By Dan Seaborn
I don’t think I’m alone when I say that my days and weeks have been blending together lately. When I wake up most mornings, I have no idea what time it is, and I usually have no idea what day it is! I’m even in a unique position because Winning At Home is semi-open right now. While most of our counselors and coaches are offering sessions exclusively through phone or video chat, some clients really need in-person sessions. So, a handful of our counselors are seeing people at our offices (while taking the proper precautions, of course). Because of that, I head into the office most days to make sure everything is going well and help in any way that I can. And even though I have that routine as part of my life right now, I still have found this time to be very disorienting. I’m sure you have found that to be the case, too.
As hard as this time has been, it has also allowed (or forced) all of us to push “pause” in a way that pretty much no other circumstances would have. It’s been a time when the ordinary stress and busyness of life have been taken off of our plates, giving us the unique opportunity to focus in on what matters and time to invest in those things.
As I’ve reflected on my own experience, I realized that we’ve all been presented with a very unique growth opportunity. Jane and I don’t have kids at home anymore, but I was recently telling her that a time like this would have been an unbelievable opportunity to invest in our kids if they were still living at home—a tiring opportunity, to be sure, but a great one. I decided that I want to come out of this quarantine time with growth in three areas; I want to see measurable depth in my relationship with my wife, I want to see measurable depth in defining my purpose and I want to see measurable depth in my growth in my relationship with God. You might not personally connect with all three of those things, but those are the areas where I want to intentionally grow in the coming weeks.
I want to encourage each of us to make sure that we don’t “fast forward” through this time in an effort to get back to the normal routine. If we do, we will miss this significant opportunity where we get to spend lots and lots of time with our families. We can use this extra time together to create memories and bonds that will bring us out of this quarantine with stronger marriages and families than we had when we went into it.
We can do the same with our purpose. As we’ve spent some time getting back to the basics, I bet that many of us have thought about the tasks we now realize weren’t as important as we used to think they were, that there were things we did out of habit more than out of necessity or out of the meaning we found in those tasks.
Let’s make this quarantine a time when we refocus and recommit ourselves to living with intention and investing into our families. Let’s find the areas we want to see measurable depth in and take steps to make that happen. When we do that, we’ll be finding bright spots during a very tough time and winning more often at home.