OUR VOICES

It's time to let our voices be heard.  I have learned so much during this Coronavirus pandemic.  I am grateful for healthcare.  I am thankful to be a teacher and still get paid while teaching virtually from home. A lot of the training that took place years ago is coming in handy.  I am thankful to be married and have a husband who is working.  We have both experienced shortage before.

However, I can sympathize with the millions of Americans who have filed unemployment and are waiting for it to continue.  At least you received $600 plus what the state pays.  In Tennessee, that's $275 a week.  Child, please. Many people only had what the state paid and still had to pay their bills. I have experienced that.  By the time I got the unemployment; it was time to go back to work. You must not give up.  I am a witness that even though you are on unemployment and don't feel that you are able to tithe off of it.  Give 10% to the church.  I promise you, God will make up the rest and it will amaze you.

I have that radical faith.  Sometimes, I have given my last dime to the church and then sold a few items at the record shop or bookstore just to have gas money.  I did this because I wanted to sow a seed on the Word.  I was a lot younger then and would not try that now.  I didn't run out of gas.  God always touched the hearts of those who I encountered, and they just wanted to help.

Some of you are going to go to better jobs.  Some will get promoted when you return to your job.  I realize that many people were very well planned and never went without a paycheck.  I think God wants us to be more sympathetic to all people and not turn our noses up at anyone.  I don't care how wealthy you are, this pandemic is affecting you.  It may not be affecting you financially, but it's probably affecting you mentally, socially, and perhaps spiritually.  Some, it has affected your health or someone you know or work with.

Many business owners survived the first wave, but didn't survive the second.  Many people found this to be the perfect opportunity to go into business or to take their current business to the next level.  The Bible says, "All things work together for good, to them who love and serve the Lord and who are the called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28).

I thank God that I am a writer.  Writers are used to being alone.  Writers get caught up in their character's lives. Writers can manage.  However, many writers are also social butterflies and live for the excitement of the day and the interaction with people.

Get on a schedule.  Exercise, meditate, organize.  Some people needed rest because they were performing at a high level.  I look back over my life and I still to this day don't know how I did as much as I did when I was younger.  When I was in television, my shift was 10 hours.  Many times, I gladly worked 13 to 14 hours just to get the overtime or to be seen during the day.  I worked overnights at the time.  I still found time to go to church, work in the church, teach an adult to read, and sit on two boards of directors and was President of those two boards at various times.

After leaving television, I taught.  At one point, I was teaching school, running a non-profit foundation with a friend of mine, working on my Master's and trying to promote a book. Wrote a play.  I still don't see how I did all that I did.  God gives you the energy for where you are at a particular time in life.

Rest up.  Stay prayed up and let's see what the future holds for us both.