things that the pandemic has brought us

Truly, the pandemic has brought us so many negative things. I also don't want the situation that we are all facing right now but it's either we give up, or face it bravely. The good thing here is that we, despite all the hardships that this situation is giving us, we are not giving up and we keep on fighting. We are learning and we are adapting. A proof that we are adapting is our so-called New Normal.

I am seeing so much flaws both from the government and the people but let's all be positive (not on Covid), let us broaden our perspective, see the good in bad, and try to see things positively. What's important here is that we're trying and we're fighting.

Anyway, I don't want to be negative so in this article, i'm just gonna share the good things or the positive things that the pandemic has brought us, our family.

Just a disclaimer, I know that we were all put through a hard time because of the pandemic. Me, saying the good things that it brought to us doesn't mean I like the pandemic and it also doesn't mean that i'm selfish and insensitive about experiences of others. I understand that the situation is hard but let's not make it harder by thinking all negative. I just wanna share some positive vibes to you all. And if ever that you don't like this kind of content, you are free to leave this article. Thank you so much for understanding. :)

Positive things that the pandemic has brought our family;

• Quality time

You probably hear about this one for so many times now. Because of the lockdown, families stayed all together on their home. It was March 2020 when the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) has started, our business were also closed and we all have to stay at home.

During the first week of pandemic, we used that opportunity to clean the whole house. Since, back then, we are always busy. Working from Mondays-Saturdays and the only day off is Sunday which we are using to rest or to travel somewhere to celebrate our family day. We don't have time to clean, or more like, we are too tired to clean.

I remember that on the first day of lockdown, early in the morning, after breakfast, we first clean our storage room at the side of our house. On the next day, we cleaned the empty room upstairs, next day is our kitchen, next day is our backyard, until days passed by and our house is already so clean that you won't see any dust already.

When there's nothing left to clean, we found watching Kdrama as our past time. It started with a few episodes daily, but day by day, we are all becoming addicted to it. We usually watch after lunch, at 1 or 2 pm then stop at 5 pm to prepare for dinner. Then we'll continue watching after dinner, at 8 pm until 11 pm. We were watching so fast! We usually finish a whole Kdrama for 3-4 days only. It happens daily for more than 2 months until our store opened again.

But despite working on our business again, we still continue watching during everu night until the month of October, before school starts. I think we have watched less than 50 Kdrama series. LOL

To cur it all short, cleaning and Kdrama became our quality time.

• Better decision making in terms of budgeting

We became so thrifty this pandemic. We learned to put more value into things. We learned to conserve and to save, not just money but also resources.

Of course, we are also greatly affected by the pandemic. Our business were closed for less than 3 months. We don't have income during those times. We have spend Ate and Kuya's savings during those lockdown period.

We were challenged financially so we have to be smart on our every purchase. Through the pandemic, we learned to buy foods from the market that will be good for one week. By that, our budget were more organized and we only buy what we need.

We also learned to conserve water and electricity. During lockdown, we don't use any of our washing machine for our laundry, we do our laundry through handwash to save electricity. We also don't use water from the faucet, we use our well of water (poso) instead of it. We also take a bath using the water from the poso so that our water consumption will be lessened.

We learned to save money, water and electricity because of the pandemic.

• Deeper connection with God through prayer

I think, this one is the thing that I liked the most that pandemic did to us. The pandemic is no joke, it's a crisis, and it calls us to pray, to be more prayerful, to rely on God, and trust Him to make all things back to normal again.

It's the time for us to have faith and to pray more. And this is what we did. We cannot help all the people around us monetarily or through relief goods but we can surely help them through praying for that.

Because of the pandemic, we learned to be more prayerful. To have faith in God and to let Him do the work for the things that we cannot handle. During the lockdown, we started to have our daily devotion and prayer meeting as family. We sing praise and worship to God, we read some part of the scriptures, we share our learning with each other and we have a list of the things that we should pray for. We pray for our country, for all the people in our country, for every families, for the government, for our frontliners, for the positive cases, and for our own family. That's the least that we could do to help our country with what we have experienced and we are experiencing right now.

Every night, we allot time for our daily devotion and prayer meeting. And through that, not only we have a contribution for our country but we also develop deeper connection with God.

The pandemic has also brought me some changes personally, specially my development on my spiritual growth. I have been publishing my compilations of daily devotions in here since January. But honestly, before that, daily devotion has always been my struggle in my whole Christian life.

It was month of July since I started having daily devotions again, I'm writing it on my journal, and praise God, for until now, I haven't missed a single day to write on that journal of mine.

I have also finished three 40-days devotional challenges. 1st is the 40 days of purpose, 2nd is the 40 days of prayer, and the 3rd one is the 40 days in the word. I have already shared on one of my article the 40 days of prayer, i'll surely share more about it and the other challenges here in the future.

Just to give you a recap, because of the pandemic we had:

• quality time;

• better decision making in terms of budgeting;

• deeper relationship with God through prayer;

• and personally, spiritual growth for myself.

So I guess, I have to end it here. It's too long and I hope I didn't bore you with that. And if you have noticed, I haven't write an article for 4 days now. I'm back! I hope your time reading this was worth it.

Before I end this, let me share to you just these 2 verses:

James 1:2-3 "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance."

2 Chronicles 7:14 "if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

All things shall pass. For now, let us not forget that we have our God who got us, He will protect us and He will never leave us. Take care everyone. Stay safe, keep on praying and keep the faith going. =)