What THIS Conservative Woman Learned From Quarantine ｜｜ Faith, Family, and Friends!
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about what quarantine has taught me about my faith, family, and friends, and how we can incorporate those lessons into our lives moving forward. I hope this episode encourages you to be kinder to yourself and your family during this difficult time.
Transcript
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Hello beautiful ladies and welcome to today's video where we're going to be talking about
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what quarantine can teach us about faith, family, and friends.
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So we've all been in quarantine for quite some time now or at least sheltering in place or staying
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at home and I think for all of us it's just been a huge adjustment. We've gone from just living our
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normal lives to the coronavirus hitting the world and us just learning how to deal with it. Of course
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some states are opening up. I'm lucky enough to be living in Nebraska so we've got some restaurants
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that are opening and some stores that are opening up as well and that makes things easier but even
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with that we're still social distancing, we're still wearing masks, we still can't really travel
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and so things are just totally different than what we're used to and on top of that this is just a
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really scary time. We're afraid for the people that we love, we're afraid for the economy, we're afraid
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for people losing their jobs and I think it's just really hard for all of us to figure out exactly
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what to make of this whole time and what can we learn and sort of take away into the future as
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this all kind of returns to normal. So as I was sitting and thinking about what I wanted to record
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it sort of came to me that I wanted to talk about how this has encouraged me to think about my faith,
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how it's encouraged me to think about my family, and how it has encouraged me to think about my friends.
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So let's talk about some new perspectives I've taken away through this time and how we can
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incorporate that into our lives moving forward. The first thing I want to talk about is faith.
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Now as you guys know I was raised orthodox, my husband was raised reform, the two of us are
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now aspiring to be orthodox and more observant, and so faith is really important to us because
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those values are really important to how we want to live our lives and raise our family, and it also
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is important to us because we love our community. Well as I'm sure a lot of you know that are religious,
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this has been a really hard time. Synagogues are closed, churches are closed, mosques are closed,
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people can't congregate in their communities to worship God, and that's just a totally different
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experience. So much of religion is community based, which is such a beautiful thing, but of course
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there's also this huge part of religion which is between us the individuals and God. And something
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I've really noticed during this whole quarantine is that you can't depend on your community to stabilize
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your faith. What I mean by that is that I think a lot of the time we use community as a way to bolster
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our faith in the times that we're struggling instead of looking and trying to find answers.
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And so there might be times that you're really struggling with your faith or really questioning
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things, and instead of taking the time to go and ask the questions or look deeper into the Bible or
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scriptures, we end up just saying, well I don't want to lose my community or I can go hang out with
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my Jewish friends or Christian friends and that'll stabilize my faith. Well something that I've wanted
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to take advantage of during this quarantine is that I can't use my community as a crutch right now.
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And I love my community, so that's not to say that the community structure of religion is generally a
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crutch, but sometimes you'll use your community to convince yourself that you don't have to ask
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questions even if those questions are kind of eating away at you. And so you end up just kind of
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sweeping the questions under the carpet because you love being part of the community. And you might
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even find yourself going to services at church or synagogue because you want to hang out with your
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friends or be part of your community and the prayer aspect of it is so much less than that. Or you might
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even skip the prayer and just come for the socialization afterward. And it's an interesting thing
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because quarantine is forcing those of us who are religious to really look into our relationship between
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us and God. So I know that for me I've had to sit down and really think about the questions that I've
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had and examine those. And I've almost had a more open dialogue with God because I can't just depend
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on community to make myself feel the importance of religion. The basis of my faith lately has really
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been turning to God when times are hard and celebrating with him when things are good and investing time
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into my personal relationship with God, with the laws that I keep, with the Bible, with the scriptures,
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with the Torah. All of those things for me have allowed my religious beliefs to grow even deeper. So that's
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one thing I really think we can take away from this after quarantine is to keep working on your individual
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relationship with God instead of just depending on your community to stabilize your faith. And it's just an
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interesting thing that I didn't necessarily see coming as a result of quarantine. And so I think
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for a lot of us this could be a make-or-break moment for our faith. It will really either shake the core
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of our belief system because we depended so heavily on our community to stabilize it, or we can really
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delve deeper into our individual relationship with God and strengthen it. So this is a cool opportunity for
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us to take the time and invest that time to grow our personal relationship to our faith. The next one is
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family. I know that for me it's been really hard because my husband and I are isolated out here in
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Nebraska. It's just the two of us. But I thank God every day for the technology that we have and that
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I'm here with my husband. And I think this is a really wonderful lesson for a lot of us of how important
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family time is. I think this is a beautiful time for us to really delve into and explore how important
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family and family time is. How lovely it is that we've gotten more time to spend at home. I'm sure
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kids are really appreciating that they get to spend more time with dad or mom if dad and mom work a lot.
