Hello, my name is Mackenzie Chester. I am the mother of eight young children, and I am humbly asking you to please stop the spread of this virus. For the ones who cannot fight it off on their own, I am asking you to please do whatever you can for the weak. We are in a battle.

I’m not talking about Covid.

I’m talking about fear. We are living in a pandemic of fear unlike anything I have ever seen in my lifetime. It is highly contagious. Our children are inheriting the paralysis that we ourselves are taking on due to fear, anxiety, hostility, hatred, confusion, miscommunication, and misinformation.

Covid is horrible. We have all been touched by loss through it. I cannot even begin to imagine how it has upended the beautiful lives of many that I love. But we cannot live every moment of our lives in fear. We must choose to get up each morning and celebrate the breath in our lungs. For our children. We must create habits and rhythms that will bring joy, even in the direst of circumstances. We must delight in our lives, in our children, in this imperfect world where we are caught between earth and eternity. None of us are promised tomorrow. We must disengage from hate, from the language that divides lifelong friends, from the inability to see through another person’s eyes. We must find beauty in our lives, and help our children to find it as well. We must continue to pray to God for guidance and walk forward in that without fear and without regret.

I beg you: Pray, research, pray, make decisions, pray, revise them if necessary. But do not live in fear, for the sake of those who are too weak to have hope. Find love in your hearts for those who have come to other conclusions about how to end Covid. Don’t attack them, don’t hate them, don’t heap all the problems of the world upon them. Give grace. We need it now, more than ever, in the face of such suffering all over the world.

And above all, speak love. That is the only gift we can give to those who are grieving, and it is strongest medicine we have to cast out this pandemic of fear.