What Are You Holding On To?

What do you hang on to? Where is your stability? What is constant for you in the current global pandemic?  Various levels of quarantine from "social distancing," to "hard quarantine," the world as we know it turned on end in March. With all social events cancelled, economic, physical, and emotional challenges all around us, many of us are wondering what happened? When my locality experienced a 5.7 earthquake shortly after the pandemic, I found myself asking, What is certain? What do I know? What do I hold onto at times like this? 

I'd like to suggest the simple power of our words and our stories are the places we reach in order to sustain, continue and endure in difficult times. Our words and stories are key to our emotional and mental survival. That which our mind feeds upon and reaches for becomes the reality of our thinking and basis for action. When we become aware of our thoughts we can consciously create and and choose them. Without that skill it is all too easy to fall into fearful and chaotic thinking. As we bring order to our own thinking we help our children bring order to theirs. We can choose the words and stories we focus on, so that we can be part of the solution and not part of the collective world fear. May I share a two brief resources of words and stories I draw upon:

• My Father, now an angel on the other side of mortality, said almost every day of his life, "Let's go!" Never one to fret, whine or complain, my Dad made a plan, then with his famous - "Let's go!' began implementing the plan. An experience from my childhood also comes to mind, when August storms and wind threatened to destroy the corn crop that my brothers had worked so hard to grow. If the crop were destroyed, so would their mission and home ownership goals be destroyed. Our family knelt in prayer that night as my Dad called upon heaven to temper the elements. The storm ceased and the corn was saved. 

• And from holy writ: 
• Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths   -Proverbs 3:5-6
• The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. -Psalm 18:2

I reach for words and for my stories. I know that words have power to calm. I have seen the power of words to comfort. I have heard words of cheer. I have felt confidence that God rules in the heaven, and can bring understanding solace and stability back to individuals, families and nations according to their faith and His will. 

                                Pixnio