We are inviting various voices working in the diocese to share their pastoral and practical insights during the COVID19 pandemic.
Worldwide Marriage Encounter England & Wales is a Movement that helps enrich and refresh couples marriages with its focus on learning to share our feelings with each other from which a deeper communication and love grows.
To find out more https://wwme.org.uk/
Our thanks to Charles & Krysia Golabek for this contribution.
Happily married for 20 – 30 – 40 years. Busy lives, still working, enjoying your hobbies, a bit of charity work, parish council, Lenten groups, barbecues with your children and grandchildren, friends round for dinner, maybe a concert or a play at the local theatre, planning a holiday to get a bit of sun after this dreadful winter?? And then suddenly, everything stops. Life goes on hold. We are in lockdown, and social isolation. Wow, and now it is just you and me!! For how long? Three weeks, six weeks two months, three months … who knows??
We’ll be fine. OK, we are in that vulnerable group, but we have no underlying health issues.
Then the News: doctors and nurses have died. Young men and women, a teenager, a child.
We hunker down and stay at home.
We are fortunate. Our daughter lives close by so once a week she drops by with our shopping.
We are lucky to have all the modern technology and social media. We Skype, Facetime and WhatsApp; we even Zoom and Hangout … so we keep in touch with family and friends. We have our Marriage Encounter sharing group, three couples, we meet virtually every three or four weeks.
We have our Alpha sharing group working virtually through the weekly sessions. All good. But what about us? In all this WhatsApp’ing and Hangout’ing, where are we? Are we together, or gradually drifting apart? How is the monotony of daily routines affecting us as individuals, and as a couple?
Being at home together, close proximity, getting in each other’s way, little things begin to irritate, desperate for some “me”- space and time??
Here are few things that we try to do …
We wake up, I make a cup of tea. We sit in bed and share where we are. How do I feel this morning? What’s the programme for today? What would I like to do … what would you like to do … what can we do together? It only takes a few minutes, but it beings us together and gives some structure to the coming day.
We are, two quite independent characters, so being on our own, getting on with our own activities is the natural default position. But that can lead to “ships-passing-in-the-day” syndrome? So, I help in the garden, we go out for an hour to walk along the canal towpath, we read the bible together to prepare for the evening’s Hangout discussion and sharing, we found an old pack of cards and the cribbage board … we try to remember how to play Gin Rummy … why do I always seem to lose?!!!
Two of our children live in Australia. Our early morning is their going to bedtime, but WhatsApp brings us together. Highlight of the day; seeing our grandchildren romping around, being creative, pitching tents in the garden for an overnight sleepover … of course, they are also in lockdown … on the other side of the world.
People decry all this social media, but for us, at this time, it’s a lifesaver. Physically isolated, yes, but being able to keep in touch with family and friends brings a level of perspective and sanity. I’m even getting used to virtual hugs … better than no hugs at all!!
Then there are some days when I wake up feeling irritable and cranky … (some might say I’m always crabby anyway). I’m not sure why I feel restless, prickly, tetchy. It’s just there; cabin fever setting in?? I need to recognise the symptom and nip it in the bud. Otherwise the day can end up with silly things said, hurts and upset and ending up in an even deeper “social isolation”. Not good.
So I share how I am feeling. The sharing pre-warns the other that it is nothing they have done or said. The process of sharing also has a cathartic effect. Naming the monster, bringing him out into the open, diffuses the tension, the irritability and gradually fades. The little smile, the cheeky grim, a gentle hug … we are together again.
