This has been the weirdest year of my life, and probably many of yours too. A good friend and I had a long talk the other day about what we've learned from the pandemic that we didn't know before. I've learned a lot about human nature, dealing with uncertainty, and adapting. I've also learned to be grateful for the "village" that has always been there to help me raise my kids, as a lot more things have fallen on my shoulders during the pandemic. While I've learned a lot from online schooling some of my kids, I am so grateful I don't have to do that forever.
As I read through some of my emails from the past year, it's interesting to see how some of the concerns of the early days (the worries about fomite transmission, should we wash our groceries?, should parks be closed?) subsided while other concerns loomed larger. Utah's numbers stayed low until schools went back in September and then we had a surge. Our total cases per capita are higher than other states, but our deaths have been lower. Still, we've lost 2000 people, including some that are dear to friends of mine.
For this post, I want to reflect a little bit on the early pandemic days and then list some of the lessons our family learned.
 |
| Cami's baptism on March 7th was our last normal gathering. Little did we know what was coming just a week later! |
Coronavirus Shutdown
On March 15th last year, this is what I wrote in my weekly email to family members:
CoronovirusWell, that progressed quickly! At the beginning of the week, it looked like school closures and quarantines were in the realm of possibility, but not very soon. Then as the news started coming in from Italy and other parts of the world and as I started hearing the experts talk about the lack of testing in the United States and the R-factor (how transmittable this disease is) and various mortality rates (.5% in South Korea, 3% in China, 6% in Italy right now), it started to seem crazy that the schools were still open around here. One of the few known cases in Utah went to a BYU basketball game a few weeks ago. Then two Jazz players got sick. Tom Hanks and his wife got it in Australia. NBA games started to be canceled.
It went from the Church canceling members attending General Conference (on Wednesday) and canceling stake conferences (also on Wednesday) to canceling all Church meetings worldwide (Thursday) and then closing all temples starting on Monday (announced Friday). The Church's announcement, along with the governor's recommended ban on any groups larger than 500 meeting (and for older folks, 100) on Thursday made Provo go from a bit of extra stocking up to a full-on run on all the stores. My friend Chantelle sent us photos of Costco on Thursday. It was packed full and the lines to check out went all the way to the back of the store. Similar events happened all over the country. DH and I were glad we'd done our regular shopping on Wednesday night, when the stores were only a bit more crowded than usual.
BYU canceled classes starting Friday and moved to online school for the rest of the semester. And yet still, we had school on Friday. It wasn't until late Friday afternoon that we got a call letting us know the governor had ordered all schools in the state closed. So that put me in the position of figuring out a good schedule for all of us with just a few days to spare. I will sometimes spend as long as 6 weeks putting together things for our summer breaks so this felt a bit compressed. Plus we have the added problem of not being able to do things in public, have classes or do things with friends. I think we've figured out a good balance of schoolwork and play and we're having the kids write down goals for the next couple of weeks. We are supposed to hear from the schools and get their assignments via Chromebook starting Wednesday.
On Thursday morning, Lillian had heard from her internship in Brussels that she was accepted. Then things got crazier and that day BYU canceled study abroads. We hope she will still be able to go, perhaps this fall.While the rest of the town was at Costco and the supermarkets, I took 8 kids to the library yesterday morning. The Orem Library and the Salt Lake libraries had already closed so we figured this might be our last chance for a while. We brought back all our books and checked out five and a half baskets more, which is a bit less than twice as much as we usually have. Later in the day, they announced it was going to close."
