Up to this point, my family and I have all remained healthy and well throughout the COVID-19 quarantine. However, following a quick trip to the grocery store I began feeling that I may be coming down with something. Although the physical symptoms I felt were real, head pressure and queasiness, I wondered if they were manifesting from a false sense of reality or if I was legitimately getting sick. Not wanting to get overly worked up about the possibility of the latter, I stayed levelheaded as I processed through whether I was truly coming down with something or not.
Since the quarantine began several weeks back, I have become so used to staying home. When it was time to go to the grocery store to get milk, I was not the least bit in a hurry. In fact, I dragged my feet and delayed as long as possible. It was not until the evening of the following day after we ran out of milk that I made an effort to go buy more before the store closed.
It was my first time out with my makeshift fabric mask covering my mouth and nose since the mandate to wear them while in public places. Upon my arrival at the grocery store, I took the available precautionary measures to stay healthy by using disinfecting wipes supplied by the store to wipe down not only the shopping cart but also my hands after opening refrigerator and freezer doors and picking up packaged meat.
As I walked inside and was surrounded by other shoppers wearing face masks of differing variations and some also wearing protective gloves along with noting the existence of clear plastic dividers at the registers between the cashier and customers as well as decals on the floors throughout the grocery store for to adhere to the required spacing of physical distance between patrons, an icky feeling overcame me and continued even after I returned home.
While lying in bed after settling in for the night, my head felt out of sorts and my body was on the verge of feeling achy. Though I allowed myself to feel what I was feeling, I wondered if my body was merely responding to the visible awareness I observed at the grocery store of society protecting themselves from catching the coronavirus rather than my actually coming down with something.
I considered the experience similar to feeling like having earphones in my ear when I don’t have them in anymore or feeling like I am still wearing roller skates/ice skates after no longer having them on my feet or when hearing about others having lice and worrying if I too have lice when my head starts to itch.
With the uncertainty of whether I was truly coming down with something or not, I consciously decided to redirect my thoughts away from the possibility that I was, as I felt that if I continued down that path I would probably very well become ill, as the saying goes along the lines of, “If you think you are, you are”. Instead I focused on my body actually being well as I thought about what I do to care for my body and the foods I eat that are healthy. To this thought process, I fell asleep.
The next day it was a tender mercy that the symptoms I had the night prior were gone. I rested on the fact that the measures I saw in place to protect employees and shoppers was what brought on the symptoms and not that I was actually coming down with something. Phew!!
When have you wondered if you were truly coming down with something or not after being in an environment to which you felt icky and you came to realize that your physical symptoms were in response to external stimuli and not that you were actually coming down with something?
tendermercym❤️ments~jld
“How have you noticed Heavenly Father’s awareness and mindfulness of you today?”
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