My mom and I are in agreement: our brains aren’t working right, if they’re working at all.

When you’re in mourning after a loved one has died, they often talk about how you’ll experience a “brain fog.” You put your keys in the refrigerator and the pint of ice cream in the pantry.

I think some of us are experiencing that this week. It’s kind of like when your computer is running a program in the background, so all your other applications begin slowing down. Our psyches are trying to make sense of last week — and everything else — and our brains just aren’t free to do their normal operating.

How do you make sense of the fact that it was literally zero degrees outside, with a governmental failure caused life-threatening outages across the state of Texas … and this week, it’s sunny and warm?

How do you make sense of the feeling of relief that the storm is over, your power and/or water has been restored … but oh yeah, things are still not back to Real Normal, because the global pandemic is still upon us?

We can logic our way through all of that – understanding the science of climate change, weather patterns, community spread of a virus — but we can’t logic our way through the emotions surrounding all of this.

It’s just going to take some time. Be patient with yourself, and others. When you can feel happy or relaxed, take advantage of that. When the pendulum swings the other way and you find yourself anxious for no good reason … just sit with it. Don’t try to fix it, just know that most likely, it will pass. (If it doesn’t feel free to reach out to me or another member of the pastoral care team!)

And … maybe double check where you put the groceries.