As a follow up to our previous blog post The Village – Resources and Tips for during Social Distancing, we’re posting some more tips from our village, the ICL community.
Your connection with God
- Spend some time in stillness and solitude
- Take a walk in nature
- If you don’t know what to pray, just show up
- Stand outside at night and look at the stars, maybe use that view to connect with the Lord
- Take a walk by water: listen and pray
- Spend some time reading your bible: maybe follow a plan from YouVersion. They have plans for children as well.
- Use the Pause app to unburden your heart and refill with His spirit
- Listen to messages on YouTube that encourage spiritual growth
- Listen to praise and worship music on YouTube
Your connection with others
- Coffee time after church
- Drop ins on Wednesdays
- Connect Groups
- Use video calling * to
- Read together
- Play board games together
- Play online games together
* using Zoom, Skype, Jitsi (you don’t need an account to use Jitsi), Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal…
- Call others to encourage them
- Send cards to essential workers
- Get groceries for others
- Cook a meal and bring it to someone who is living alone
- Help families with children do schoolwork
- Allow your children to cook dinner using the “Schijf van Vijf” as a guide
Caring for yourself
- Make choices that will benefit/guard your mental health
- Do not compare yourself to others
- Find things that are within your control to work on
- Gardening
- Puzzles
- Reading
- Painting
- Coloring Books
- Dance Parties (plenty of dance music on YouTube/Spotify)
- Listening to feel good music
- Exercise with a workout video from YouTube
- Get dressed up and play “restaurant” (the kids can participate too)
- Give yourself permission to “do” things or “pass” with no guilt
- Some people find that having the same structure 5 days a week is helpful to enjoy the weekend
- Try out new recipes
- Declare a holiday: decorate the house and make a special meal
- Create an imaginary coworker that you can blame things in the house (Wendy)
- Listen to authors reading their books online (check Youtube, also bol has some for children)
- Watch an opera/ballet/musical (many are showing the full program on YouTube)
- Take a Coursera course