Details

Written by Dan Reiland

There’s a difference between working at home because you want to and working at home because you have to. Working at home was an appealing privilege to many, but can now produce feelings of cabin fever on steroids.

When your kids become your office mates, new challenges arise. Homeschooling, working, and doing family life every day in your home may be fun for a week, but “until further notice” can be overwhelming.

Where I live, outside the city of Atlanta, we’ve just received a “Stay at Home” directive. That’s different than “I get to work at home.” It’s psychological when you don’t have options; you can feel trapped, and your perspective changes. That impacts your attitude.

For most high energy leaders who have great drive for the mission of the church, this is a crazy-making formula. And what about the parents who are now homeschooling? Is it a crash course in education? Or survival?

Thriving in close quarters is a challenging situation for just two to three days, but now we need to learn how to do it for weeks at a time, until we get on the other side of the coronavirus health crisis.

Thriving in close quarters requires three basics:

1) Extra Grace
We were not designed for isolation, and we were not designed for indefinitely sustained close quarters. This difficult season brings with it extra friction and frustration.

When it comes to grace, my best advice is contained in these three words, “Let it go.” Let the small offenses go. Give the benefit of the doubt and let all the little things go, and most of the big things too.

When someone in your family is getting on your nerves, let it go, and trust they will extend the same grace to you.

Read More...