3 Questions For Planning During The Pandemic

We are now living out a new normal here in Basel. Kids are starting to learn online and parents are starting to pull their hair out. How do we prepare or plan for the next few weeks or months? Originally, I thought we could get away with closing down for three Sundays. Now it is clear that’s not enough and it will be some time before we resume meeting together.

Your work, home and school routines are all different as well. It’s easy to go into this ‘new normal’ and drift through it by just hoping that it ends quickly. Let me suggest three simple questions to you in planning for this season.

What things are you going to keep doing? What is going to be helpful for your well-being? Keeping a routine, getting up at the same time in the morning, taking a shower, getting dressed, having regular meal times are all necessary for good mental health. Those routines will be helpful to creating some order in your mind.

What are you going to do more of? This is a time to build in some new daily routines or activities. Perhaps you’ll need to get more exercise, or pay more attention to what you eat. Maybe you’ll want to play a board game every evening with your children. This could be the occasion to start that project you have been wondering about or finish up the paper work you have been putting off.

What are you going to do less of? There are some things that don’t need your attention during this time. It’s okay to drop some things off your plate for this coming season. You can free your mind up from some concerns by giving yourself permission to put some concerns on pause. If nothing else, we could all do less complaining during the next weeks.

Of course, we don’t know how things are going to proceed. So we hold lightly to whatever plans we might make and remember the words of wisdom from Proverbs 3:5 & 6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”