Five weeks later, I wrote this:
Life is kind of weird. It's hard to remember what day of the week it is and it's hard not to feel like every day is the same. I feel like I work all day and get very little accomplished sometimes because I'm pulled in so many directions with helping the kids walk through their school work, housework, exercise, and play. I get a nap most afternoons or at least time to go hide away and read for an hour and it really helps. I also get exercise every morning. I've taken to waking up at 5:30 so I can read the scriptures, exercise at 6, and be ready for scriptures with the family at 7.It's a joy to run into someone and have a conversation from ten feet or more away, even if you weren't that close before. The internet is full of funny memes and cute parodies of videos, but also plenty of sad and grim news from the frontlines of fighting this disease. Sadly, there are more and more conspiracy theories being spread, which is really disappointing.Some governors have taken a pretty harsh stance on things, going as far as to prohibit people from buying anything deemed non-essential at the grocery store, like seeds and toys. And there have been reports of police ticketing people for sitting on their separate cars watching a sunset near beaches in California or chasing down a lone surfer. A guy in Colorado got in trouble for playing tee-ball in a park with his daughter. But I think these are just the things that make the news. Most people understand how important it is to stay home and be safe and I think most government leaders just want to control the virus . . .I've been trying to take pictures of some of the ways this has affected daily life here. Our playgrounds are closed but I noticed when Allison was practicing driving that they've put caution tape around them in Orem, though not yet in Provo.One of the weirdest things I experienced was the eery feeling at the grocery store in mid-March. I went to Maceys to get cereal and things and while there were a lot of empty shelves, like frozen meat, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies, there was also a decent amount of other things in stock. I picked up a few items and then found out when I was checking out that I was limited to two of any item in the store. It didn't matter if it was a different brand, I could only buy two of the shampoos I had picked up and two of the cereals, and two of the canned beans, etc. I had picked up three bins of four muffins each from the day-old bakery area and I could only buy two! Imagine feeling like a criminal for picking up twelve muffins instead of eight.The clerk seemed sympathetic but told me they hadn't gotten their shipment in for several days. The stores seem to have caught up on most things since then. They even had toilet paper the last few times we went to Costco (limit 1), though not yeast or some other hard-sought items.
It is scary to contemplate the future and worry about the economic repercussions of this. We can't continue like this indefinitely and we pray for solutions and for miracles. I read a fascinating article about the way sheep ranchers are affected and it reminded me how interconnected the world's economy is. We continue to fast and pray for health workers to be protected, those who are facing this disease and their families to be comforted, for solutions to be found, and for life to normalize. In the meantime, we do the best we can to share what we have with others, to lift and encourage those who are stressed and worried, and grow our own family bonds.
Remember how weird it all was that first month or two? It was one thing to read online about shortages at the grocery stores. It was another to go to the places you regularly shop and find the shelves empty.
From the early days, when we worried about online school, Zoom, and toilet paper:
Then the memes started to center on just how awful 2020 was and the uncertainty about schools opening:
To more recent memes lamenting that 2021 could NOT leave 2020 behind:
Lessons Learned this past Year
It's so interesting to compare where we were at first with all of the unknowns but a very unified "we're all in this together" feeling with the later months of vitriol and polarization. The amazing vaccines are bringing hope this will soon come to an end and it feels very close. It's been fun to plan a wedding in August and be fairly confident we will be able to gather in large groups again. We miss our friends.
Today after we took the sacrament at home, we each took a turn to talk about some of the lessons we this past year. I wrote a few ideas down earlier so my list was the longest, but here is a paraphrase of what my family members said, followed by my thoughts.
***
Harmony -- I learned who I can trust to be with and who will follow the rules.
Allison -- I learned about what matters most and how some things aren't as important. I also learned a lot about division and polarization.
Eliza -- I learned not to take anything for granted. Nothing is a given, even performances you've prepared for. Things can change quickly.
Katie -- I learned the importance of siblings. I'm grateful we had each other.
Michael -- I learned what is most important in life. I learned how important unity is. I learned how well prepared the Church was for this. And I think God gave us Benji and Gideon to keep us all entertained.
DH -- I learned how important gratitude is for happiness. We need to be grateful for whatever we have. We learned what is most essential and how to be more willing to let go of what is not. We also learned how much we need each other. We miss being with our friends.
Cami -- Come Follow Me prepared us for this so we could have Church at home.
Sarah -- I'm grateful for all the positive, uplifting entertainment this year, like good books, movies, shows like the Mandelorian, and of course Benji and Gideon.
