We’ve enjoyed receiving the picture cards from our friends around the country, counting blessings and finding the joy of this ______ year.
This impossible, unprecedented, ridiculous, frustrating, agonizing, surprising, miraculous year.
For the first time in decades, I haven’t had the mental ability to create one of our epic family collage storytelling cards for 2020. Literally it turned into a 54-page photo book. The image on this post, however remains my favorite single image of the year. Jack leaping into the icy waters of Crater Lake in complete and utter freedom, trust and thrill.
How do we face a holiday season with all we’ve been through? Remember the moment in the Grinch story that always makes our throat clog? When they all circle-up and sing “heart-to-heart and hand-in-hand,” even though the selfish Grinch has stolen all the stuff? In the sweetest way, that’s how this Christmas feels. We realize, maybe desperately, that our hope is in something intangible and real. Our joy must come from a deeper place.
Amidst so many things that hurt, our family feels this blessing and we pray you do too. We are desperately grateful for the closeness of family — goofballs as we are.
Remember January 2020? Back then, it felt extra-important to set goals and cast vision and dream big. A new decade! So we made a specific list, all centered around optimism, enthusiastic goals for family, vocation, work, health. Three of our children are magnificently married; all six are pursuing their best dreams and building powerful relationships in their lives. That’s the important big picture, right? Yes, of course.
How could we have imagined that we’d face the layered hardships of a pandemic while also facing our cultural demons, one major family health crisis, job loss and a few wildfires too?
We’ve learned this year how to hold tight to the love between us. We’ve learned how to discuss as intellectuals and how to honor another’s priorities different from our own. We’ve sought the core of our faith and marveled at how God works in and through each of us in specific, unique ways.
We’ve changed physically too. We’ve learned that masks are normal, and we politely cut wide berths on the hiking trail. My husband has two new titanium knees and that fact alone would have been enough for the year’s big news story. If only.
Our grand daughters Ruby and Luna have transformed like time-lapse blossoming sunflowers. Also exciting is that their wise parents decided to relocate to the Pacific Northwest to be closer; one of the only positive things accelerated by Covid-19. Riley graduated Corban U, and as quickly as she could, transferred her PA studies and her life to her happy place. She’s back in Manhattan Beach, and thriving. Jack is 15 and he spent the summer finding joy with close friends and building not only his music talents but an impressive mini-production studio. Plus he’s grown at least a foot.
Everyone’s hair is longer. (And it looks good!)
We’ve played more games together, completed more puzzles and hiked more waterfalls than we might have without the pandemic. And together leaped off real and metaphorical cliffs. We drew in close.
Many of us have discovered we are happier and healthier without the scrolling time on social media. Ask around; once we got past the hilarity of the early, innocent mask and quarantine jokes, the damage to our psyche from the endless feed felt all too real.
I’ve been hustling start-ups all year supporting big ideas for great work. It’s felt difficult and frustrating, and – surprise – the actual opportunity is to write the book I’ve been promising myself for a decade. My great husband Steve has been on the the team that shepherds a University through this gauntlet of survival, and on a critical mission. He is a constant miracle to us.
Our marriage has learned to be sweeter and kinder; a certain refuge and source of strength.
Church has become something different than arriving on Sunday to a building as a matter of routine and good rhythm. Church has become being present for neighbors and finding the meaning of a community of people who share our desire to grow… and need our help.
So looking back on the images of the year, it’s nothing short of remarkable.
2020 will be the big asterisk on every story for generations to come. Our prayer is to have your asterisk not only say that it was odd because of tragic circumstances, but because it was a year of stunning growth in shaping our understanding in ways that will serve us forever.
Well done you. You’re here and you are stronger now.
For 2021, Perhaps it’s best just to say we accept any challenge.
Ready for anything, together.
