One of the greatest challenges around the coronavirus restrictions and shutdowns has been not knowing when they will be over, whether we are bracing for a few weeks, months, or years of distancing and precautions.

On Sunday, I saw many posts from across the country about returning to church in-person for the first time. But I was thinking about the opposite—how the projection for returning to church actually seems to be getting further away as the pandemic continues. (My church does not have an anticipated date for reopening.)

I remember the “snowstorm mentality” to gear up and bunker down when the pandemic began in March. Halee Gray Scott opens her recent article on quarantine sobriety with a story about noticing a shopper loading up on wine at Costco. But the comforts and distractions that may have gotten us through a few weeks—be they drinking or Netflix binges—may not be what helps us in the long haul.

As Rachel Anderson wrote last week:

We hear about parents who have given up on distance-schooling, lost track of screen time limits, or reverted to mainly eating carbs for dinner. To be sure, caregiver burnout is real, and these narratives can rightly give families permission to experience exhaustion and grieve the loss of normalcy.

But, placed on repeat, they can function like a pandemic version of the “wine mom” meme, training our focus on immediate discomforts while, ultimately, enervating the family and enshrining habits that are unhealthy and unsustainable.

The initial changes related to coronavirus were supposed to be through the end of the month, then through the end of the school year, then through the end of the summer. Now we’re approaching a time that so many of us expected to be “back to normal” and still juggling burdens of caregiving, working, socializing, and managing our spiritual and mental health. We have to be thinking about the long-term.

In some ways, I thrive under short-term resets. I’ve completed several Whole 30s, cutting all sugar, grains, legumes, and dairy from my diet for a month. I love the challenge of a Lenten fast each year. But ultimately, I’m a delayed gratification junkie—so all the habits I tried to reset come right back when the allotted time ends.

My desire for a dramatic change has kept me from developing sustainable habits slowly. I worry about what that means for a pandemic that has no expiration date. When my fitness app challenges and Bible reading plans end, have I just been checking the boxes with “healthy” distractions? Or am I really changing my mindset and growing?

Back at the start of Lent, which coincided with the initial spread of the virus in the US, CT ran an article about “giving up fasting” for Lent. I’ve thought back to the question it posed: “If Lent becomes a substitute for a lifestyle of pursuing the spiritual discipline of biblical fasting, or if it loses the heart of devotion and simply becomes a trendy ritual, is it not worthless?” The short-term fix—even when beneficial—is not as good as a long-term solution.

It seems counterintuitive to say that “taking it one day/week at time” is a long-term solution, but it keeps things manageable. When it comes to facing the unknown future of the pandemic, it can be intimidating to think out to the end of the year and next year and imagine ourselves stuck in the same restrictions, the same rising infection rates, or worse. I don’t know what will come around the next corner, but I can manage the window of time ahead of me: Here’s my devotion for today. Here’s my meal plan for cooking from home this week.

Maybe I won’t read the Bible every day. Maybe we’ll resort to frozen pizza next week. But I’m able do what I can right now, to do my best in the circumstances and in this moment, and trust that next week I’ll do my best—by God’s grace—then too.

And perhaps this day by day attitude was what I needed all along. After all, we read in James, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”

Kate