Don’t Look Back my owl meme counsels: You aren’t going that way. But I still look back over last year’s journal entries. I am looking for any premonition of the trouble that defined 2020.

Good Orderly Directions in a Pandemic

Nada. Unaware I was; totally.

But, I noted some advice that now seems providential:

You can’t think your way through trouble; you have to live through trouble and learn to think.

One thing this past year showed me – what I have learned through 2020’s troubles – is not everything going on in my head is thinking.

Projection isn’t thinking.

Neither is worry. Or overreacting. (Which some people in my family say I am a classic . . . )

This year showed me that all three responses crowd out thought.

Maybe I think too much for my own good
Some people say so
Other people say, “No no
That fact is
You don’t think as much as you could”
~Paul Simon, “Think Too Much (a),” 1982 ♫

2020 sure gave me TIME to think, removing so many hindrances to thinking I have excused as duties, obligations, and responsibilities – like housework!

Not that I was up for any awards as a housekeeper.

Living through 2020’s troubles, and 2021’s challenges, I am grateful I am living – with Doug. This much I know, believe, and trust.

Just as I have chosen to believe God’s fingerprints are all over the past twelve months.

“Whenever anyone tells you that coronavirus means that God is calling people – perhaps you! – to repent, tell them to read Job. The whole point is that that is not the point.” ― N.T. Wright, God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath*

So, I think I will let go and let Him inform my thoughts, (John 14:15-23) and reform my imagination.  (Philippians 4:4-9)

“Actually, the best answer I’ve heard in the last few weeks has not been to the question ‘Why?’ It’s been to the question, ‘What?’ What can we do? . . . The garden is far less likely to grow weeds if we have been planting flowers.” ― N.T. Wright, God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath*

Is it SAFE to be out and about?

* God and the Pandemic: A Christians  Reflection on the Cornovirus and Its Aftermath

You might enjoy what I am learning about exercising the little Gray cells, as I try not to look back too often:

THINK

Prepare for a New Understanding in Powerlessness