How Will You Celebrate Recovery?

One lesson Covid has taught us is that it’s okay to back away from activities that put us unnecessarily at risk. Conversely, we’ve learned to take calculated risks.

We certainly can’t erase all risk in life, and overly cautious isolation carries risks of its own. Some people have jobs where they’ve risked their lives nearly every day for others. We gratefully admire their courage.

At some point we hope to live through this pandemic and look back. We’ll likely identify times when we were overly cautious and perhaps other times when we took unnecessary risks.

We’ve lost many friends to Covid, some vaccinated and some not. Some were already close to death’s door, and Covid put them over the threshold.

Some seemed otherwise fairly healthy, and those losses are especially tough.

One concern we share as this pandemic continues much longer than most expected: Are we becoming more timid and risk-adverse to the point that our behavior won’t change much once the pandemic is behind us?

We know the trajectory of older adult behavior is sometimes difficult to turn around. Will “erring on the side of caution” continue to be our mantra when certain risks are behind us?

You may be familiar with the ministry of Celebrate Recovery, focused on breaking free from life-controlling issues. What are we doing to celebrate recovery from a recent bout with Covid? Or, how will we celebrate when the risks of Covid are eventually behind us?

Let’s continue to be bold risk-takers in sharing our faith, in living daily lives that reflect more faith than fear. Let’s not allow Covid to permanently sideline us or redefine us as ‘too old to serve.’

Let’s be safe and care-full, full of care for others.