Parenting during the Pandemic

The Breslin Family: Their Pandemic Year

We had the joy of filming the Breslin Family again this year in their Durham, NC home. Chris Breslin is the pastor at the Oak Church in Durham and Rachel is a talented writer and physical therapist.

Rachel wrote the most beautiful piece on parenting during the last year. The pandemic year. Her words resonate so deeply with how this last year has felt for me, filled with sorrow and joy and everything in between.

Here Rachel says:

"I have spent most minutes of every day with and near the ones I love most, and I know them now in a way that I might never have, without the constant-ness of this time. We have wept, laughed, despaired, and hoped, together. We have learned to love one another, even on the days that it is very hard to like each other. We appreciate, enjoy, and need each other differently, now.  It has been grueling, heart-stretching work for all involved, but breathtaking to behold. 

Woven in with these moments of beauty and growth, there are other times that I wonder how we can possibly do this for one more day. Yet I see so many ways that the rare gifts of these drawn-out days outweigh the loss.  I feel keenly aware that we will never, ever have "this" again. There is no way to recreate the Good that we have found here, and I'm not sure I would have found it any other way. So, as weird (and privileged) as it sounds: I have truly cherished these days. And I pray that as we continue to live through this season, it will be with an altered understanding of undeserved grace and unconditional love, and a beautifully expanded capacity to hold both sorrow and joy in the same hands."

Watch their Family Film below: