Tina's TEOTWAWKI Journal, Day 13

When you start losing track of days, that is not a good sign.  I'm reminded of something author Corrie ten Boom did in The Hiding Place, when she was locked up in solitary confinement.  She wrote that it seemed strangely important to her not to lose track of time, so she created a homemade "knife" from a whalebone stay and used it to scratch a calendar of sorts on her cell wall. 

This has been feeling like either a Thursday or a Friday, when it's only Wednesday.  And I nearly lost track of what number I was on with this journal.  Was it day 12?  Day 13? 

There's been a lot of talk lately about faith, about, is it a lack of faith to not meet in a church building on Sundays during this outbreak?  After all, God doesn't want us to be afraid, does he?  And isn't choosing not to meet giving in to a spirit of fear?  Fear means lack of faith, and God isn't pleased with a lack of faith.

There's also been talk about, we should defy government orders and meet anyway (in response to executive orders limiting the size of group meetings to ten or less.)  After all, didn't Peter and John and the other apostles say that they must obey God rather than man? 

Lastly, doesn't the Bible say that we should not give up meeting together?  If we don't meet, and instead, rely on "online church", isn't that just the same as giving up meeting? 

Okay, I'm just going to give you my thoughts as someone who is a Christian but not a theologian.

No, I do not believe it's a lack of faith to not meet in a church building right now.  I do not believe that it's giving in to a spirit of fear.  There is a difference between irrational fear and healthy fear.  Being afraid of getting a novel (i.e. new) virus that there's no known treatment for yet is a healthy fear.  I don't want to get sick.  Therefore, I'm going to minimize my chances for getting sick by staying out of crowds.

Defying government and meeting anyway, in this case, is stupid.  We are not in the same situation that believers in China or Iran or the Middle East or North Korea are.  The preaching of the gospel of Christ is not against the law, and religious gatherings are not permanently banned.  We are being asked to temporarily refrain from meeting in a church building due to a public health risk.  This isn't a "We must obey God rather than man!" moment. 

And, the scripture referred to that says "let us not give up meeting together" really means, "let's not abandon meeting together permanently" or " let us not desert the fellowship."  Have we really given up meeting together?  No.  Many, many of us have been virtually worshiping through online services.  My own church has done that.  I could make a case for "deserting the fellowship" if we were not making any efforts to worship at all.

Lastly, I'm reminded of one of the temptations that Satan threw at Jesus when Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness.  He took Jesus to one of the high points of the temple and said, "If you're the Son of God, throw yourself down.  The Scripture says that 'he will command the angels to catch you'." (my paraphrase.)

Jesus shot back, "It also says not to put the Lord your God to the test!"

God loves us and I believe he will take care of us.  That does not mean that he has an obligation to protect me if I deliberately walk out onto 285 in the middle of traffic.  For me, that would be "putting the Lord your God to the test" and I do not want to do that to Him. 

I think God is a God who expects us to use the brains and common sense that He gives us, and if that means for right now, we do not gather together in a church building, then so be it.

I miss my church family.  I miss my sister group (my ladies' Bible study).  Virtual hugs just aren't cutting it right now.  But I will get through this a day at a time, and I believe God will give me what I need as I need it. 

Take a deep breath, all, and join me in our theme song:

It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tina’s TEOTWAWKI Journal, Day 12

My BFF asked me today if I was okay.  She’d read my blog from yesterday and said it sounded like I was a bit stir-crazy.  Well, yesterday was an “I’ve been cooped up here for too long” day.

Today I did manage to keep busy.  Unfortunately, reality hit a little bit closer to home today.  for the first time since I’ve been working as a proofreader, I said that I was available for work and they had none to give me.  If lawyers aren’t taking depositions, court reporters can’t take down and produce transcripts for me to proofread.

So today, I caught up on laundry, filed papers, and even sewed.  The break may be good for me.  It will be a good time to catch up on a few things.

Okay, everyone, one more time.

It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tina's TEOTWAWKI Journal, Day 11

:: snarl ::

If this is what I feel like after only 11 days on semi-lockdown, I dread what it will be like on day 21, 31, etc.  My husband is now home for two weeks.  At least.  And all I have to say about the current shenanigans in the United States Congress was already said by Mercutio in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:  "A plague on both your houses!"

It's probably time to turn up the theme song loudly:


It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tina's TEOTWAWKI Journal, Day 10

This can not only be Day 10.  It seems like longer.  I was expecting to see a Day 20, 30, etc. 

We did our first official "online for I don't know how long" church service today. 

Annnd, so did everyone else.  Which is probably why our platform crashed and we were redirected to YouTube. 

Don, our preacher, first went to Luke 13, and talked about the woman Jesus healed in the synagogue on the Sabbath.  (How dare He!)  He pointed out something subtle in what Jesus called her, "a daughter of Abraham."

Then he went to Genesis 15, where God promised Abraham  (then Abram) that Abraham's offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the heavens.

Don then focused on four words:  "Abram believed the Lord."

Abram believed the Lord.  He believed that God would do what he promised, even though Isaac had not made his appearance yet. 

