the pandemic // the beginning
In March 2020, spring break came and then never left.
We got the email that the rest of the semester was online and then the disappointing phone calls flooded in. Summer mission trip - canceled. New job - canceled. Semester art show - canceled. My mom called with a scary concern about a mass on her back but couldn’t get access to a doctor. All of a sudden the world seemed to be falling apart. I threw half of my stuff in a friend’s apartment and shoved the other half in the back of my car. After saying goodbye to ocean at 4am, I headed across the desert sad and confused.
The sky seemed to be upset with the world too. I drove through dense fog that turned into rain then into snow and sleet with pockets of blue skies and sunshine in between. Thirteen and a half hours later I pulled up to Sami’s lil warm house in Glorieta, New Mexico. I spent a few days there in the mountains with the camp family, embracing mountain air but poorly facing the reality of loss and sudden changes in all our lives.
So we did one thing that made sense…we danced…
…and laughed around a fire.
I eventually arrived in Texas and spent two weeks at my mom’s house in quarantine. My brother and I utilized our old high school’s unwanted weight room equipment and set up a gym in our garage. Our days were spent lifting and sleeping.
Some of Josh’s high school friends began coming over to work out too since all of the gyms were shut down.
Right before I moved to Bandera, my brother’s school made their announcement that school would no longer be in person so we drove to Arkansas to move him out of his dorm room. On our way home, the truck made a horrific noise, shuttered and then slowed to halt. We pulled off the freeway to call for help. We were in the middle of nowhere and light was fading. The nearest tow truck was coming from an hour away but informed us that they could only take the truck but not us. It was a new rule that the there could be no passengers in the tow truck. So we desperately called everyone we knew who lived slightly close to our location. No luck. Thankfully, the guy agreed to drive us to the nearest town since we weren’t showing any symptoms when he arrived.
We dropped us off behind a Walmart auto center and we waited for three hours for Dad to pick us up. It was a long night. That was the last time we saw the truck.
Amber had called me a few days before I began my journey back to Texas. I picked up the phone and all she said was “It’s time to come home…”. We had been sort of joking about living together for about a year. But it never made sense. After Camp Eagle, my life was in California and her’s was still in Texas. I had three years left and no idea where I would end up after school. It just never made sense. Yet, she had truly believed it would happen.
I felt a strong pull towards Bandera but had no idea why. There was nothing there for me besides my friend. But the idea of living in the hill country again and being close to Camp Eagle made me excited. So…I moved…again.
Our days were slow and simple. Wake up. Run. Work or do school. Paint/ sing/ dance. River swim. Cook. Repeat. I slept in the laundry room on a piece of fence panelling. However we slept on the porch quite often…in the breeze, under the stars. We talked about Jesus. How he was working within our hearts and in the world. How He was making everyone in the world slow down and be simple again too.
The Sorianos instantly adopted me. It was weird. Total strangers inviting me in and calling me family. They wanted to know about my life and what I thought about God. I didn’t understand why at the time, I was just thankful to have new friends in this new place. The social distancing didn’t stop their fight for unity in their communities. I saw them love and pray in such a way that brought me to tears. All I knew was that whatever they were fighting for, I wanted to be part of it.
