The longer I am a mother the more I am amazed at how I find such meaningful lessons in children’s materials. I often find these more applicable and compelling than when I sift through a longer read because the ideas are simple, and I am at a point in my life when I don’t have a lot of uninterrupted time to read and study. During this period of isolation, to help pass the long hours at home, my six-year-old daughter has been listening to a lot of Adventures in Odyssey, a Christian radio drama.

One day she was sitting at the kitchen table coloring and listening to a show while I was making lunch. I was half listening to the story when the main character said something that caught my attention. The children in the town of Odyssey were caught up in a panic over a fake rumor, and he said, “Being prepared in case of an emergency is smart, but when we panic about things that are out of our control, we’re beginning to take our lives out of God’s hands.” My daughter asked if the virus was considered an emergency and if people were panicking. Yes, and yes to those questions. 

This little exchange got me thinking about how we should face this time. We often hear the phrase, “Prepare, but don’t panic.” God wants us to be practical in our actions and take care of one another, but there is only so much that we can do. Sitting at home pouring over conspiracy theories and panicking about what is going to happen does no one any good. We cannot control this situation, but we can control how we act in it. We can prepare ourselves and our families, watch out for one another, and act cautiously, but we can still live our lives fully, being the person God wants us to be. For me, that means remembering God has called me to the vocation of wife and mother. My vocation has not changed because of the pandemic. I have not stopped living it, I am just having to live it in a different way now. Life is not over; it’s simply different.

Dear Lord, please help all of us to learn how to live out our lives in a new way during this crazy time. Do not allow the stress and strangeness of the pandemic and quarantine cause us to push you out of the driver’s seat of our lives.