Abram, in Genesis 15, did remind God that "I remain childless, so a servant in my household will be my heir."  Uhh, you know, Lord, I'm an old man and Sarah can't have children. 

Don talked about a concept called "implicit bias", and I'm pulling this out of the top of my head because I have no notes in front of me.  Implicit bias is the way circumstances have wired us to think.  In Abraham's case, he didn't have a child and he had a barren wife.  So what could God give him? 

One of Don's points was that the way implicit bias is changed is through an intervention, which is what God gave Abraham.  He said, "Here, let me show you something."  Then He took Abraham outside and showed him the stars.  I don't know if you have ever seen the stars, the real stars, out in the middle of nowhere.  I've seen stars like that twice, once, on my 18th birthday while coming home from college and looking out the window of my sister's car while driving down US 19.  The other time was in Minnesota, where I pulled off of a road and turned my headlights off just so I could see the stars.  They are beautiful.

Abraham probably got to see the Milky Way, along with Orion and the Big Dipper and however many other constellations there are.  And he got to hear God say, "So shall your offspring be." 

God intervened.  And so Abraham believed Him, and God rewarded his faith. 

My question for myself is, Do I believe God?  I don't have a specific, deliberate promise like Abraham did; I don't have the promise of, "You will have a son in your old age."   

But what did He promise?  To be with me, to not leave me, to meet all my needs, to give me the Holy Spirit, to forgive my sins and give me eternal life with Him? 

I'm one of those who has a hard time believing.  I'm rather cynical when it comes to religion and sometimes I'm skeptical when it comes to modern-day Christianity, i.e. the religion we have made it. 

But when it comes down to God, and Jesus, and can He be trusted? 

That part, I believe. 

Even though I am currently using this as my snarky theme song: 

It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it

And I feel fine!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tina’s TEOTWAWKI Journal, Day 9

This is Saturday, Saturday is supposed to be an errand day, a “get it done” day, so what did I do?

A few loads of laundry and some dishes, and I did make dinner.

And Frank and I went to Walmart to look for washcloths (of which we needed more.). We left with washcloths and a few more grocery supplies.

And now we are watching Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.

And I have little more to add to the chronicle of the Great American Lockdown.

Except the theme song:

It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine!

Just my .04, adjust for inflation.

Tina’s TEOTWAWKI Journal, Day 8

Today my husband and I went out together.  I wish I could say that we went out to dinner, but unfortunately, I had to get a blood draw and he needed to have an abscess on his back looked at.

But before that, I had my first experience with teletherapy.

I have a twice a month counseling session with a psychologist.  She, along with so many others, has moved to teleworking.  Today we had our first session with a screen separating us.  It went pretty well.  I had a little trouble getting into the session at first but was able to, eventually.  I was surprised, as I talked to her, at 1) how well I may actually be coping and 2) how normal so many of my feelings are.  My frustrations with the men in my household aren’t because they’re being nasty, it’s because life as we know it has been upended and we don’t know how long it’s going to go on.  There’s this undercurrent of uncertainty that’s underneath everything.  I don’t like it.  No one does.  But I realize that there’s an undercurrent.  There are reasons for my feelings.  In fact, there are very sound reasons for my feelings.

I did tell my counselor that if I had shown up dressed in a HAZMAT outfit with a mask, then she’d have reason to worry.  :-).

My husband and I went down to Dekalb Medical (now Emory Dekalb) to get our stuff done.  I have an endocrinologist appointment next week, God and COVID-19 willing, and I have a feeling that he’s not going to accept my rationalization of ‘stress eating’ as a reason as to why I have gained back weight I’ve lost.  (He is not a bad doctor.  It’s just that his bedside manner can be rather lacking at times.).   The woman who took my blood was dressed almost as if she were caring for an Ebola patient.  Well, maybe not quite THAT extreme, but she did wear a surgical mask and was wearing a disposable paper gown over her clothes.

The women in the office were also wearing surgical masks, almost all of them.

But here’s what was weird:  The parking lot was practically empty.  I’m used to having a lot of trouble finding a parking place outside of the building I go to and this time, I didn’t have a problem.  Elective procedures have been canceled.

The waiting room in the doc’s office was practically empty as well.

And the one thing I thought would happen with my husband ... didn’t happen.

You see, what I wanted to do was drop him at urgent care.  He thought it would be more efficient to go to the ER.  I thought, okay, if that’s the way you want to do it, but don’t be shocked if I have to pick you up the next morning.

The total time for both of us together to have our stuff taken care of?

Around two hours.  If that long.

My husband ended up having a cyst on his back.  What had worried me was that the area around the cyst was red.  I thought it might be infected and I didn’t want that infection to get into his bloodstream and turn septic.  So the docs in the ER drained it and fixed him up, and sent him home with antibiotics.  (He told me that the docs had called it a “classic drain”.  I sort of felt like he was a participant in an episode of Dr. Pimple Popper.)

While waiting on my husband, I went down to Joann’s Fabrics and got a mini muffin tin, on the reasoning that “if I’m going to be stuck at home, I’m going to do something productive!”

Then I drove down to a small park and took a few minutes just to walk around.

