Covid-19

 March 15

So many ‘years’—so it seems, have transpired since I last wrote.  Such traumatic moments we have lived, too.   

Yes, both my Fisherman and I got infected with the novel coronavirus a month ago today.  Two weeks of uncertainties, days and days of not feeling well and not knowing exactly what was to be expected next, or what was going to happen to us or what we were supposed to experienced; days and days thinking of our friends and remembering those who didn’t make it, it was indeed a traumatic experience.

I spent many hours on my knees seeking help from “above”; at times feeling I was going to die; feeling unworthy at times for God to hear me, or feeling I wasn’t good enough or perhaps not holly enough for having been infected.  Guilt, fear, contrition filled my soul.  One morning when my faith was at its low and I was feeling very discouraged, I asked the Lord to speak to me and show me what I was to expect.  I was ready.  I then opened my Bible, and God said to me in a gentle, clear voice:  “Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler; the net is torn, and we have slipped away” (Psalm 124:7).

I knew right there and then that we were going to be fine.  We had escaped, even if we were still feeling awful!  And we did.

March 12

I have started working in the garden again—spring cleaning this place I have so abandoned for so many months is like meeting with a good friend I hadn’t seen in years again.  I’ve been discarding winter spoils and cleaning the garden’s floors of debris accumulated during the cold season.  It hasn’t been easy, this job… for this body has aged in the chronometer of an atomic clock since Covid… but it felt deliciously good, and it felt delightful like a miracle escaping through my fingers as I worked the soil and crawled under the bushes, pulling weeds and raking dead leaves with bare hands. 

I’m alive!  I made it through, and now more than ever I want this old body and feeble mind to be the sanctuary where the Holy of Holiest lives and the place where his Holy Spirit dwells.  I am so humbled and thankful for the way in which God saw us through.  I want to do so many things, change the color of my hair, cut it, get new furniture, do some improvement in the house, plant new trees, get rid of some others…

I cleaned my closet this past weekend too.  A lot of the outfits, shoes and bags I hadn’t worn in the past year were giving away.  I didn’t even have to think about it twice, for I have been ‘reborn’ and what’s the ephemeral has ever to do with real joy?  the joy that cannot be touch, but feel, the joy that gives health to your bones?

It was so freeing being able to finally part from those things that at one point in my life were not only important, but also loved and treasured.  I have been doing the same with a lot of other things in my life.  We carry so many baggage and unnecessary things; material and not material.  Negative feelings, grudges, resentment, hatreds—they weight us down and make us sick.  We need to forgive and forget, and we need to always remember that our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. 

 See you soon, my friends!