Classically Abby - What THIS Conservative Woman Learned From Quarantine ｜｜ Faith, Family, and Friends!

00:00:00.160 Hello beautiful ladies and welcome to today's video where we're going to be talking about 1.00

00:00:04.560 what quarantine can teach us about faith, family, and friends.

00:00:12.000 So we've all been in quarantine for quite some time now or at least sheltering in place or staying

00:00:17.280 at home and I think for all of us it's just been a huge adjustment. We've gone from just living our

00:00:22.240 normal lives to the coronavirus hitting the world and us just learning how to deal with it. Of course

00:00:28.480 some states are opening up. I'm lucky enough to be living in Nebraska so we've got some restaurants

00:00:33.200 that are opening and some stores that are opening up as well and that makes things easier but even

00:00:38.000 with that we're still social distancing, we're still wearing masks, we still can't really travel

00:00:42.720 and so things are just totally different than what we're used to and on top of that this is just a

00:00:47.760 really scary time. We're afraid for the people that we love, we're afraid for the economy, we're afraid

00:00:52.560 for people losing their jobs and I think it's just really hard for all of us to figure out exactly

00:00:58.080 what to make of this whole time and what can we learn and sort of take away into the future as

00:01:02.880 this all kind of returns to normal. So as I was sitting and thinking about what I wanted to record

00:01:07.520 it sort of came to me that I wanted to talk about how this has encouraged me to think about my faith,

00:01:12.800 how it's encouraged me to think about my family, and how it has encouraged me to think about my friends.

00:01:17.600 So let's talk about some new perspectives I've taken away through this time and how we can

00:01:22.960 incorporate that into our lives moving forward. The first thing I want to talk about is faith.

00:01:27.200 Now as you guys know I was raised orthodox, my husband was raised reform, the two of us are

00:01:32.160 now aspiring to be orthodox and more observant, and so faith is really important to us because

00:01:37.520 those values are really important to how we want to live our lives and raise our family, and it also

00:01:43.120 is important to us because we love our community. Well as I'm sure a lot of you know that are religious,

00:01:47.760 this has been a really hard time. Synagogues are closed, churches are closed, mosques are closed,

00:01:53.440 people can't congregate in their communities to worship God, and that's just a totally different

00:01:58.560 experience. So much of religion is community based, which is such a beautiful thing, but of course

00:02:04.880 there's also this huge part of religion which is between us the individuals and God. And something

00:02:11.360 I've really noticed during this whole quarantine is that you can't depend on your community to stabilize

00:02:17.280 your faith. What I mean by that is that I think a lot of the time we use community as a way to bolster

00:02:23.280 our faith in the times that we're struggling instead of looking and trying to find answers.

00:02:28.720 And so there might be times that you're really struggling with your faith or really questioning

00:02:32.880 things, and instead of taking the time to go and ask the questions or look deeper into the Bible or

00:02:38.240 scriptures, we end up just saying, well I don't want to lose my community or I can go hang out with

00:02:42.640 my Jewish friends or Christian friends and that'll stabilize my faith. Well something that I've wanted 0.95

00:02:47.680 to take advantage of during this quarantine is that I can't use my community as a crutch right now.

00:02:53.840 And I love my community, so that's not to say that the community structure of religion is generally a

00:02:58.480 crutch, but sometimes you'll use your community to convince yourself that you don't have to ask

00:03:03.600 questions even if those questions are kind of eating away at you. And so you end up just kind of

00:03:08.800 sweeping the questions under the carpet because you love being part of the community. And you might

00:03:13.280 even find yourself going to services at church or synagogue because you want to hang out with your

00:03:18.480 friends or be part of your community and the prayer aspect of it is so much less than that. Or you might

00:03:24.640 even skip the prayer and just come for the socialization afterward. And it's an interesting thing

00:03:30.640 because quarantine is forcing those of us who are religious to really look into our relationship between

00:03:36.400 us and God. So I know that for me I've had to sit down and really think about the questions that I've

00:03:43.280 had and examine those. And I've almost had a more open dialogue with God because I can't just depend

00:03:51.040 on community to make myself feel the importance of religion. The basis of my faith lately has really

00:03:57.120 been turning to God when times are hard and celebrating with him when things are good and investing time

00:04:03.200 into my personal relationship with God, with the laws that I keep, with the Bible, with the scriptures,

00:04:10.000 with the Torah. All of those things for me have allowed my religious beliefs to grow even deeper. So that's

00:04:16.080 one thing I really think we can take away from this after quarantine is to keep working on your individual

00:04:22.160 relationship with God instead of just depending on your community to stabilize your faith. And it's just an

00:04:28.240 interesting thing that I didn't necessarily see coming as a result of quarantine. And so I think

00:04:33.840 for a lot of us this could be a make-or-break moment for our faith. It will really either shake the core

00:04:38.880 of our belief system because we depended so heavily on our community to stabilize it, or we can really

00:04:44.960 delve deeper into our individual relationship with God and strengthen it. So this is a cool opportunity for

00:04:52.080 us to take the time and invest that time to grow our personal relationship to our faith. The next one is

00:05:00.800 family. I know that for me it's been really hard because my husband and I are isolated out here in

00:05:05.360 Nebraska. It's just the two of us. But I thank God every day for the technology that we have and that

00:05:10.880 I'm here with my husband. And I think this is a really wonderful lesson for a lot of us of how important

00:05:16.480 family time is. I think this is a beautiful time for us to really delve into and explore how important

00:05:23.360 family and family time is. How lovely it is that we've gotten more time to spend at home. I'm sure

00:05:29.840 kids are really appreciating that they get to spend more time with dad or mom if dad and mom work a lot.

00:05:35.600 And of course this has been really hard because the kids are not in school and there's not really a

00:05:41.120 break but at the same time we're learning how core and important family is because we can't just go

00:05:48.880 out and do whatever to distract ourselves. We really have to be with people and that's our support system

00:05:54.960 and family has become such an important part of our lives. And family is what's getting us through

00:06:00.640 these really hard times right now because it's very difficult to figure out who to depend on during

00:06:06.640 this whole coronavirus pandemic. So it's a wonderful thing that we've had an opportunity to spend more

00:06:12.080 time with family to have family dinners that we're seeing grandparents are staying with their kids to

00:06:17.680 help them take care of the grandkids or we see that cousins or uncles are moving in together to help

00:06:23.600 each other just make it through the day and that's a really beautiful thing. I think quarantine is just

00:06:28.400 such a great reminder of how important family is and I think sometimes that can get really lost in the

00:06:33.760 bustle and shuffle of daily life and ambition and putting family at the forefront right now is

00:06:40.160 such an integral part to the growth of a society and we're seeing that people are appreciating their

00:06:45.680 parents more because their parents are coming and helping with the grandkids and for the people who

00:06:49.680 they're having a harder time because this is all very close quarters and it can cause a lot more

00:06:54.000 fights and a lot more bickering it's also a really good opportunity for people to take this time and work

00:06:59.280 on their relationships. I think that's been something that's not really been talked about that you

00:07:03.680 kind of just have to make it through but I think this is the perfect time to work on your relationship

00:07:08.000 because there's nothing else to do there's nowhere else to go and if you have a relationship that's

00:07:12.480 important to you and is worth you putting the time in you are never going to have more time than right now.

00:07:17.520 Family is such a beautiful thing it's such a traditional value that I think gets lost sometimes

00:07:22.880 and quarantine is really putting the focus back on family. The last thing that quarantine is teaching us

00:07:28.000 is about friendship and I have seen such an incredible thing happen. My husband and I are very extroverted

00:07:35.280 people we're very social we love hanging out with friends and having get-togethers and all of that

00:07:40.640 and I think it's really hard when you're living across the country from your friends because you make

00:07:45.360 time for the people that you can actually go out with. Most people aren't doing double dates over zoom

00:07:50.320 generally and this is the first time where your friend down the street is exactly the same as your friend

00:07:56.000 a hundred miles away three hundred miles away three thousand miles away because you can't see

00:08:01.120 your friend down the block you can't see that friend either and so you have to do zoom calls

00:08:05.280 no matter who it is you have to do zoom calls or you have to do video chats or whatever and you're

00:08:10.320 making the same time for a friend that's in your city as you are for a friend that's far away and I

00:08:16.000 think in a lot of ways it's revivifying how social we really are and those social connections that

00:08:21.840 we've built from a long time ago there are friends that my husband and I hadn't talked to for a couple

00:08:27.520 of years and now all of a sudden we're having a double date and we probably wouldn't have had that

00:08:31.760 had this pandemic not happened it's teaching us the importance of keeping up those relationships

00:08:36.880 and taking the time for a virtual date every now and then with your friends is a really nice thing

00:08:42.560 I don't think that the frequency of that's going to last because as people can go out they're going to

00:08:46.880 want to return to kind of in-person face-to-face contact but I think people will still remember

00:08:52.400 and keep in mind that they can make a double date night at home with a friend who's across the

00:08:58.000 country and I love the idea that we're all really rebuilding connections between people that hadn't

00:09:03.200 talked in a long time because we have the time and we can't leave the house anyways it's an interesting

00:09:09.120 thing that as we're all social distancing a lot of us are getting closer to so I hope you guys enjoyed

00:09:14.240 today's video please leave a comment and tell me something you've learned during quarantine if you

00:09:18.080 agree with things that I'm talking about if you're exploring your faith more or if you are finding

00:09:23.680 the value in your family thank you so much for watching today's video please subscribe to my channel

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00:09:43.600 community and i'll see you guys in my next video bye

Classically Abby - May 15, 2020

What THIS Conservative Woman Learned From Quarantine ｜｜ Faith, Family, and Friends!

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