As you have been quarantined with family or perhaps “sheltering in place” alone, was this a time of productivity? Perhaps you caught up on stacks of “must do’s” or even many of those “wanna do’s.”

I’m sure there was much “jammie and lazy bones” time. I recently told someone I needed to resume a routine because even though I was constructive throughout the day, I found my hours and days blending together. It was delightful not awakening to an alarm, but I also realized how mundane my life would be if I didn’t have a regimen. Now as our lives resume to normalcy what did we learn?

Did we lay aside those times with friends and family of trivial disagreements? For persons totally alone, as am I, I don’t have incongruities.  Nonetheless, I came to appreciate each and every time I’m able to walk to my garage, sit in the seat of my car and pull from my drive to go wherever I choose. Since I spent my life in health care, I was always cognizant of my freedoms, opportunities and abilities, as I cared for many persons whom were much younger than I, living their lives in total immobility, illness or severe handicaps.

I know each has been blessed by stories we’ve read or heard of strangers reaching out to others. As we listened to the interviews of healthcare workers on the front line, working long and fatiguing hours in order to serve those in need, we may have felt incredible appreciation toward them. However, we also realized we could not overlook those not being interviewed; isolated while caring for terminally or critically ill loved ones, caregivers of handicapped children or loved ones with Alzheimer’s. They could not call for someone to come by and relieve them, for all were in quarantine.

As we resume our lives, will we recall those days we traipsed from store to store seeking toilet paper, yearned for a time to sit in our favorite coffee shop chatting with friends, or longed to have a family celebration in our favorite restaurant? During this time, I also prayed for those families losing loved ones, unable to provide an avenue to honor them. Memorial and funeral services were postponed to enable “greater than ten” to gather and remember.

I trust that as I return to my “normal” that I don’t fail to speak to another when passing by, or that I fail to offer assistance to anyone I’m aware of  that has a need or that I fail to offer gratitude daily for those things I take for granted.

I will enjoy jammies and “being lazy days”, if I choose. Yet how grateful I will be that it is a choice rather than because I’m prevented from leaving my house. I trust each of us have memories which imprint us for the remainder of our lives. Psalm 9:1 NKJ, “ I will praise You, O Lord, with my whole heart…”