isolation

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Your Perception Of Isolation May Be Wrong

Isolation and social distancing can give the perception that contact and connection is lost.

Your Perception of Isolation May be Wrong

We fear a loss of contact and connection during this pandemic. As a pastor, a big concern of mine is that people – especially those who are more vulnerable – will feel forgotten and alone.

During this time when contact is our enemy, we want to find ways to ease the loneliness. 

I remember playing dodge ball as a kid. There were only a few rules to the game and the bottom line was if the ball made contact with you, you were out. That was it; there was no second chance. It was harsh and you sat on the sideline until a new game began. 

It also meant you had to be in good shape to stay in the game. You had to move and dodge (hence the name of the game) to avoid getting hit. The people who were the most agile, the most flexible, could jump the highest and duck the lowest were the ones who would win the game. 

But as I got older, the rules of the game changed. 

The ball could actually make contact but only if you were holding another ball and it hit that ball and not your body. Then you were safe. Also, if a ball came whizzing towards you and you caught it, you were still in the game even though there was contact made.

The game had evolved to allow some contact under certain conditions to a game that was all about no contact. The changes increased the length of the games and kept more people in the game longer. It was actually pretty good.

So this game, known for its no-contact rule, actually added a whole lot of contact. 

This past week two groups in the city that work with seniors reached out to me. They wanted to bless the seniors in our church by giving them a gift of sorts. Their problem was that they had no means of either contacting random seniors or of distributing the gifts.

Their solution was to use the churches, so our church received a number of gifts from them intended for our seniors.

My problem was that most of our more vulnerable seniors have been avoiding contact during this pandemic and are not yet coming out to church services, so I would need to find a way to distribute all these gifts.

The only thing I could think of was asking our congregation if they would help deliver the gifts to our seniors. 

At church and through our livestream, we asked for volunteers to help deliver these gift packets. It was amazing how many people stepped up to make contact and connect with those who are experiencing isolation and social distancing to a greater degree. 

In the midst of the isolation and social distancing, there is far more contact and connecting happening than we perceive. 

… And as a pastor, it is so encouraging to see!

Here’s the thing: If you are feeling isolated, if you are lacking contact and are feeling forgotten and lonely, God is trying to make contact with you right now. He wants you to know He is with you. Give Him the opportunity to bring you His love and forgiveness. Reach back to Him and connect with God in a personal way through Christ. The perception may be that you are alone but there is a lot more contact and connection right around you than you realize.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What can you do to make contact with someone today? Leave your comments and questions below.

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Anticipation Is Making Me Late, And Keeping Me Waiting

Anticipation is a great motivator and will help you plow through something you don’t really want to do. 

Anticipation is making me late and keeping me waiting

Though sometimes anticipation can make time seem to go really fast because you are so focussed on it, usually anticipation makes time seem to go very slowly.

It all depends on what you have to do before you get to what you are anticipating.

As a kid, I remember Christmas morning being something I anticipated for weeks in advance. But let me tell you, Christmas Eve seemed to last forever, like time was standing still.

The word itself reminds me of a Carly Simon hit song from 1971. The chorus went like this: “Anticipation is making me late, it’s keeping me waiting.”

It’s like that for me today. 

I’m anticipating going for my first mountain bike ride of the year at my local mountain bike club. 

But before I get there, before I even make sure my tires are pumped and my gears are shifting smoothly, I have to get a few things done, including finishing writing this blog post. 

While I’m sitting in my family room, staring at my iPad, with a keyboard on my lap, I’m really visualizing the course out at the farm.

It looks so different depending on when you ride. Early in the spring when the leaves are still not fully developed, it is brighter and you can see more of the terrain around the path.

In a week or two, the leaves will provide shade to ride under and the path will appear to be all that is highlighted. 

Later in the fall, with brown leaves all around, it will be difficult to even see the path underneath.

With our new social isolation measures, there will be rules to follow, even though most of the time when I bike, though there are over 1000 members, I rarely come across other bikers. And when I do, it is only for a flash, as I glide past them or they whisk by me. 

As long as the trees can’t get COVID, I will be safe from potentially getting the virus on the mountain biking trails. It’s just getting to them that’s the issue. 

And the more I think about riding, the more I anticipate it and that is making me late, keeping me waiting.

As painful as it might be for me right now, if we never anticipated anything, we wouldn’t make plans. We wouldn’t get excited about what is coming up. We wouldn’t dream about what is to come. 

