How I Got Through Quarantine
By: Erin Brown
Tags: Quarantine, God, Faith, Mental Health, Christianity

Living in quarantine has probably been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Everything had closed and the world had gone into panic mode. Society pushed that if you didn’t wear a mask, you were selfish and deserve to catch COVID-19, even though for some people it was a health concern. The news and just about every other media source was only reporting on the negative side of everything. It seemed that there was more bad news every day.

I had just moved into a new apartment the same week that everything shut down. Not only that, but the day after we had moved in, we discovered bed bugs. For me, the prep for the bed bug treatment was worse than the actual bed bugs, but I also wasn’t noticing any bites by them either. My roommate and her girls got the brunt of it. Then we had to go through 4 of the treatments because the company that the apartment complex hired wasn’t doing a thorough enough job. On top of ALL of that, my car had broken down about a week after moving in.

I think it was probably early April, and I was prepping our apartment for the second treatment. It was a Sunday afternoon and I just lost it. I hadn’t seen any of my friends in a few weeks, my car wasn’t working, I felt like I was failing at prepping for the bug treatment because it didn’t work before and I couldn’t even escape for a bit because everything in the world was shut down.

That was the start of my mental health spiral.

Let me just say, before I divulge any further into my experience with COVID quarantine, I know there are definitely worse things than what I had to go through. There were people that were living full time with an abusive person. A lot of people lost their income and couldn’t feed their families. Many people died or came close to it. I’m not taking any of this lightly, but I can only share my experience.

After everything else had started to calm down, quarantine really started getting a hold on me. I didn’t realize I was an extrovert until this moment (I’m sure any fellow extroverts can understand this dilemma). My value no longer seemed as high as it was. I felt absolutely worthless. I woke up in the morning, continued with a lot of lying around, and then going back to sleep. Often, I would try to go on a walk every day just to get out of my apartment, but that was just something to hold me over for a bit. My days just seemed useless.

There was a day that I had driven to my church’s empty parking lot at around 9pm and just cried my eyes out. I just needed to process every little thing that was causing my emotions to drop. Being as antsy as I am, I had to find something to do to pass the time that didn’t involve potentially spreading a disease I may or may not have.

Now, I’ve been a Christian for as long as I can remember, but there’s always potential growth when you have a relationship with God. It isn’t always bless the poor, heal the sick, feed the homeless. That’s certainly a huge part of it, but that wasn’t really an option for me in these moments due to my mental state and partially the COVID-19 based restrictions on everything, so I decided to get to know God better than I had previously.

Every time I went on a walk, I would listen to a Christian interview-style podcast to get more of an understanding of what other individuals’ relationship with God looked like. Every time I would listen to one, I would hear about how God was using other people to further the Kingdom (or “following”) of God and my faith in Him would grow. That wasn’t good enough though. I wanted to experience God for myself. I wanted to hear His voice. After I would come back from my walks and listening to the podcast, I would lay on my bed and pray.

“God, what do you want to say to me right now? How can I further your Kingdom from my bedroom?”

Sometimes He spoke to me by my conscience, sometimes it was a picture, and sometimes it was something I read in the Bible. One time, I felt like I was supposed to email the podcast ministry that I kept listening to this vision that I had experienced, and they emailed me back this prophetic word that they felt over me and it was INCREDIBLY accurate. All that to say, my mental state was getting better and better every day that I was pressing into God because I felt loved and listened to.

Not only was my walk with God becoming more fruitful and blossoming more than it has before, but I was also able to grow in my friendship with a family who were encouraging me and loving me like any good friend would. I was also able to feel like I was doing something to improve the world because I was able to tutor the children with things that I’m passionate about. I was able to help someone else out practically and hang out with some of my favorite people.

I was also able to purchase a nice keyboard as my big quarantine purchase and I don’t regret it one bit. It has been something that I’ve been able to use as a tool to worship God and just to fiddle around with. It’s been a fantastic source that I’ve used to “de-stress” and escape reality for a while. I encourage you to find that thing for you, whether that’s an instrument, cooking, going on a walk, cleaning, etc. It’s an absolute necessity.

Quarantine life was awful, but I got through it. Now, everyone is still anxious about COVID-19 and masks are still mandatory. However, a lot of businesses have opened back up. People are allowed to eat inside restaurants again (with precautionary measures), you can get a haircut, you can go to the grocery store after 8pm. Quarantine was awful, but if we do go back into a full lock down again, I feel like I have a better grasp of how to cope. I know that I have a God who has never changed and never will. He is always someone I can rely on!