Lillian -- The pandemic was good for me. If not for all the changes in plans, I likely wouldn't have met Jacob last fall. And I love Jacob. I loved being with my siblings this year, like when we went to Glacier National Park. I am grateful for prophetic leadership that led us through this and I'm grateful for the additional time I've had to study the scriptures. I'm glad certain people are no longer in our political leadership and that the pandemic hastened that day. And I've loved teaching mission prep with Sister Pike. I've also learned how great my mom is.
***
My lessons from our covid year, in no particular order:
My lessons from our covid year, in no particular order:
* How much we take for granted.
* How important moms are. I'm also grateful for all the supports in our society that help moms, like schools, teachers and activities.
* How it feels to live with uncertainty. I gained a greater empathy for the scriptural stories. I used to look mostly at the whole story -- "they had this trial and then God helped them" -- and now I think more about what it felt to each of them in the middle of the story. I understand a little more about how it feels to trust God but still have to live through things without knowing how the story ends just yet.
* How it feels to feel restricted and trapped and how easy it can be to focus on what we don't have.
* How to adapt to continual changes and make the most of what you can do.
* How beautiful it is to worship together in our home. I have more appreciation for Matthew 18:20, "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them." I have had powerful spiritual experiences in our little home sacrament meetings.
* How human nature works, in a lot of different ways. It's easy to pull together for the short time, but harder to do so for an unknown long time.
* How unprepared we are in the developed world for hardship. I recently came across a quote I thought profound. Paul Brand was a surgeon who worked in India and then spent the last part of his career in the U.S. He said, "In the United States ... I encountered a society that seeks to avoid pain at all costs. Patients lived at a greater comfort level than any I had previously treated, but they seemed far less equipped to handle suffering and far more traumatized by it." Perhaps we have come to expect too much ease and comfort in our lives. I think too many in our country and other rich countries (with the exception of many Asian countries who had experienced SARS) had the feeling that a pandemic couldn't affect us the way it did.
* The effect of echo chambers in responses to the pandemic. How easily conspiracy and extremism can spread and how the polarization can keep us from having real discussions about risks and tradeoffs. There was way too much fighting about basic facts and reality instead of talking about how much can and should be open, whether and how schools can be safe and what priority they should be given, and how to compensate those who are most devastated by the pandemic.
* How Satan uses the same tactics with all of us, no matter our political leanings. For years, I've watched people on the political left fight, rationalize and become distant from the Church and the prophets because of their loyalty to their political positions and unwillingness to humbly consider prophetic counsel. It was interesting to see it happen more on the political right this past year. I saw too many who found their loyalty to their political tribe and online echo chamber stronger than their gospel allegiance. It was interesting to see the same kinds of arguments that some of these people condemned in left-leaning Church members now get trotted out to justify their rejection of the Church's response and counsel in regards to the pandemic. It was interesting to see how tribal loyalty can trump gospel identity if we are not humble enough.
* How important humility is and how hard entrenched views can be to change. Seeing all of this play out has reminded me to check my own heart for pride. Instead of just saying, "What's wrong with them?," I try to say, "What's wrong with them and me? How am I letting these same problems encompass me?"
* The importance of following the prophets. They provided balanced, compassionate and loving leadership throughout this. I loved seeing how God clearly prepared the Church for this but that He did it the same way He works with me -- by inspiring certain actions but not by giving foreknowledge of why those actions are important. It was clear that the prophets didn't expect this to happen at this time in exactly this way (hence President Nelson's "Little did I realize . . ." preface to his talk last April) and that they didn't know how long it would last. But nevertheless, we had the inspired Come Follow Me changes, the ministering changes and other things that were all in place beforehand. It isn't necessary to know exactly what the future will entail to be inspired.
* How important preparedness is. It can feel like we have food storage and other things and never need them, but the pandemic showed how quickly things can change and how fast stores can empty of basic items. It's hard to predict the future but it is easier to feel at peace knowing we have basic preparedness in place.
* How much people need each other. We really have missed our association with our friends. I remember at certain points in the pandemic realizing that while I was trying to plan more family outings and fun adventures to make up for the loss of so many other things, what we really were lacking was interaction with our friends and the wider world. While doing the things we could to strengthen our family was good, it didn't fill the hole left in being so isolated.