When I was a youth pastor and my junior high girls were anticipating a week at summer camp, or a weekend retreat, they would jump up and down wth big grins on their faces, saying things like, “just 6 more sleeps!”

Anticipation is a good thing. Sometimes we think it’s killing us but it really keeps us going. It motivates us like it is motivating me to finish writing this post.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think we anticipate being with God in heaven all that much. If we did we would have a very different outlook and response to the world around us. We would be less caught up in solving the issues of the day and more concerned with how to best leverage the present circumstances to bring about Christ’s return and our eternity in heaven. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How would anticipating being in heaven change your present mindset and actions during this time? Leave your comments and questions below.  

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Isolation Is Good For Something; Not Sure What That Is

This Isolation is wreaking havoc on my efficiency and making me less productive. 

Isolation is good for something; not sure what that is

Probably most people and businesses in general are running at a lower efficiency than they normally do. I was talking with someone recently who said he thinks he’s operating at 70%.

It’s understandable. We are finding our way through a new set of rules and measures. Life is not what it was a few months ago before coronavirus.

I am in the same boat as most people, although, if anything, I should be more productive and working at a high efficiency. You see, I work best when it is quiet, and boy is it quiet at work!

I hear of people working from home and being on Zoom meetings where their three-year-old makes an appearance several times during the meeting … and the kid isn’t updating their dad or mom on the latest sales projection numbers.

I know some people are going nuts trying to get work done at home. 

I’m the opposite. I still go into the office, and I’m the only one there. It’s really quiet which should be perfect for me. 

I once had an assistant who loved to play music when he worked. He often would play it Friday mornings when I was trying to write my sermon. He would keep the sound low but he had a subwoofer in his office and all I would hear was boom .. boom . . . . . . . boom . . boom . . boom echoing through the wall between our offices.

I couldn’t concentrate at all.

It’s probably because of my ADD that I need quiet to focus, but the quiet isn’t even working these days. Anything can take my attention away from what I’m working on.  

In fact, the other day I stopped working on my sermon to pray. After a moment or two of prayer, I realized I had spotted a black squiggle mark on my desk and my mind went to some cleaner in the kitchen I had seen earlier. I almost stopped praying to go get that cleaner when I realized what I was doing and got back to praying. 

Maybe it is too quiet here at the church. Maybe I need a couple of three-year-olds messing with my mind and my patience. 

Wait … I’ve been there before, and no thanks; I’m not going back.  

But maybe it’s not my ADD. Maybe I’ve been going for too long without a break and I’m running out of steam. 

Come to think of it, it’s often around now that I remember my summer vacation is coming up and I start thinking that it can’t come fast enough. 

Maybe it’s that I would normally be a little more active by now. I would be mountain biking and golfing. I haven’t done any of that and I haven’t really been working out in my home gym either. 

It’s possible that it’s all these factors and the isolation has just created the perfect storm for them all to be working against me. 

Here’s the thing: This isolation can get you off your game with your time with God. Your schedule has changed; you don’t have the same routines as normal. You may have different demands placed on you. All these things can create that perfect storm that makes spending time with God more difficult. Let me encourage you to find some calm in that storm. Eke out some quiet waters where you can listen to the Lord for direction and guidance through a turbulent time. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How efficient have you found yourself to be in this isolation? Leave your comments and questions below. Hit the “like” button if this has been helpful and subscribe if you want these posts to come to your inbox.

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My Tinnitus Just Got Diagnosed Today

It’s been so quiet around here that I discovered I have tinnitus.

My Tinnitus Just God Diagnosed

I shouldn’t be surprised … and it makes perfect sense that I would have it. I’ve certainly been exposed to my share of loud noises. 

But, until this Covid isolation, I really hadn’t noticed it at all. That might say something about how infrequently I am in silence. 

If anyone should have tinnitus, it should be my daughter, Karlie. When she was weeks old, she was in a gym, filled with high school students kicking basketballs and volleyballs and yelling at the top of their lungs. Somehow she slept right through all the noise, but you’d think that maybe it would have brought on some tinnitus effects. 

So far nothing for her.   

But then there is my wife. She spent much of her youth listening to quartet music … mostly because her dad sang in a quartet. It’s hardly the kind of music that you would think could produce tinnitus, but she has developed a rather pronounced case.

… Which leads me to think that my parents were upset at the wrong music when I was listening to my rock music at levels that were known to fry speakers.

I also went to concerts – a lot of them – in my late teens and early twenties.

