One word describes everyone’s 2020

Do you ever pick a word for your year? A theme for a season? No matter what you might have picked, this year’s realities probably surpassed what you anticipated or expected. 2020 was full of… surprises, to say the least. Sitting here in yoga leggings and a sparkly sweater, feeling grateful to be with my family while feeling a little like something’s missing, I consider these dichotomies. It would seem that there’s one word that kind of sums up everything. (And no, it’s not a cuss word.) If 2020 was anything, it has got to be the year of “and”.

Struggle and blessing. Disappointment and joy. Frustration and breakthrough. Open eyes and hurting hearts. It was year of hugging the ones around you closer and tighter while missing those too far away, or worse, having gone and left an unfillable hole. It was a year of tremendous growth and some real pain. A year where you feel blessed to be home and yet miss going out. Year of losing of some things, while gaining some more of what matters most. Figuring some things out and understanding there’s so much that you never will.

2020 was, or felt like, one of the biggest mixed bags of blessing and trial. It has even seemed to hold onto its job until the very final moments, the last gasps. If you to find yourself ringing in the new year with some mix of emotions- maybe even yoga pants on the bottom and a sparkly sweater on top, too- then you my friend, might have found your word to sum up 2020. Your year might have been an “AND” year, too.

The crazy thing about “and” though, is that it holds a whole lot of space for grace. Where two things coexists that are seemingly impossible at the same time, Grace is a bridge between them. Grace is where God comes. It’s the bridge between what was, and what could have been. Between joy and grief, between love and learning more. Between here and the now, yesterday and today. Between heaven and earth. Grace is a meeting place.

As we stand facing 2021 and a whole new year yet to discover, I hope that you can meet up with Grace upon the bridge. And there, meeting His Love, you can walk across the bridge together.

It’s a good idea, too, to leave behind what you’re able to leave behind. It help you recognize grace when you stumble upon it. Help you really embrace it when you find it. Leave the things like bitterness, anger, and pain behind as soon as you can, and whatever else is heavy, unbecoming, loathsome, cumbersome .

For whatever you may have lost, I pray you carry with you only the salvageable things forward. Keeping what it taught you and what you learned. (Sometimes it came at a very high price.) The things that remain (like faith, Hope, and love.) Things that don’t weigh you down. Without carrying the extra heavy stuff. Regret, worry, disappointment. Because it’s important to not get weighed down.

“Letting go of what is behind pressing on for what is ahead.”

Cheers to 2020. Thankful for what has brought you here and determined to leave behind anything but the best. Cheers to holding onto the blessings, the beauty, the important things. Letting go of what you can’t control. Acknowledging what we’ve lost, what’s been painful, and choosing to not carry what we don’t need any further.

Standing at the edge of a new year. Rejoicing over it- what has brought us here, what’s behind, and what is yet ahead.
Trusting that whatever it is is going to be brighter. That we’re more ready. Ready to move ahead, into a great new unknown.
With more strength AND gratitude than we knew last year.

Thanks 2020. It’s been real.
AND we’re glad we’ve made it over to the other side.