Lessons from the “Plagues” of the Past Year and a Half Part 4: Perspective, Resilience, and Asking “What Now?”

By the time you reach a certain point in a difficult season, something shifts. You stop asking why this is happening and start asking what now? Not because you’ve figured it all out, but because staying stuck in disbelief takes more energy than you have left.

If you’ve been reading along, you know that the past year and a half has been… a lot. And that’s not me being dramatic – that’s me being succinct.

At one point, I actually wrote everything down. Partly to process it, and partly to reassure myself that I wasn’t exaggerating. Seeing it all in one place was both sobering and oddly clarifying.

Here’s what that season looked like, in order:

• My husband’s cancer diagnosis and more than a month in the hospital

• Two major floods in two properties within one week

• Carbon monoxide filling our house

• A new furnace – right before Christmas

• A dead animal under the hood of the truck

• Termites and unexpected structural repairs

• Two front teeth pulled, followed by a long, multi-step implant process

• A dryer unknowingly venting into our wall for ten months

• Thermostats failing in two properties

• A bed bug scare

• A water leak under the sink

• A propane leak at the beach house

• A second furnace failure just before Christmas – almost exactly one year after the first

• And, just to round things out, a fractured wrist after slipping on ice in our driveway just before the end-of-year holidays

Seeing it written out still makes me shake my head. I wouldn’t believe it either if I hadn’t lived it.

Some of these things were serious. Some were expensive. Some were more annoying than anything else. And some were just… absurd. The kind of absurd where you find yourself laughing out loud and saying, “Are you kidding me?!” because that’s the only reasonable response left.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I also lost two front teeth – not figuratively, literally. What I assumed would be a root canal turned into extractions, bone grafts, months of healing, and a temporary flipper that makes eating awkward and smiling a calculated decision. It’s not life-threatening, but it’s a daily reminder that even “small” things carry weight when you’re already worn thin.

Here’s the lesson that surprised me most:
None of these things, on their own, broke us.

What wore us down was the constancy. The sense that as soon as one problem was resolved (or on its way to being resolved), another one stepped forward and cleared its throat. The feeling that your margin for error – emotional, financial, physical – had quietly disappeared.

And that’s where perspective became essential.

Perspective doesn’t mean pretending things aren’t hard. It means recognizing what still exists alongside the difficulty: people who show up, professionals who do the right thing, systems that eventually work, and moments of unexpected grace – like renters who catch a flood early, a cleaning crew that notices what could have gone unseen, or a warm fire in the fireplace when the furnace fails.

Resilience, I’ve learned, isn’t about toughness. It’s about adaptability. It’s about taking the next reasonable step, making the next necessary call, and trusting that even if the hits keep coming, you can keep responding.

And humor? Humor is not denial.

Humor is oxygen.
It is not optional!

Because sometimes, when everything piles up at once, the only thing left to do is take a deep breath, shake your head, and say, “Are you kidding me?!” – then get back to figuring out what comes next.

I wouldn’t wish this season on anyone. But I wouldn’t trade the lessons either.

Here’s hoping this particular “plague season” is finally coming to an end.