Reader,

I hope that this finds you well. As a society, we find ourselves in a *hopefully* once in a lifetime strangeness. Our lives have been disrupted, we’re concerned for ourselves and others, and we are grieving the loss of what we had hoped this season would hold. Weddings and graduations cancelled and postponed, relationships strained, and lives changed. I’ve had my days of despair feeling at my wit’s end with this lonely time, and I’m guessing you may have gotten there sometime over the last month+. I get it. This is hard.

And somehow in the midst of it all, I find myself more connected to what I believe to be the Spirit of God than I have in years. For control freaks like me, I guess in some ways that makes sense. I can’t even trick myself into believing that I have power over my situation right now. Maybe you’re there. I don’t tell you all of this to let you know what a spiritual giant I am, instead I tell you this to let you know that my ego gets in the way sometimes… ok probably a lot of times. And maybe yours does too? These days I am finding truth in the places that I had forgotten to look, or the places to which I had become dismissive. My heart is softening to the earth and those in it. I’m finding that in this more simplistic lifestyle I have been forced into, I can find the Spirit in the little things – the things I often look over.

Anyways, however you are responding to being a person during this strange time, I want you to know that you’re not alone. People love you and miss you, even when you don’t feel like it. Yes, even you! Thankfully, we can still connect in ways that I have scoffed at before. If you feel alone, reach out. Odds are the person on the other end feels similarly.

Breathe in, breathe out, see yourself. You’re actually awesome. A miracle in fact!

Love,

Michael