QUARANTINE BLOG # 533

September 14, 2021

Hospitals in the southern United States are running dangerously low on space in intensive care units, as the Delta variant has led to spikes in coronavirus cases not seen since last year’s deadly winter wave.  In Alabama, all I.C.U. beds are currently occupied.  In recent days, dozens of patients have needed beds that were not available.  They are placed in the waiting room, and some are in the back of ambulances.

Unvaccinated Americans are 10 times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid in the advance of the Delta variant than the vaccinated, according to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Dr. Scott Harris, Alabama’s state health officer said, “That’s the reason we’re in the situation that we’re in.  Virtually all of our deaths are people who are unvaccinated.”

Hospitalizations among children under 18 are also higher than ever during this wave of the virus, driven largely by surges among children in the least vaccinated states.

👉  Writing for The New York Times, Jenny Block told a great feel-good story that featured a diagnosis of leukemia, separation amounting to quarantine, and a wedding.  Now that lead doesn’t sound “feel-good” but stick with me.

Dr. Kaitlin Flannery and Dr. John Mancini were 29 and 28 when they met on the dating app Bumble in April 2018. They set up a date, which, according to John is the only date for which Kaitlin was on time.

Three months into dating, John turned down an opportunity from his company to work in Ireland for six months, because he did not want to be away from Kaitlin. “When I said no to my boss, he said, ‘Let me guess. There’s a girl.’”

After relocating to Boston in September 2019, John started feeling more and more tired. They attributing the fatigue to stress from moving and starting a new job. But in January 2020, the couple found out that John had leukemia.

But by March it became clear that the two had to be separated, as Kaitlin noted that she was working in a hospital and “taking care of kids from all over the country and world.” For his safety, the couple lived apart for three months. John lived at his family’s home in Rhode Island. He would come back to Boston for his doctor’s appointments, and Kaitlin would put a new load of groceries in the trunk and wave to him.

On August 17, 2020, John proposed via cell phone. Kaitlin said, “I was so excited I forgot to say yes, prompting John to ask a second time.”

The couple were wed August 14, 2021. Because of John’s life-long fascination with dinosaurs, a six-foot wooden Allosaurus wearing a floral collar matching the bride’s bouquet greeted guests. Kaitlin invited her two sisters to join in her father-daughter dance, which then soon became a father-daughters-dinosaur dance, as friends brought an inflated Tyrannosaurus Rex to join the party.

👉  From the daily funnies:

👉  Elon Musk is set to take a giant leap ahead of Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson in the billionaires’ battle to open up space for tourism. Jeff and Richard recently launched themselves into zero gravity on suborbital “hops” lasting about 15 minutes – from launch to touch down. But Elon will top them this week by sending the world’s first all-civilian crew into full orbit. The SpaceX founder will not be going himself, but in a major milestone for space tourism, four private citizens will board the Inspiration4” mission.

A Crew Dragon space craft, launched on a Falcon 9 rocket, is scheduled to blast off from Kennedy Space Center Wednesday. Space craft and crew will travel around the Earth for three days. It will orbit higher than the 254-mile altitude of the International Space Station, before a splashdown in the Atlantic.

In July, Branson, on his Virgin Galactic rocket plane, went above 50 miles, which is regarded as space by the US Federal Aviation Administration. But he was short of the Karman line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, 62 miles up. A few weeks later Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, went just beyond the Karman line.

The trip is being paid for by billionaire Jared Isaacman, 38, founder of money-processing company Shift4 Payments, who will be on board. Isaacman has said he hopes to use the mission to raise an additional $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, pledging the first $100 million himself.

👉  Some “Signs for the Times:”

👉  Think about it:

👉  Today’s close is from New Morning Mercies, by Paul David Tripp.

It is a simple fact of nature that once the leaves are off the tree, you cannot put them back again. Once you have uttered words, you cannot rip them out of another’s hearing. Once you have acted on a choice, you cannot relive that moment again. Once you have behaved in a certain way at a certain time, you cannot ask for a redo. You and I just don’t have the option of reliving our past to try to do better any more than we have the power to glue the leaves back on the tree and make them live once again. What’s done is done and cannot be redone.

But we all wish we could live certain moments and certain decisions over again. If you’re at all humble and able to look back on your past with a degree of accuracy, you experience regret. None of us has always desired the right thing. None of us has always made the best decision. None of us has always been humble, kind, and loving. We haven’t always jumped to serve and forgive. None of us has always spoken the truth. None of us has been free of anger, envy, or vengeance. None of us has walked through life with unblemished nobility. None of us. So all of us have reason for remorse and regret. All of us are left with the sadness of what has been done and can’t be undone.

That’s why all of us should daily celebrate the grace that frees us from the regret of the past. This freedom is not the freedom of retraction or denial. It’s not the freedom of rewriting our history. No, it’s the freedom of forgiving and transforming grace. This grace welcomes me to live with hope in the present because it frees me to leave my past behind. All of what I look back on and would like to redo has been fully covered by the blood of Jesus. I no longer need to carry the burden of the past on my shoulders, so I am free to fully give myself to what God has called me to in the here and now. “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).

Are you paralyzed by your past? Are you living under the dark shroud of the “if-onlys”? Does your past influence your present more than God’s past, present, and future grace? Have you received and are you living out of the forgiveness that is yours because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus?

Quit being paralyzed, by your past. Grace offers you life in the present and a guarantee of a future.

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