As depressing as this may sound, and I truly don’t want to be a downer, the only word I can come up with to fully and accurately describe 2020 has been grief. The year has been heavy and hard and ultimately heartbreaking in so many ways. Grief isn’t necessarily negative, but there is a weight to it – to love something, really anything, is to grieve for it.

When I look back on 2020, I imagine an old-timey newspaper salesman (paperboy?) on the street yelling “Extra! Extra! There is immeasurable joy! There is immeasurable grief!”  When I find myself in seasons of sorrow, I can more clearly see the true joy of my life- the things that really matter. The valley is the place of vision.

This week Ray and I watched a Dolly Parton documentary on Netflix and it talked about how many of her early songs were incredibly dark. Mountain music is dark. It talks of struggle, poverty, heartbreak, and death. In the future when people look back on 2020 I’m sure there will be songs written of sorrow and death… but maybe there will also be songs of vision, creativity, justice, and how we moved forward. 

I don’t have anything really profound to say about 2021, but we’ll have a new baby a few weeks in, which inevitably will start a new season in our lives. I’m going into 2021 hopeful and my prayer is that you are too.