SHELTER-IN-PLACE? ARE GUILT TRIPS STILL ALLOWED?

For the most part, I've always felt that I am pretty immune to guilt. I claim it's because I have a Catholic mother and a Jewish father and so two negatives make a positive. I've always felt guilt is a wasted emotion. It tends to stop us in our tracks (emotionally) and make us go through this strange internal dance without fixing our issues or moving forward. So, I find it very interesting that this whole “shelter in place” order has brought up really strange guilt feelings/thoughts over the past few weeks. Unlike other internal messages, that I can just ignore or that run in the background, I'm very aware of these guilt feelings/thoughts as they pop into my head. Probably because I really don't believe in them and so they stand out as the odd man out. 🎶 Which one of these is not like the other. 🎵

What kind of things bring up these new and strange emotions? (Probably for some of you they might not be new) Maybe the most obvious ... I'm not doing enough for my children. I'm not managing their emotions or paying attention to them enough.  I'm not feeding us correctly or shopping correctly or taking care of my parents correctly or handling my own body correctly. Ahhhhhhh - the ever-dreaded “CORRECTLY”. There it is!!! Where in the Life Instruction Manual does it tell me how to “correctly” handle a pandemic? My book seems to be missing that chapter!

That first week, I told my family that the things we used to do pretty well with were now gone and the things we didn't do so well with, were the things we now needed to do better. For example, we used to be good about hospitality and having people over for dinner, making time to meet friends for lunch or coffee dates and catching up with people over happy hour or making arrangements for our ministry work. We were even doing pretty good about making it to the gym every few days. Well now, all those things are gone and we have to do more personal Bible study and family time (the dreaded board games), eating at home (the dreaded cook every night), eating as a family (the dreaded “who’s turn is it to clean downstairs” and then making them do it!), meal planning, checking on people through social media, texting and phone calls (you mean I need to TALK through my phone at people?). These are the things we weren’t the best at doing and now it’s what we need to improve on.

I find that as I do these things that I’m not great at, I become more critical of myself. I feel judgmental and it definitely led to more depression that first month. It's funny that I wasn’t depressed that we had to stay in. I certainly didn’t mind that the pressure was off or that the go-go-go lifestyle was gone. All of that's been great. It's just having to flex the muscles that haven't been very strong over the years. So, I see this as a growth opportunity and I feel like this is helping “finish our training” to help us notice the things that we’re not as good at and it’s giving us time to get stronger in those areas. Last night, as we ate dinner together as a family (which we do almost every night now ... which has been amazing) I noticed that I'm not stressed at night or exhausted, so we actually all stayed downstairs and sat around the living room and talked for an hour. I cannot tell you the last time that has happened. We haven't done that, except for on vacation, for years and years. 

I'm hoping we're moving into a new and better phase of life. I'm hoping we don't lose these blessings as things open back up, in the next few months. I hope we don't lose the muscles we're building. And yes, I still feel guilt is a wasted emotion.