My One Rule for Quarantine

When Casiday was little I always told her she only had one rule — obey. As long as she obeyed us, she would be doing what she was expected to do. It simplified things a lot also. The one rule was the name no matter where she was. At church, obey the leaders. At school, obey the teachers. Visiting family, obey the adults.

Basically, that was the only rule she had for most of her childhood. Obey.

I’ve been thinking about that one rule idea a lot now that we’re in week five of social distancing/self-quarantining.

What is the one rule I want for myself? For my family?

What should be the defining guideline for how we act and behave and speak?

And I’ve landed on this one …

Be Kind.

Be Kind.
To myself.
To others.

Pretty simple, huh? Well, let me just be honest, I need things to be simple right now. I have a hard time concentrating and feel pretty much overwhelmed by so much of what is going on around me and even inside me with more frequency than I ever expected.

Why be kind?

• God is kind. We really don’t need another reason, do we? He’s been so kind to us, the least we can do is be kind to ourselves and to others.
• We’ve never done this before. None of us. It’s all new. And scary. And overwhelming.
• We don’t know what we’re doing. None of us. We’re figuring out what works as we go.
• We’ll get some right. And when we do, we’ll celebrate.
• We’ll get some wrong. And when we miss it, we’ll apologize and move on.

But I believe if we choose to be kind to ourselves and others, we’ll make it through this with more than we ever imagined we could.

Let's choose to be kind — to ourselves and to others. And on the other side of this crisis we'll have more than we ever imagined. #COVID19 Click To Tweet

And, y’all, that’s something I need to hold on to in these crazy and uncertain days we live in.

xoxo,

Teri Lynne