It was not uncommon at those concerts to have difficulty hearing the person right beside you tell you he thought the band was great. You just guessed what he was saying by the huge smile on his face.

There was one concert I went to, however, that beat all other concerts for causing my potential hearing damage. 

It was an Emerson Lake and Palmer (ELP) concert – and it was outdoors, no less. I was more that halfway back from the stage in the football stadium, but when the dust settled after the concert, I had ringing in my ears for three days!

I had never experienced that before.

My ears should have been ruined, but they weren’t. I still had great hearing and I think my hearing now is still pretty good for someone my age. 

I don’t have any trouble hearing most people, as opposed to my quartet-listening wife. 

In the midst of all this isolation, I find that I am alone more in my office. There is nothing happening outside my office either. All there is is silence. In that silence that surrounds me, I am starting to pick up some white noise in my ears.

Some people pay money to buy white noise recordings so they can calm down or get to sleep at night. I get my white noise for free.

I understand that what I have is nothing – it’s minor, not really even a bother. But I am wondering what else I will discover about myself as our isolation continues. 

… Well, I better turn up the iTunes on my computer so I don’t fall asleep with all this white noise in my ears. 

Here’s the thing: When our world is full of sound, sometimes it’s hard to hear what God might be saying to us. Our attention is on other things, turned to other sources. Right now, while we are experiencing more time to be quiet and think, while we encounter a season where we can actually hear what’s going on between our ears, take the time to try to hear God. He is saying things to you in nature, through other people, in your thoughts and, ultimately, through His Word the Bible. Let’s not miss this opportunity to tune Him in. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How have you been using silence to your advantage lately? Leave your comments and questions below.

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I Actually Did What I’ve Been Meaning To Do

The other day I actually did something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. 

I actually did what I've been meaning to do

For sure it’s because of the isolation that I did it, but I’m really glad I gave it some time.

In this “post-busy” society we live in, I think everyone is finding new or different things to do than normal. 

A large segment of our lives has been cut out. We don’t go out anymore; we stay home. 

I’m reminded of that everyday I go in to work. I pass a roadside work sign that states in large block letters (so you know they are yelling it), “STAY HOME; STAY SAFE”.

Any recreation, hobbies, meetings, events or activities you used to do are not happening right now. 

Everyone is looking for things to do around their homes. 

I’ve noticed lots of activity at the hardware stores so some people must be doing home projects. Spring is here so others are getting to work cleaning up their yards.

Then there are some who are making up games to play. It’s fun to watch the crazy stunt tricks and downright ridiculousness people are posting on YouTube and instagram these days – all things from around their homes. 

One thing I’ve been meaning to do for years is shoot some hoops.  

We have an adjustable basketball net in our driveway and every day I come in and out of the garage and have to avoid it. Many times I’ve thought I should go out and take some shots … but I’ve always got something else to do. I’m on my way here or there; I have to do this or that. 

But not anymore. 

For the record, I have been working a lot. I’ve even been doing extra and learning the technical aspects of live-streaming which has taken a lot of time. 

But the other day I decided to take a few shots. I had nothing else to do except watch TV and I try not to get sucked in to that too early in the evening. 

It’s been several years since I went out to shoot baskets. The only other time was a year ago with my son … and he killed me playing one-on-one. 

So I pumped up a ball and went outside. I tried to raise the net to 10 feet but the mechanism wouldn’t engage and hold the net up that high. 

It was not that exciting shooting on a 7.5 foot net so I didn’t last too long. 

But the next day … 

The next day I got inspired, got some tools out and took the mechanism that raises and lowers the backboard and rim apart. 

It was a very quick fix.  

I then spent a good hour or so taking shots. My wife, Lily, came out part way through and we took shots together. 

I’d been meaning to do it for so long. I had no excuse and lots of time. 

Here’s the thing: Maybe there is something spiritual that has been nagging at you for some time. You’ve thought of studying something in the Bible, or investigating a question you’ve had. Maybe you thought of memorizing scripture, or discovering what faith in God is all about. Well, now is the time. You have the time, so take it and develop your spiritual side. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What is something you’ve been meaning to do, and now you could actually do it?  Leave your comments and questions below.

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This Isolation Is Taking Us Back In Time

I can see where this isolation is taking us – right back to the 70’s!  

This Isolation is taking us Back in Time

I’ve already started to see some people’s facebook pictures of what they looked like in their teens. 

Why the photos? Well, with hair salons and barbershops closed, our hair is going to get longer … at least for the people who have hair. 

