Looking Into this Week Ahead: April 5 – 11, 2020

What are you looking forward to this week?

I know: we are in the middle of a pandemic and we are stuck at home and looking forward feels counterintuitive, so please keep reading – let’s work through this together.

Yesterday I wasn’t “feeling it” – meaning I didn’t feel like doing anything. I didn’t feel like “showing up” in my spaces on line. I didn’t want to answer my phone when well meaning people called me, I didn’t feel like facilitating the Intentional Conversations Virtual Coffee Date, even though it was Saturday and therefore game day!

Normally I am quite capable of the old adage of “picking myself up by the bootstraps” and “putting on a game face” I am a theater person who performs while sick, I sing out when I have a sore throat, even as a baby my mother wrote in my baby book, “Julie is such a smiley baby, she smiles through her tears.”

Yesterday proved I am not so good at smiling through numb, which is what I was feeling.

I did manage to have a fun hour playing Pictionary on Zoom and I did manage to place an order for art supplies for curb pick up on a website that didn’t feel very intuitive AND I managed to wake up today and participate on a worship-livestream at the church where my daughter serves as associate pastor 3,000 miles away and I found myself feeling refreshed.

I remember when this all started and she was so concerned about Holy Week and could this isolation stuff PLEASE be over by Holy Week and now we know Northern New Jersey where she lives and works is in the grips of the Covid-19 pandemic.

She and her church have adjusted to “doing Holy Week” differently.

If you would enjoy the service, here is a link to the facebook live recording you may watch on replay:

I watched Katherine with Palm leaves in her hands saying “Hosanna!” and all those past Holy Weeks of her childhood and her brother and sister’s childhood rose up in my memory. All those palm branches, all those sweet upturned trusting faces. I watched the worship service from the church where I grew up as well and remembered waving palm branches as a little girl.

This morning may be the first time since we were called to stay home I actively thought of the future with a ray of light.

The skies here are filling with clouds. I know many of you are used to April Showers bringing May Flowers, but here in Bakersfield April is usually awash in wildflowers and the rains have left us. Our desert landscape returns to a lot of brown and is dry, dry, dry!

My heart is welcoming the rain – and I find myself ready to make plans for the week and fill in my calendar with zoom calls and twitter chats and times to create content to keep bringing you messages of hope and inspiration and creativity.

I ask you again: What are you looking forward to this week?

It may be as simple as “breathing my next breath” or it may be specific tasks or phone calls or times of meditation or prayer.

If you are unable to think of anything now, I invite you to return later – when you feel even a slightly bit brighter – and consider the question again.

What are you looking forward to this week? Please leave a comment so I may add my intention, love, hope and prayers to yours.

Also, if you are feeling isolated and alone, remember we have our daily Intentional Conversations: a Virtual Coffee Date of sorts daily at 1:30 – 2:30 pm Pacific time and YOU are welcome to join the group of heartful, whenever and however you care to participate. Click here to sign up for free at the Registration & Invitation page.