“The (Covid-19) times, they are a-changin’.” – Bob Dylan
Being a human being in 2020 feels like what it must be like to be inside a washing machine as it tumbles down the side of a mountain. Head-spinning change and stomach-churning fear. If Covid-19 wasn’t a terrible disease, it would be a cool ride at Disneyworld.
The only thing that makes these times manageable - through the deafening noise and disorienting spinning – is the faith we have that this gut-wrenching journey will stop, and that we will somehow be up(W)right and ambulatory at the end.
And so, while car counts fall and revenues dwindle, we have faith.
While shop owners cut employee hours and lay others off, we have faith.
As employees anxiously wait for their stimulus checks and shop owners nervously wait to hear about the status of their EIDL and PPP loans, we have faith.
In the middle of tumbling and plummeting through denial, anger, fear, bargaining, depression and helplessness, we have faith.
With our faith, we stay strong. We show brave faces. Owners are brave for their employees, even when they feel like crying. Employees are brave for each other, even when they feel like screaming. All of us are brave for our families, our children. We tap into untapped resources. One owner told me, "I stay strong for my employees but inside I want to cry and ram my head into a wall."
Breaking through our own personal wall of fear is important. Staying busy is important, staying engaged is important. Post silly and funny and serious and helpful things on your shop Facebook pages. Offer touchless pickup and delivery and perform enhanced sanitizing of customer vehicles, discounted and even free services to health care workers, first responders and others working on the front lines. Do deep cleaning and renovating and organizing. Do what you can, when you can, with what you have, to keep the cars coming in, even when everything you are doing feels like it is doing nothing.
This morning’s newspaper headline read, "This could be the worst week yet." That’s encouraging news. On the other side of "worst" is "less worst" followed by "not as terrible." It's downhill from there - the downhill of the flattening curve. Fewer cases, fewer deaths.
Faith is not knowing the outcome and moving forward anyway. It is believing in something we can't see. We have faith in gravity and oxygen. We have faith in God, or whoever our supreme being. We have faith in love, and each other. And we have faith that this, too, shall pass.
Because it will.
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” C.S. Lewis
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