* How good my kids are. When it came time to make sacrifices for other people and even to do so when many of their friends weren't doing it, they stepped up. They have been so willing to adapt and make the best of whatever the circumstances. It hasn't always been easy for any of us, but I've loved seeing the growth that has happened.
* How important moms are. I'm also grateful for all the supports in our society that help moms, like schools, teachers and activities.
* How it feels to live with uncertainty. I gained a greater empathy for the scriptural stories. I used to look mostly at the whole story -- "they had this trial and then God helped them" -- and now I think more about what it felt to each of them in the middle of the story. I understand a little more about how it feels to trust God but still have to live through things without knowing how the story ends just yet.
* How it feels to feel restricted and trapped and how easy it can be to focus on what we don't have.
* How to adapt to continual changes and make the most of what you can do.
* How beautiful it is to worship together in our home. I have more appreciation for Matthew 18:20, "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them." I have had powerful spiritual experiences in our little home sacrament meetings.
* How human nature works, in a lot of different ways. It's easy to pull together for the short time, but harder to do so for an unknown long time.
* How unprepared we are in the developed world for hardship. I recently came across a quote I thought profound. Paul Brand was a surgeon who worked in India and then spent the last part of his career in the U.S. He said, "In the United States ... I encountered a society that seeks to avoid pain at all costs. Patients lived at a greater comfort level than any I had previously treated, but they seemed far less equipped to handle suffering and far more traumatized by it." Perhaps we have come to expect too much ease and comfort in our lives. I think too many in our country and other rich countries (with the exception of many Asian countries who had experienced SARS) had the feeling that a pandemic couldn't affect us the way it did.
* The effect of echo chambers in responses to the pandemic. How easily conspiracy and extremism can spread and how the polarization can keep us from having real discussions about risks and tradeoffs. There was way too much fighting about basic facts and reality instead of talking about how much can and should be open, whether and how schools can be safe and what priority they should be given, and how to compensate those who are most devastated by the pandemic.
* How Satan uses the same tactics with all of us, no matter our political leanings. For years, I've watched people on the political left fight, rationalize and become distant from the Church and the prophets because of their loyalty to their political positions and unwillingness to humbly consider prophetic counsel. It was interesting to see it happen more on the political right this past year. I saw too many who found their loyalty to their political tribe and online echo chamber stronger than their gospel allegiance. It was interesting to see the same kinds of arguments that some of these people condemned in left-leaning Church members now get trotted out to justify their rejection of the Church's response and counsel in regards to the pandemic. It was interesting to see how tribal loyalty can trump gospel identity if we are not humble enough.
* How important humility is and how hard entrenched views can be to change. Seeing all of this play out has reminded me to check my own heart for pride. Instead of just saying, "What's wrong with them?," I try to say, "What's wrong with them and me? How am I letting these same problems encompass me?"
* The importance of following the prophets. They provided balanced, compassionate and loving leadership throughout this. I loved seeing how God clearly prepared the Church for this but that He did it the same way He works with me -- by inspiring certain actions but not by giving foreknowledge of why those actions are important. It was clear that the prophets didn't expect this to happen at this time in exactly this way (hence President Nelson's "Little did I realize . . ." preface to his talk last April) and that they didn't know how long it would last. But nevertheless, we had the inspired Come Follow Me changes, the ministering changes and other things that were all in place beforehand. It isn't necessary to know exactly what the future will entail to be inspired.
* How important preparedness is. It can feel like we have food storage and other things and never need them, but the pandemic showed how quickly things can change and how fast stores can empty of basic items. It's hard to predict the future but it is easier to feel at peace knowing we have basic preparedness in place.
* How much people need each other. We really have missed our association with our friends. I remember at certain points in the pandemic realizing that while I was trying to plan more family outings and fun adventures to make up for the loss of so many other things, what we really were lacking was interaction with our friends and the wider world. While doing the things we could to strengthen our family was good, it didn't fill the hole left in being so isolated.
* How good my kids are. When it came time to make sacrifices for other people and even to do so when many of their friends weren't doing it, they stepped up. They have been so willing to adapt and make the best of whatever the circumstances. It hasn't always been easy for any of us, but I've loved seeing the growth that has happened.
Comments