Bouncing Back Within Pandemic Parameters

Today I am grateful for time with both of our grandsons over this past weekend and for the turn of weather towards fall, my favorite season. 

Resilience is a wonderful human quality. We all have plenty of it, though we may not always acknowledge it or call it what it is. And everyone I know personally has shown an extra propensity for this "bouncing back from adversity" in the last few months. 

We are here. We have made it through a very unprecedented and challenging time. We know more lies ahead, but we don't know exactly what. We have never known exactly what lies ahead, but in more stable times it feels like we know. Or at least the range of possibilities wasn't so wide and evolving. 

Our resilience is reflected in what we have already adjusted to--a wide array of pandemic parameters. Our daily lives have changed, and yet stayed the same. Our comings and goings are altered, and yet we are able to get what we need and do what is necessary. We have been able to have some fun and share time together that means more now with so much swirling around us all. 

These parameters vary from person to person, setting to setting, state to state, country to country. There are things that have become controversial and politicized, and we probably all have opinions about such things. Resilience means knowing when we need to speak and when silence is golden. Resilience is knowing that we only have so much energy and we best save it for who and what matters most.

The twists and turns of these last few months have given us a true training ground for acceptance, patience, flexibility. The training has revealed strength and adaptability I never knew I had. I hope you can say the same.

Circumstances foster resilience in individuals and in families, communities, schools, and so much more. 

I was thinking about resilience as this Spiderman bouncy house inflated in our backyard on Sunday.

Those of us who were able enjoyed it and felt the lightness and buoyancy it made possible. It only took 45 seconds to inflate, but it had the help of electricity and a blower. Humans may take a little longer to bounce back, but we have even more amazing sources of power:  faith, hope, love.