Yesterday was a no good, very bad, awful, horrible, rotten kind of day.

Here’s is a list of reasons why:

1. Covid-19

So… as the day progressed from awful to really awful to just BAD ON SO MANY LEVELS I found myself leaning on my dining room table, head in hands, talking to my eleven-year-old about his, uh, behavior. Words like “unacceptable” and “are you kidding me” and “consequences” were thrown around. We talked for a good twenty minutes about life’s most difficult challenges (no snark here; people are hard) and when he was done I felt like I had earned a doctorate in behavioral psychology, minus the student loans.

And then… he wandered off and proceeded to do the EXACT SAME STUFF that merited the Let’s Talk Series, Episode #34556 in the first place.

And so it goes.

How, I ask you, can you go FURTHER when you keep going BACK and AROUND and BACK… again?

I know that sounds like this book:

but instead of the spooky owl at the end it has a mother who yells and takes away screentime.

I’m linking up with my favorite writing people over at Five Minute Fridays, and today’s theme?

This is tough, ya’ll.

I can’t look back and lean on history to get us through. There was no pandemic like this in my past – no wearing of masks or closing of pools or, Lord help us, no summer baseball on the radio.

And there is no clarity of what’s ahead. Further down the road. The murkiness of what’s coming next makes me sit out on my back stoop a lot and stare into space.

Certainty is one of my favorite addictions.

My husband came home last night and asked me how my day was and I started to cry. I made a circling gesture with my hand, trying to explain how I was feeling, and he came and kissed me on the forehead.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said. He did not, quite miraculously, try to fix anything or offer advice or started any sentence with “Well you know what you need to do is…” and I’m grateful. He gave me mini Hersheys and offered to make dinner.

The best Forward I can offer right now is this:

1. Do the next right thing.
2. Go to meetings and don’t drink in between (recovery, ya’ll. It doesn’t pay attention to pandemics. It can be your OWN pandemic if you’re not careful).
3. Watch Jim Gaffigan like, all the time. All the time.
4. Don’t worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God your worries, and don’t forget to thank Him for His answers. And the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, all the quarantines, all the pandemics, all the viruses, all the political strife, all the economic fears, all the arguing and isolation and endlessness of it all – ALL of it, will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

I stole that last one from a really good book. 🙂

Carry on, troops. Forward.