Here’s the twist though…..we didn’t know it.

I took the Tripper® Bus back to Maryland that Sunday afternoon and I was starting to feel sick. There was already a lot of news about this mysterious and apparently deadly “coronavirus” that appeared to have been born in a Wuhan market in China and had already spread like wildfire. We had yet to learn or hear the term “superspreader event” which, in retrospect, this gathering would certainly have been considered. We weren’t masking, that was for the overly anxious survivors of avian flu, manicurists and healthcare workers. We dismissed that as unnecessary given our lack of experience we were about to gain.

Upon returning home from the event, I knew I was sick and my lungs were affected. There was only testing by prescription at a military facility, drive by style. There was no vaccine and no medication to ameliorate the symptoms of this dangerous and frightening respiratory virus. If you thought you had it, you called your doctor, got a prescription for a test and registered for the nearest and earliest test you could find. After driving myself an hour with a fever and feeling badly to Timonium, the nearest and earliest test I could get, I was “stabbed” with a giant Q-tip that I thought touched my brain. I learned that the test results would be about another week and I was already 3 days in to “quarantine” at home.

I was instructed to monitor my symptoms and confine myself to quarantine until the results of the test confirmed or denied I had it. I spent 10 days in tortured fear of dying of asphyxiation. Anxiety worsened the condition. I became so conscious of my breathing, I was afraid to stop thinking about it, for fear I would stop breathing…UGH!!!

I set my office up in my bedroom and met with friends, family and colleagues on Zoom.

My husband and I would conduct remote “happy hours” in the afternoon. He would prepare a tray of treats and a glass of wine and leave them outside my door. He would go to his office with his treats and FaceTime me.

At the end of 10 days, I received a negative test result.  I was feeling better, had a negative test result and my doctor’s permission. I was allowed to return to common quarters without a HAZMAT suit, no longer armed with Clorox wipes and Lysol. He never caught it, a blessing, since he is on immunosuppressants and of the same “high risk” age category as I.

I rejoined the world just as it had begun to shut down like never before.

Today (the day I started to write this) is Saturday, December 30, 2023. I am, once again, in isolation, day 5 of isolation after having symptoms which appeared on Christmas Day…a sore throat. Sensing it could be more, I chose to sleep apart that night with a reluctant blessing from him. Tuesday morning, in the very early hours, I took an antigen test and for the first time in 4 years, after 5 vaccinations and boosters, a flu shot and a pneumonia shot, I tested positive.

Before I saw it, somehow I knew it. Before Raymond woke, I was feathering the nest that would be my home for the next week or more.

I find this incredibly symbolic, the last week of the year that will be considered the end of the most catastrophic and deadly pandemic in history. Children will learn about COVID 19 like we learned about the Bubonic Plague. We lived through it and many who are dear to us did not.

Without a doubt, it infected the energy of the planet. What remains is in no small part attributable to the life force of a deadly invisible virus and it has shaped humankind in its wake.

I say this, but I may not mean what you think.

It’s easy to get caught in the maelstrom of dark news. Bombarded by news of war, murder, crime, hate, anger, disease, natural disasters and death, we feel we are being consumed beyond our control or reach. It’s easy and natural to feel hopeless at times. It would also be natural for you to interpret that line about what remains and see THAT is what remains.

I invite you to CHOOSE to see what remains differently. I invite you to SEE through the DARK.

Take the time to examine your life post pandemic. Audit, measure and assess what remains.

After all, THAT is the WORLD to you. That is the unique fingerprint of LIGHT you have generated.

Be RUTHLESS and HONEST. Did EVERYTHING that changed in your life over the last 4 years WORSEN it? Was your life IMPROVED in ANY way? Are you STRONGER? Are you more at PEACE? Are you still able to work? Do you have ENOUGH, if not MORE than enough? Did you learn about yourself in ways that surprised you? Has what you learned enabled you to progress?

A lot of bad things happened to many of us. A lot of things we would have tried valiantly to avoid took us down anyway.

For me, one of the biggest lesson of this pandemic was that AVOIDING danger, or what we perceive as DANGER consumes so much energy unnecessarily. I spent so much time and energy protecting myself from PHYSICAL, MENTAL/EMOTIONAL, RELATIONSHIP and FINANCIAL harm that I built a PRISON around myself that still proved INADEQUATE to protect me.

I now am GRATEFUL for the breech of my prison walls. Once the “DANGER” penetrated my safe space, I found it to be much tamer than I imagined.

I recently read “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” for the first time and my last statement reminds me of the Wizard himself. The dangers I have been avoiding are a lot like the “Great and Powerful Oz”. If we got a look behind the curtain there was just a man like any of us. I now know the DANGERS I have avoided are exaggerated by my fearful imagination.

This revelation has inspired my word of the year for 2024.

ACCEPT

Accept is for the things we cannot change. Like Reinhold Neibuhr’s Serenity prayer which has become the invocation for those in recovery, God grant me the SERENITY to ACCEPT the things I cannot change, COURAGE to change the things I can and the WISDOM to know the difference.

If we ACCEPT the things that happen that we can’t change, if we PAUSE  before reacting and if we choose NOT to resist what seems to be something unwanted or bad, simply ACCEPT and move forward, I believe the world will be a better place. I believe we will fan the flame of LOVE and when we EACH choose to do that…your POWER will combine with all the rest and EXPONENTIALLY increase.

ACCEPT is my word of the year for 2024.

ACCEPT your WORLD.

ACCEPT your LIFE.

The world will change for you.

This is Graceing Agefully™

PS….COVID, in my only experience with it, was not as bad as a mild cold. Despite testing positive for the next 10 days (today, Jan 4 I tested negative for the first time), I barely felt sick, I just knew I was putting those in my presence at risk. There again, an example of the fear of what it might be was far worse than what it was.  Happy New Year!!