've been wanting to gear more of what I share on here towards my potential future generations. *
With that being said, I want to talk to my children about what everyone is talking about these days because the day will come that this is just a distant memory (thankfully).
So let's start at the beginning. A few months back we began hearing about some new illness that started in China. It was talked about a lot but not something we paid that close of attention to. In general, us American's kind of hear horrible things happening around the world and don't pay that close of attention to them because often times we are protected from the horrible things happening around the world. Then China essentially shut down, which was weird for us but didn't seem to phase us until we began to realize what that meant for us economically. You see, a lot of our "stuff" comes from China and with their workers forced to stay home, that meant our economy was slipping just a bit. Something you must understand is that our economy is booming right now, arguably the best economic time it has ever been. We've had talks of a recession coming in the next couple years but so far that hasn't come to fruition. Unemployment has been low, people have money to spend, and the stock market has been hitting record highs. It has been easy to assume that even if the economy slipped a little bit into a recession in the next couple years that all would still be okay. Okay, so back to the virus. It shut down China, people were dying and it started hitting our news more and more. I remember at some point the mention that it would eventually spread around the world and even if only 250 cases were detected outside China that it would quickly grow into a worldwide pandemic. Then it spread into Europe and we got our very first case in the United States roughly 4 hours away from us in Seattle. I don't think we took it too serious though and I am sure that I was not alone in thinking that even if other countries shut completely down, there was no possible way that would happen in America.
We saw the numbers start to hit Iran hard, and it still felt like a foreign nation that wouldn't affect us and then it hit Italy hard and Italy didn't feel quite as 3rd worldish to us and we started keeping a closer eye. We watched as touristy Italy, in their busy Easter season completely shut down into quarantine. And then the virus started to spread in the Seattle area and we watched in a little bit of shock as we saw Seattle start to shut down. Things started happening so fast from here and it was almost like hourly we were getting new information and restrictions from the government. We are only weeks past this point and I remember being shocked that an adoption conference we usually attend made the decision to cancel the night before the event started. The idea of cancelling an event where thousands of people would meet was surprising. We went to a broadway show one night and a couple days later the show was completely shut down. Now, just weeks from when this started, we are where gatherings of any size are forbidden. We do church from home watching online. Stores, restaurants, businesses are shut down. Your Dad is working from home, and just of yesterday even if I want to take a walk with Auntie Megan, we would have to maintain a distance of 6 feet apart. The virus is continuing to spread, they tell us that hospitals will be overwhelmed at some point. Hospitals are struggling to have the supplies they need, the economy has tanked at an insane pace. Your Daddy has been working his behind off at work for months on something big and was weeks away from it happening when the economy tanked. Things changed so rapidly that we never even saw this thing coming a month ago and now here we all are hunkered down at home for who knows how long.
Some of you kids may have a vague memory of these events and some of you are far too young to even remember a moment of it. We are trying our best to balance sharing the reality what is happening but also shield you from any fear of the events. You know you are making sacrifices with sports and birthday parties, but I don't know how much you really understand. But I am super proud of how flexible you are being towards your birthday parties and the loss of activities you love. Even Sabrina being flexible about her one on one trip with us in May, you guys have been awesome. We stopped at the store the other day and I stayed in the car with you guys and I know even that was a bit confusing. Malachi loves history and I have explained to him that these events happening right now will someday be directly written into our history books. As we just finished a unit learning about federal government, state government, and local government this has been a perfect time to let him watch press conferences from the federal and state level and discuss how the federal and state government work together through this.
The world is writing history right now. We don't even know how it all is going to end at this point. The virus is still spreading, current numbers are over 300,000 worldwide with over 14,000 deaths. If you are reading this years later, you know how this ended while we are still wondering if things will soon slow down or if this is just the tip of the iceberg. We don't know if this will re surge in the fall/winter or if enough people will build immunity to drastically slow the spread next year. We don't know if we are going to fall back into a rough economy or if as soon as life returns to normal the economy will pick back up and laid off employees will get their jobs back. We don't know what permanent changes will come from this. Will companies become more open to their employees working from home? Will people continue to buy groceries for delivery or curb side pick up? Will restaurants permanently convert to more delivery and pick up and less dining in? Will we have rediscovered the family unit and permanently try and slow down our schedules to spend more time together?
Through all things, I want to remind you first and foremost to put your trust in God. Trust Him with the little and trust Him with the big things. It has not been an easy for me to give up this illusion of control that I want, to trust God with the lives of the people I love most, even though I know He loves all of you even more than I do. It's hard to not fear, for loved ones, for worries about finances. But I promise as you continue to walk with God it really IS possible to have complete peace in whatever we face. And always remember to pray. When fear tries to creep in to your life, pray!
We will also continue to teach you financial freedom so that when these types of storms hit, you can be best prepared. I remember how scary it was when your Daddy got laid off 12 years ago. We were young marrieds with school and car debt and a mortgage and not much in savings. We never wanted to have that feeling again and we have worked hard to be in the place we are now. Even through this unknown period and your Daddy being the sole income provider for our large family, we have no debt besides our mortgage and a savings account that could get us through for quite awhile if we needed it to. Let's hope it doesn't come down to that, but I just say that it brings relief through a tough time like this to know we could continue to get by.
And lastly, try to help as you can. Right now our whole household is in the "low risk" category. The best thing we can do is stay home as much as possible. So far Daddy has been the only one going places and all he's going out for is to get food here and there. We also want to have open hands to help however we can. We always want to keep our eyes out for needs that need met. Whether that be neighbors who can't leave home, needs our church see's in the community, helping with international missions where countries aren't equipped at all for this, donating blood for blood bank shortages, or even taking in foster puppies that need a place to crash until the rescues can find them homes. Sometimes it doesn't feel like we can tangibly help very much but we love being on the lookout for things we can do!
I truly hope that we can look back on this time and see that something good came out of it. This is a unique moment in history that we will likely never see again. Even though times are really hard for many, I hope through this hardship we see that we were finally given permission to slowdown. Life shut down and we get to enjoy this small moment of time as a family with nothing on the agenda (besides homeschool and Daddy working from home) but time spent together. I hope this is looked back on a positive moment for families and a time where we discovered some things that we didn't need to bog down life with commitments every night of the week. That it is okay to take joy in simple pleasures and not constantly be going. After months of feeling overwhelmed with how busy life is, this time at home is a breath of fresh air. I am hopeful that we will get through this as a world, we will learn lessons, and I hope that we all come through this as better people.