It’s spring in Atlanta, spring that brings the foul-smelling Bradford pears but the forsythia and the daffodils, the cherry blossoms and the redbuds . . . And the pollen.  Spring will always follow winter, and in Atlanta, the arrival of spring is not only heralded by the trumpeting of daffodils and the flowering of forsythia, it is also heralded by the sprinkling of pollen over every car, every driveway, every front porch, and every deck in the area.

But this is a weird spring, this spring of illness, this spring that will come marked with the acronym of COVID-19, that will be marked by canceled proms and canceled graduations.

I couldn’t put my finger on it while I was walking around the park, but things just felt odd.  Maybe it’s because I was carrying around in my mind the undercurrent of what was going on in our world.  There was a sign up at the park saying, playground closed until further notice, and I wondered if this was what the people who survived the 1919 flu pandemic experienced.

What I think it is, why I think it feels odd, is that we’re in the “falling into” phase of this event.  Every day is bringing more bad news; the market dropping more points, yet another prominent person testing positive for COVID-19, more governments, more municipalities enacting emergency orders, more places closing or severely restricting their hours.  We’re still falling down the hole and we have not hit bottom yet.  The fall, in this case, is a little bit like that awful autumn of 2008, where every day brought another drop in the market and another firm closing its doors.

When JFK was shot, or 9/11 happened, or the Challenger exploded, you had the “falling into” phase; where things were happening, one after the other after the other, rapidly and there was no way to stop them or make sense of them.  I guess someone’s terminal illness is a bit like that as well.  Outside you see the normal rhythms of life, of people going to work, running errands, shopping at the grocery store . . . And your rhythm has been totally upended.

I listened to a Paul Harvey news broadcast the day after JFK’s funeral.  The impression I got was that of a nation trying desperately to get its feet back under it after two men and four shots had knocked the feet out from under it and knocked the wind totally out of it.  People were jumpy, edgy, trying to navigate a new normal, trying to use the initials LBJ, not JFK; trying to say “President Johnson” and not “President Kennedy.”

We’re not there yet.  We’re still seeing the exponential growth of this illness, still hearing of people testing positive, still hearing of protective measures being taken.  My own husband is a federal employee and he has yet to learn whether or not he will be going back to work on Monday.   (He called in sick Monday, felt better Wednesday, and then went in that Wednesday only to be sent home with orders not to go back until Monday.).

We’re still in this odd, weird, “falling into” phrase where we have not adapted to what is “normal”.

Someday we’ll hit bottom.  Someday our feet will get back underneath us and we’ll learn to navigate again.

In the meantime, I will reload my weapon of humor daily with the ammunition of snark.

So, all together now:

It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it 
And I feel fine!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tina's TEOTWAWKI Journal, Day 7

Was it really a week ago that people mobbed the stores, determined to get what they could?  Because we were afraid that this virus was going to keep us from getting what we needed when we needed it?

Just a week ago that my son came home from school for the last time until the end of March, and maybe longer? 

My friend Laura writes a column for her local paper.  The column coming out on Sunday will be about "the new abnormal", as she calls it, and it's a perfect phrase. 

I already know that I can count on getting very little done in the mornings, because mornings are when my son gets his digital learning assignments and I will be his main resource as to how to do them. 

I also know that I will need to keep working because there is still plenty of proofing work to do. 

It's very odd, this new world that we have entered, where its history will not necessarily be recorded in textbooks but in Facebook memes and Twitter posts.  Where suddenly, social media and streaming services are a necessity to keep working and to fight boredom.  Where Netflix and the European Union are talking about dropping HD programming for the moment because so many people are doing online streaming. 

Today a Filipino Christian commented that a baptism he'd planned had been canceled due to the COVID-19 virus.  They are being ordered to stay one meter apart, they cannot go past a police checkpoint, and violating the law will lead to a fine and/or imprisonment.  Many Filipino Christians are living hand to mouth and they literally cannot afford to break the law. 

I saw at least one person say, "Baptize the person anyway!  What if they die?"

Several comments also followed, where the Filipino Christian explained about the fines and someone asked, don't you have a congregation that could take up a collection?  (My comment:  Don't suggest to these people that they break the law unless you are going to help them with the consequences, legal, monetary, and other.) 

My suggestion?  Maybe the person wanting to get baptized can give the confession to someone standing a meter away, then dunk themselves in water?  Or, perhaps they can live stream their baptism? 

This is a situation I had not thought about that could result from this virus:  how do you baptize when you are not allowed to be around people in public?  Or when being near people is a literal health hazard?   

We are going to have to get very creative in the days and weeks that follow if we really want to help people turn to Christ in this midst of this pandemic.  One person who commented on my wall said that we in Churches of Christ have not done a very good job of thinking through what to do when one could not be baptized (not when one is unwilling to do so, but when they are unable to do so.) 

I do strongly believe in the importance of baptism.  I don't want to get into a theological discussion here, but if you take a look at the book of Acts and if you look at conversions described in detail, they all talk about baptism. 

I also believe that God is a God of grace, and that he knows and understands the heart of someone who desires to follow Him.  Surely there are ways He will make for those who want to do so. 

Okay, everyone, here we go again:

It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.