I’ve already started thinking of how I might comb my hair after it reaches a certain length, because my present hairstyle is not going to work. 

I’m also interested to see how many Donald Trump look-alikes start cropping up. You know, guys who are thin up top and have to start doing the combover.

It should be good for laughs … but it brings me back to a time that I don’t really want to go back to.

Back in the seventies, I could not imagine myself with short hair. Now I can barely handle thinking about what I would look like if I had long hair again. 

The picture might give some ideas. 

If we get to that place – and we’d have to be isolated a long time because I don’t think my hair grows as fast as it did back then – at least we have better resources now to deal with long hair than we did in the 70’s.

In the early 70’s, my hair would take upwards to an hour and a half to dry after a shower. If I needed to go out then my only recourse was to put on my mom’s hair dryer. 

That’s right, I said “put on”. 

That hair dryer had a base unit that generated hot hair which, in turn, flowed through a tube into a plastic bonnet-like shower cap that was perforated with holes on the inside. 

I was quite a sight sitting with that dryer on my head! 

When the first blowers came out, they barely had enough power to blow out a candle. The blower dryers we have now would have no problem drying my 70’s long, thick hair. They can pretty much dislodge the hair from my head if I’m not careful!

Until my kids were in their twenties, they had never seen me without a moustache or goatee. It was a tough adjustment for them to get used to looking at my clean-shaven face. If we end up staying holed up in our homes for a long time, my kids will have to get used to seeing their dad in a whole new way.

I wonder if having long hair again will make me look younger. In reality it will probably just make me look creepy, and who wants that?

So I guess either our isolation will have to end sooner than later or our premier will have to list hair stylists as an essential service and get them back to work.

Even then, think of the backlog of people trying to get their hair cut. We might have to wait another month just to get an appointment. 

Here’s the thing: I think we are more concerned with how we look to other people than to God. Yet others don’t see us when we first get up or when we are sick; only God sees us all the time. He sees us when we are at our best, but also when we are at our worst. We should pay more attention to how we look to God than how we look to people. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What is your plan if our isolation lasts longer than one month? Write your comments or questions below.

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Let’s Connect Now More Than Ever

In these times of change and uncertainty, we need to intentionally connect more with each other.

Connect Now More Than Ever

As isolation becomes more and more widespread, and the normal ways of connecting with each other become harder, if we don’t work at it, if we just accept our isolation, we will slowly cut ourselves off from others.

And that’s not good at all. We can become very self-absorbed, thinking only about ourselves and our needs.

What has encouraged me is how my church family has responded to being isolated. I have heard over and over how people have been calling each other. People, who would not normally phone others, are burning up the minutes on their phones, chatting, cheering and encouraging other people in our church community. 

I’ve been thrilled when I have phoned someone and they’ve told me that this person and that person had called them this week. My heart shouts for joy when I hear that!  

It’s a sign we care about each other and a sign we are not going to let this isolation keep us from connecting with one another. 

But there is a segment of society that we could all learn a lesson from. 

Two months ago you would never have thought that this group could teach us anything. In fact, most people have just wished that this segment of society would finish maturing and finally enter adulthood. We just considered them as adult-ish.

I’m talking about the 22 – 30-year-old single male population. 

There is no better model than them right now for us to learn how to connect together. And the crazy thing is they have been practicing it for years already. It’s just natural for them.

I’m not saying that the females of this same demographic don’t connect as well – they may, but I can only speak of what I know and have seen. And these twenty-something-year-old males are masters at connecting. 

They are highly tech savvy, so they are on their phones, burning up data at lightning speeds. They text, video chat, send pics, phone, and play group video games with headsets …sometimes they do it all at the same time. 

These males could be isolated for months – heaven help us – and yet still connect with everyone in their circle on a daily basis. They are just that good at it.

For the rest of us, outside of getting into online video gaming, we need to work hard at using the means available to us to keep connected with one another. 

I like what many people are already doing. Let’s just keep it up. We now need to connect more than ever.

Here’s the thing: While we find ways to connect with each other, we should be as intentional to look for ways to connect with God. There are the basic ways to connect with God: through His Word, and through prayer. And especially now we should be taking full advantage of these ways of connecting with Him. But let’s also not neglect connecting with God and others at the same time. Make it a habit on Sundays to tune into a livestream service, and take full advantage of online Bible studies and devotionals. We need to connect with God now more than ever.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What are you doing throughout the week to stay connected to God and others? Leave your comments and questions below.