Thoughts In Corona Time (early days)

I don't think I ever thought I'd be here - blogging in the time of a pandemic in America, in 2020, after having had my fourth child in a hospital, 4 weeks earlier.

Weird times.

It turns out I fell victim to a very sneaky kind of pride: pride in thinking we were so advanced that really bad things (like plagues) were only the stuff of the past. Oh we only have new advanced really bad things like terrorism to go with our new advanced stuff everywhere else. I'm glad to take a new dose of humility, but it seems a bit much that it takes a worldwide crisis and global economic collapse to make it happen.

Gallows humor aside, my new state of Michigan is now on what I affectionately refer to as "lockdown." We're not supposed to go anywhere but the grocery store, the doctor, or maybe a walk outside. No gatherings at all with anyone outside your household. When all this talk started about 10 days ago, I was pretty sanguine about it - honestly, as a homeschooling mom with a newborn, I figured it wouldn't feel that different to me. We have lots of weeks where we barely leave the house! Except...it turns out that wasn't true. We just leave the house a lot less than most other people. But both of my older kids have weekly music lessons, we had a weekly playdate, religious education, Mass on Sunday with accompanying coffee + donuts, weekly dinner with our next door neighbor. It turns out - it's very hard to lose your entire routine during the midst of a global health crisis in the information age. It is very easy to make news updates an idol...an idol that I stare at, waiting for my cues of how to live my life.

That is deeply sad, because I have been Catholic now for 14 years, and I thought I had taken to heart what Jean Valjean said - "my soul belongs to God I know/I made that bargain long ago." But, like the apostle I identify with the most, I took my eyes off Jesus and began my descent to a watery grave.

I don't know what this whole experience would be like as a single person, without other people directly in my care. I am confident in saying that situation has its own crosses. In my life, I have to manage my own maelstrom of emotions (anxiety - grumpiness - stir crazy - sad - frightened) while managing the emotions of several other people (emotions which may or may not be related to the current crisis). All while making sure that they eat, have fresh underwear/diapers, aren't wacking each other with bricks, or living in abject filth. I would love to binge watch movies and day drink until this passes. But little people are watching me, and sloth plus drunkenness aren't the best choices during a pandemic.

My kids are going to be affected and formed, in some way, by this crisis. Susannah more than everyone else, clearly. But it's up to us, the parents, to decide what that formation looks like. How do we - as Americans, as Catholics, as Orams - behave in a crisis? A crisis where we cannot leave our homes? What does my behavior tell them about how we are to act when a situation of this magnitude is before us?

God help me, up until now my behavior has set an example that has not been good. Yes, I'm just barely 4 weeks postpartum - yes, I'm getting little sleep and have hormones going crazy - but God knew that when he put me here. I have to quit making excuses and respond to the gently whispered invitation: to mother them, to be the warm heart of this home, to draw them close to his Sacred Heart and show them the light in this gloomy time. This is the strength of women, of so many generations who came before us and faced war, famine, plague, and death - on a scale we cannot imagine, with none of our modern comforts, with far less food. My weakness is proof of the relative constant comfort and entertainment to which I have thus far been accustomed; to the prosperity of the time and place in which I live. Can I shirk my burden, when it is so small?

When I first converted, I loved the stories of the early martyrs and the great saints that did so many amazing things. I wanted to do Great Things for God - to die, to join a convent where they wore no shoes in winter time, to be one of the ones who gave it all! But when he asks me to hold my temper with a small unreasonable child, I want to hold onto my anger instead; when he asks me to get up and tidy a room instead of scrolling Twitter, I clutch my phone tighter. When he whispers to me to bring order to my home, I turn my back and ignore my family's need for structure. It turns out I wanted to give everything, except the sins I'm currently indulging in.

May this Lent where I have so little distractions, where I am truly cloistered in my domestic church, give me the courage to abandon my sins, and truly repent.