Write Your Own Story
As a father of two little ones, entrepreneur, and church leader working mainly from home I must say this quarantine period is indeed messing up everything regarding my routine and my family’s daily habits.
And I bet it is quite the same for you reading this!
I found it easy to let the quarantine-mode affect my family: withdrawing from my most valuable relationships, poorly investing my time into them, waiting for everything to just go back to normal.
So how do we make this time remarkable?
How do we build memories that won’t detach our true selves from this very situation? How do we get out of this stronger than we entered? I think the answer lays in choosing to be flexible, more than we used to be at least. I am a morning person, delighted in routines and punctuality, used to effectiveness and motion.
All of you parenting a kid and a toddler in an apartment know that everything in the previous sentence is now sadly just a dream. I think I have never appreciated school more than now. Never missed my in-laws more than now. Never longed for a busy schedule more than now. Schedule... what a wonderful old friend haha. As I was thinking through this (and how to keep my kids in bed for longer than 10 hours) the other day I realised how real this quarantine has hit my family.
It doesn’t matter than none of us is even exposed to the pandemic.. we are surely living its consequences anyways. What I could not see though was the flip side of the coin (this is when my wife gives me that look).
Dry bones or overflow of life?
As it is for those dry bones we read about in Ezekiel 37 I think I can make this dry season an overflow of life and love for my family. Maybe, just maybe, it’s an opportunity I will never get back in my life, to have the time to invest more in my family. In this mental frame I think I can decide to read more about parenting and marriage, practice acts of love in each of my beloved’s love languages. I think I can get to know them better since I have plenty of time available. I think I can step into areas of their lives that were previously influenced by other people (teachers, peers, etc..) and leave my love mark on them as their father and husband.
I have the faith and the resources it takes to get better at my family role, and I believe you have too!
Write your own story
I am just a read away from that famous marriage expert’s book, a text away from that amazing couple I always wanted to get wisdom from, a hug away from my kids heart, an encouraging word away from my wife’s happier day. I challenge myself and you today: what amazing chapter of your life are you going to write in this season?
I know for myself I want my kids to remember how good it was to be home 24/7 with daddy, and my wife to long for the next pandemic to get her quarantine-mode romantic husband back. I will gladly trade my habits for that, deciding to be flexible and make the most out of this.
Emanuele Di Costa
Worship Pastor, Home Church Florence