What Now?

How do we pick up from a bad situation and move forward? COVID-19 has sidelined all of us. We've all heard the saying "making lemonade out of lemons". How do we do that with a situation like this? Looking at the Spanish-Flu pandemic in the early 1900's, it gives us hope that life will get back to normal. We all face different challenges and have to figure out how to get through them.

Some of us face job challenges. Whether businesses have completely closed, employees were laid off due to lack of sales, or folks limiting themselves to possible exposure in a work or group environment, how do we bounce back? Many companies incorporated digital work environments for folks to work at home. Some folks have taken this time to launch their own business. There are some who choose not to go back to work at all. With these options, challenges arise for businesses to recover from the economic stress that has happened in our nation. We have all seen these issues affect how businesses are run. Wait staff is limited in restaurants making a meal out at a dine-in restaurant take longer than it should. Shortages due to limited freight-line drivers, have increased prices in restaurants, grocery stores, and anywhere else that sells food or merchandise. Our family has had to limit where we eat and how often. We are having most meals at home, or when eating out is required, finding less expensive or fast food restaurants. We have noticed that our dine-in meals increased $12.00 to $20.00 per meal. That hurts! Our economy has greatly suffered in every way from from the effects of this pandemic.

What do we do? How do we cope? The best way we can, that's how. We entertain ourselves with chores at home, try to finish unfinished projects, pinch pennies, and pray for our usual way of life to get back to some kind of normal. We all hope that is sooner rather than later. We use the extra time at home to teach our children life skills and how to maneuver through every day life. We spend time with our families in our homes on some days and in our cars on others. Our family likes to go on drives just to see the scenery. It is a nice break from the four walls we look at everyday. With those drives, we have learned how to pinch our pennies with roller food from the local gas stations. Reward points are a great way to stretch the money you have. If you are able to earn reward points from your local gas station, take advantage of it. We earn points with every gallon of gas we buy. We'll take it!

We learn patience, which sometimes seems to be the hardest thing to learn. We can also serve our community by being patient. Showing patience can keep people at ease, and that is a great way to serve our community. We try to teach our kids to be patient by our actions and hope they learn from our behavior. I'm not saying that we don't fall off the wagon on occasion, be doing our best is what we should strive for. Get out into your community and spread patience. It can't do anything but help us all out during the challenges we have during this stressful pandemic. 

So, we learn patience which, in turn, helps us to serve our community. We also learn ways to solve the problem of limited funds with reward programs and other programs we can find. In the meantime, good luck with your ventures of serving, solving, and learning.