Gracie Girl Blog

God likes to wreck my plans. 

ha. yup. As I’m beginning writing this, I’m sitting in the Palm Beach Airport waiting to fly into Charlotte and then Roanoke, to then load my car with stuff from my dorm, and drive home for maybe the remainder of the semester.

My friends and I just keep sitting here thinking about how crazy it is that just a few days ago, we thought we’d be going back to school on Monday. Now, we are all going home to wait out a virus that might be a bigger deal than we thought and find out how good or bad our self discipline really is with these online classes.

In the last two days we talked a lot about how life can change in an instant. One of my friends said thank goodness its this, just online classes and not something much worse or tragic. I agree, there’s a lot to be thankful for, but also this current situation is hard and it’s ok to admit that.

I think this will be one of those things we’ll look back on and say “I remember where I was when the coronavirus breakout happened.” Since I find it interesting and worth documenting, I’ll tell you where I was.

We left for spring break thinking we’d be back to classes in a week. On Wednesday, four friends from school and I were sitting on the beach when we heard UVA was going online for at least three weeks. I texted Hannah to confirm. We didn’t think much else until we heard other schools were making similar statements. We got home from the beach and someone posted VT would release a statement at 4:00pm. 4:00 hit and no statement. Another post said there would be one at 5:00pm, we waited but were skeptical   people weren’t just making this up. 5:00 hit and sure enough, we got an email saying we’d go online for the rest of the semester.

The next 24 hours, all of us felt every emotion as we began to process what this meant. Some of my friends decided to stay longer in Florida while me and another friend decided we’d rather be home (and booked flights for Friday, thus how I ended up in the Palm Beach Airport). We continued to get emails, most of them bringing more questions than answers. Over the weekend, we suddenly were terminating our campus housing contracts and scheduling move-out dates 2 months too early.

This may sound stupid, but throughout this TikTok has blown up with endless posts about the situation. I saw many with people talking about canceled tournaments and asking people to comment what event got canceled for them. I wish it was one event that got canceled for me — It feels like the next 2 months of my life got canceled.

My emotional rollercoaster:

• Fear: Not being home stressed me out. I flew to Roanoke and then got stuff from my dorm and my car and drove home all in the same day. Everyone deals differently, some people are perfectly fine sitting on the beach, but I for sure am not those people.
• Hope: I could barely talk to my mom without hearing the word “revival” and I believe she’s right. While everything was being canceled, online church has begun. I hope it gets really hard to be on the internet without running into sermons and scripture. 
• Thankfulness: I’m glad I’m at the age I am, I’m glad I started taking vitamins and began strengthening my immune system because of college. I’m thankful I come from a family who wants to give, and give even more in a time like this. I’m also so thankful to come home to a family that loves me and who loves the Lord. I’m praying for my friends going home to difficult environments.
• Sadness: I feel like my freshman year has been cut short except for the fact that I still have online classes. I feel robbed of spring in sweet Blacksburg. I feel like I’m missing out on relationship building.
• Fear again: what if I get it? what if we all get it?
• Hope again: God is mighty to save. He is faithful. He is using this for good. He has made promises He will not break. God is hard to ignore in times like these.

Friend, I pray you find hope in the Lord in this shaky time. If you already know the Lord, I pray you take your quiet times seriously and love your neighbor more than ever. If you aren’t sure about this God-person, I hope you maybe look around online for some sermons. The pastors are bringing the truth, God has words for us and I want to be ready to hear them. He is in the fire with us, He is unstoppable, more unstoppable than this virus.

All the ends of the earth

will remember and turn to the Lord,

and all the families of the nations

will bow down before him,

for dominion belongs to the Lord

and He rules over the nations.

Psalm 22:27-28