1. You're finding yourself more and more drawn to desiring something new - something new to read, watch, eat, drink, to buy (or just dream about buying)...

2. You find yourself caring less about work, relationships, etc. You communicate with people less. You offer input less. You're less willing to offer an idea and potentially get shot down. You feel less vested in what happens and less like there's a difference to be made because every day is the same.

3. You're finding it harder to engage with God than usual in your reading, prayer, etc. You're reading and praying less than you normally would. Your mind is distracted, bouncing from one thing to another and taking you quickly away from what you're talking to God about or reading about to some distraction.

These things are, I believe, ourselves trying to push back against the drawdown of a pandemic that's shut off our normal world. And in these things we push back by either by:

• #1 — running from it (escaping it and numbing ourselves to it with experiences, purchases, or alternate realities) or

• #2 & #3 — shutting ourselves off from it (making our world smaller by not communicating, not risking, not connecting with God and what he might ask of you or share with you in a time like this).

These efforts reflect sadness, loss, fear and a slowly creeping exhaustion. They mean that no matter how many precautions we take or how much social distancing we practice, the pandemic is getting in and we're experiencing loss in one way or another.

I don't have a deep, thoughtful answer for what to do with the impact this has on our hearts, but I do think it's important and helpful to name the impact so we can address it, grieve it, ask God to intervene and have hope that he will.

If any of these are you, just know you're not alone. I can raise my hand for some of all of these.