Corona simply means crown. After all, the coronavirus does look like some kind of horrific crown! I suppose a crowning achievement isn't necessarily a good thing. Putin will be remembered for his crowning achievement of invading Ukraine. For me however, I would like to think that my crowning achievement is my writing. I've plodded on writing throughout the pandemic. Not necessarily my best writing ever, but hopefully honing my craft. When I think about it, I have a greater achievement than my writing during the pandemic. For a start, I kept my sanity! I was training to teach history, a thankless task in the context in which I did it. In the midst I caught covid. Then I got overenthusiastic about pedagogy (I won't bore you), lost sleep, and went mad. A couple of weeks later I was back on the course and plodding on. Having been told that 'you cannot teach with mental [ill] health', I wasn't granted a teaching qualification, but persisted in working in education, a financially undervalued sector in the U.K. During the pandemic, I also became immortalised in Swansea University's Richard Burton Archives (anonymised as 'Colin') for their CoronaDiaries social history project. My diary entry was a suitably morose Spotify playlist, which anachronistically included a song called Chimamanda by Flavour. Allow me to explain. Just before the first lockdown in the U.K., my second daughter, middle name Chimamanda, was conceived. She is my ultimate crowning achievement of the last couple of years, the jewel in the crown as it were! How have I kept hold of my sanity? How has my family held together? What keeps me going? In large part, writing. Writing in and of itself is a bit like social media- a double edged sword. It has strengths and weaknesses. If I was a writer of Mills and Boonesque novels, I think I would have struggled to retain my marbles. Thankfully, I write about the Bible, which is a great source of strength. Take for example this wrote from John's gospel, quoting Jesus: 'In this world, you will have trouble [oh cheers for the reality check!], but be encouraged, I have overcome the world' (John 16:33). As the old children's chorus I used to sing goes 'with Christ in the vessel, we can smile at the storm'. I find that hard times like the pandemic do one of two things for people. They cause them to either cry out to God, or to cry out against Him. Hard times for me- the death of my grandfather, mental illness, work troubles, covid- have only driven me closer to my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. If you're tempted to rail against God for the hard times, I encourage you to cry out to Him rather than against Him. He may well surprise you with His answer. You may feel that God is mute to your cries. Yet maybe this very article is the answer to your prayers and will set you off on a journey that concludes in eternal life! I'm not here to advocate some manmade religion or philosophy. I'm here to commend to you the God who can bring good out of bad, even this pandemic. How do I know? Because God has brought immeasurable good out of the brutal murder of His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Through His crucifixion on our behalf, we can be forgiven and restored to a right relationship with Almighty God. So writing might not be your thing. Why not start with a letter to God? My prompt would be to simply say 'Dear God, here is where I'm at [... insert where you're at here and be honest!]. Meet me where I'm at I pray, in Jesus' name, amen' God bless you with your writing task!