New Normal

Quarantine. Working from home. Living this life of separation. It will do something to you.

It will make you take a good hard look at your life and attitude, and evaluate who you are and what’s important to you.

With this season of isolation, a phrase has continued to circle around, “new normal.” Many of us are left wondering what does that even mean or look like?

I know what normal looks like. Coffee shops and cafes, lunches with friends, working from the office, but what about the deeper normal I have settled for within?

I, like most, have always desired acceptance. Approval really. You could often find me working late hours or serving extensively. Motivated by my love for others but also striving to my core for acceptance.

Throughout this extended season of “shut down,” the Lord has really been calling that out of me. Helping me to identify that the approval I’m seeking and the performance mindset I have are based upon a broken value system.

Of course that makes sense but to be completely honest initially I was uncertain of how to remedy this flaw. Thankfully our Father never leaves us longing for answers, what He begins He is so faithful to complete and there He met me. Through solitude in this season and study the Lord began to chip away at a place within me that I thought was “normal.” We all have those places. Our “normal.” Our viewpoint, our attitude, our crutch…

Reaching this place of normal within myself, I recognized a fear I had long lived with and never correctly diagnosed. The fear of man.

My motivation to work hard and serve harder driven by my desire to be accepted. But what does that look like right now in Quarantine 2020? When we’re working from home, or we’ve been let go from our job. When we find ourselves homeschooling our children and in close quarters with the people we love. Normal feels so far away.

The lack of approval creating an opportunity for me to seek the One who really mattered. Lack is actually a gift, it creates opportunity and within this realm we become new.

What normal do you need to recreate with your Creator?

Normal, it’s such a mundane yet comforting word but what beauty awaits us as we seek the opportunity of a new normal.

Walking with you,
Holly