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And of course this has been really hard because the kids are not in school and there's not really a
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break but at the same time we're learning how core and important family is because we can't just go
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out and do whatever to distract ourselves. We really have to be with people and that's our support system
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and family has become such an important part of our lives. And family is what's getting us through
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these really hard times right now because it's very difficult to figure out who to depend on during
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this whole coronavirus pandemic. So it's a wonderful thing that we've had an opportunity to spend more
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time with family to have family dinners that we're seeing grandparents are staying with their kids to
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help them take care of the grandkids or we see that cousins or uncles are moving in together to help
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each other just make it through the day and that's a really beautiful thing. I think quarantine is just
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such a great reminder of how important family is and I think sometimes that can get really lost in the
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bustle and shuffle of daily life and ambition and putting family at the forefront right now is
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such an integral part to the growth of a society and we're seeing that people are appreciating their
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parents more because their parents are coming and helping with the grandkids and for the people who
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they're having a harder time because this is all very close quarters and it can cause a lot more
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fights and a lot more bickering it's also a really good opportunity for people to take this time and work
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on their relationships. I think that's been something that's not really been talked about that you
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kind of just have to make it through but I think this is the perfect time to work on your relationship
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because there's nothing else to do there's nowhere else to go and if you have a relationship that's
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important to you and is worth you putting the time in you are never going to have more time than right now.
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Family is such a beautiful thing it's such a traditional value that I think gets lost sometimes
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and quarantine is really putting the focus back on family. The last thing that quarantine is teaching us
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is about friendship and I have seen such an incredible thing happen. My husband and I are very extroverted
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people we're very social we love hanging out with friends and having get-togethers and all of that
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and I think it's really hard when you're living across the country from your friends because you make
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time for the people that you can actually go out with. Most people aren't doing double dates over zoom
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generally and this is the first time where your friend down the street is exactly the same as your friend
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a hundred miles away three hundred miles away three thousand miles away because you can't see
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your friend down the block you can't see that friend either and so you have to do zoom calls
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no matter who it is you have to do zoom calls or you have to do video chats or whatever and you're
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making the same time for a friend that's in your city as you are for a friend that's far away and I
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think in a lot of ways it's revivifying how social we really are and those social connections that
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we've built from a long time ago there are friends that my husband and I hadn't talked to for a couple
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of years and now all of a sudden we're having a double date and we probably wouldn't have had that
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had this pandemic not happened it's teaching us the importance of keeping up those relationships
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and taking the time for a virtual date every now and then with your friends is a really nice thing
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I don't think that the frequency of that's going to last because as people can go out they're going to
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want to return to kind of in-person face-to-face contact but I think people will still remember
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and keep in mind that they can make a double date night at home with a friend who's across the
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country and I love the idea that we're all really rebuilding connections between people that hadn't
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talked in a long time because we have the time and we can't leave the house anyways it's an interesting
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thing that as we're all social distancing a lot of us are getting closer to so I hope you guys enjoyed
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today's video please leave a comment and tell me something you've learned during quarantine if you
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agree with things that I'm talking about if you're exploring your faith more or if you are finding
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the value in your family thank you so much for watching today's video please subscribe to my channel
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community and i'll see you guys in my next video bye