Over the course of two months since the Covid-19 quarantine, being home together as a family has been wonderful. However, even though we have all been together during this time, much of our weekday hours in close proximity to each other has been spent separately engaged with school assignments via distance learning, employment from our home office, and various hobbies, mostly by means of screen time. As such, when an opportunity early afternoon came up to spend more deliberate quality time with one another away from our screens, I embraced and relished the moment.
A couple of days prior, I heard that the Air Force Thunderbirds would be flying overhead near our area, at a specific time, on this day, to recognize and pay tribute to our front line responders, healthcare and essential workers for all that they have done during the coronavirus pandemic. Thirty minutes before the scheduled fly by, our family stopped temporarily what we were individually involved in doing to go see them. We anticipated the time away from home would be very short. However, it was not until the very minute we expected to see the F-16 Fighting Falcons fly by did we learn that due to inclement weather the time of the Thunderbirds arrival had been delayed 1 hour.
Upon getting this updated news, we all decided it did not make sense to drive back home 15-20 minutes away to shortly thereafter turn around and return back to the place we considered an ideal location to see the Thunderbirds fly by, per their flight pattern, and instead, we agreed to pass the time by getting lunch together. Even though the mandate to wear a mask inside public places is an easy deterrent for me to have not wanted to go inside an establishment to pick up food, the availability to do so was a tender mercy as we were able to spend more deliberate quality time with one another and break away from screen time for a bit longer.
In addition, when we returned back to our original location and were only able to see a brief glimpse of the Thunderbirds as they flew by, it was a tender mercy we were able to get to another lookout spot within their flight pattern just in time to observe a spectacular 180 view of them before they looped away, and being that the location was a greater distance from our home, we had even more deliberate quality time with one another to which I embraced and relished.
When have you relished moments in which an event you were attending with loved ones was delayed and the opportunity to spend more deliberate quality time with one another came as a result?
tendermercym❤️ments~jld
“How have you noticed Heavenly Father’s awareness and mindfulness of you today?”
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