2020: The Year that Shaped Us

What will you remember about 2020?

I mean, yes, I can pretty well guess what most of you are thinking as you read this. Of course you’ll remember the pandemic and all that came with it--virtual learning, homeschooling, working from home, the toilet paper shortage, lockdowns, masks, missing friends, missing your favorite restaurants, reconfigured holiday gatherings, Zoom, Zoom, and more Zoom.  Our country’s racial reckoning and the 2020 national election top our memories no doubt, too.

Perhaps you’ll also remember getting creative with {safely} seeing your neighbors, backyard sprinkler runs, fireside chats, socially distanced parking lot meet ups, getting a new pet. Or perhaps you’d rather forget 2020 and pretend it never happened. [Though even in our wildest dreams, of course, even if we completely forget 2020, our lives forever after will be profoundly different.]

As we mark this final December day off the calendar, our hearts might flutter a bit at getting closer to trashing the entire calendar of 2020, ready to put 2021 up on the wall, full of a hopeful moxie that everything will turn around, that it can’t possibly be a year as disastrous as the one we are currently in. While some of us may have leaned into some of the softer sides of 2020--living at a slower pace, choosing activities with intentionality, feeling less rushed to get everyone to their respective art class or sports practice, spending more time with loved ones because they are just a video call away--even with those softer sides, it’s clear that the majority of us have been looking for a way out of this year before it dares plunge us any deeper into the upside down.

I love the new year. New Year’s Eve has become an evening I look forward to with a sense of renewal, reflection, and promise. NYE is cozy in our world--nothing glittery or showy for it. Snacks and movies, watching our favorite episode of a beloved TV show, choosing a countdown to watch, Christmas lights shining in the background. Sometimes I am still awake at midnight, other times not. No matter how we ring it in, it remains that constant, that time of reflecting on what was and what will be. 

It would be easy to look at 2020 as a weird sort of mistake; as a year not worth celebrating as it comes to an end. The year when many of us felt completely sunk in the gender gap.  The year when parenting, teaching, and working all collided making us feel completely inadequate in every sector. Many of us have simply turned to surviving this year; we can’t even think about thriving.

But what if we didn’t discount 2020?  What if our New Year’s Eve celebrations and reflections still held space for this year as a year to be documented and remembered and one that has no doubt shaped the world we are making for our children?  What if we didn’t see this as the terrible, no good, very bad year that was but instead saw it as a year worth learning from? I am not asking you to lean into toxic positivity or dismiss the raw feelings that have simmered over the past nine months. I am asking that even in the midst of the overwhelm and the great uncovering of our unsustainable obsession with productivity here in the Western world, that you take these last few weeks of the year to pause. To reflect. To lean into the joys and the learnings and the moments of 2020 that simply took your breath away.

Here are some reflections stems to get you started. Maybe jot them down or simply pull one or two out to think about. Write your responses in a Google doc or journal. Read through them together as a family on New Year’s Eve. Or simply reflect. Whatever works best for you.

In 2020…

1. What are you most proud of?

2. What did you learn about your children?

3. What did you learn about yourself?

4. What memory makes you belly laugh?

5. What memory makes you hopeful for the new year?

6. [Scroll through the pictures on your phone]: Choose a photo from this year and tell your family and friends a story about what that photo represents to you about 2020.

7. In what specific ways did you succeed?

8. In what specific ways did you persevere?

9. What have your children taught you?

10. What new foods did you discover?

11. What new talents did you discover?

12. What new games did you start playing?

13. What new traditions began?

14. What will you miss?

15. What will you celebrate?

16. What project did you complete?

17. What project did you start?

18. When did you get creative with turning disappointment into joy?

19. When did you want to give up….but didn’t?

20. When did you give yourself a break?

So I ask again, what will you remember about 2020?

Let it be said of us that even in the midst of the tumult of our time that we were able to stretch without breaking; and for those of us that feel broken, that even in our brokenness that we can find purpose and light. No, this year was not easy. No, 2021 will not be a magic fix. But perhaps we can lean into the lessons of a difficult year and capture some of the moments that kept it from completely shattering.

A Walk through the Wilderness: Reflections on Lent and Covid-19

As I write this, a cup of coffee sits to my left. I gave up coffee for Lent. Lent: a time of fasting {of giving something up} in the Christian tradition. Lent: a period of 40 days, a season of reflection and preparation before the celebration of Easter. Lent: the time in which we remember Jesus' own fasting and withdrawal into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.

I gave up coffee for Lent.

....and then the world flung upside down.

The coronavirus entered our news feeds and our psyches. As we read and watched and wondered, it entered our country and our cities and our local communities. As it continues to wreak its havoc on the health and safety of everyone around the globe, we watch and we wait and we wonder and we pray. And we wash our hands and we stay home. We listen to what we should be doing {or not doing} to somehow slow the spread of this awful, deadly illness.

And I honestly don't know what else to do.

There's something about the quarantining and the social distancing happening over Lent that is somehow oddly holy in the midst of all that feels incredibly unjust right now; and I am trying to figure out what to do with that.

And after multiple fitful nights of sleep and early morning wake ups just to get some headway through the work of the day before the house wakes up, I went back on my Lenten vow and brewed the coffee.

And it was good.

And as I sit here with the coffee to my left and this tension in my heart about the practices of Lent and the holiness of this time and the unjust world that keeps revealing its brokenness, my heart is heavy. My spirit is tired. I need to turn off the news but I crave information. I crave preparedness. It's at the core of my being.

I need to unplug from social media but that's where I am feeling most connected these days. It's also where my anxiety increases as I read the news articles and step into the lives of others who are making the most of their days with kitchen organizations, homemade science experiments, and hands-on learning activities while I can barely get it together to put real pants on.

And I don't know where to find the balance.

And I imagine what Jesus felt going away for 40 days where he was tempted and tested. And I think about how we are all being tested right now. How our country, how our society, how our communities and our families are being tested. And right now Lent {for me} is not about giving up that one thing or continuing to give up that one thing.   Right now, everything about where we are is completely unknown and unchartered.

We are in the wilderness.

And we won't be out of the wilderness by Easter. April 12th may be a "beautiful time" on the Christian calendar, but it will not be a healthy time for us to celebrate en masse. We are going to have to continue our walk through the wilderness even in our celebrations, even as we find beauty in the ashes, even as we know that a more joyous time of gathering is indeed coming. And, yes, I do believe that beautiful and celebratory time is coming.

This walk through the wildnerness is not what I had planned in my Lenten practice this year. I imagined these 40 days as a time of reflection, of {minor} sacrifice, of going through the daily and weekly routines of life remembering Jesus' sacrifice and His gift of magnificent grace.  I imagined a holy celebration with people I love on Easter Sunday morning, of a family photo at the foot of the cross in our sanctuary, of a backyard egg hunt, and a table full of comfort food and the faces of loved ones.

But even through this walk, through the uncertainty and the unknown, I do know that life continues. The paths may meander and enter periods of darkness, but sunlight and growth and water still find their way through the trees. We are all walking these meandering paths together--perhaps in different step--but indeed together.

Every wildnerness has a path out. We will find the path out. And when we do, we will turn our faces towards the sun.

And we will embrace one another.
And we will shake each others hands.
And we will dance in the streets.
And we will shout with joy that the resurrection has come.

Our world will be different. We will be different. Our time will be marked by what was before and what comes after.

Perhaps that is the hope that gets us through one more day.

Alleluia. He is coming.