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2020: A Strangely Positive Look Back

This year has been a shock to the entire world's system, and we have certainly lived through a year that will be mentioned in history books forever. 

Yet for us, as I look back, it has been - all in all - a good year. One that turned out extremely differently to what we expected, different from anything we've ever known. It's had its hard places of course (although we never actually suffered any real hardship, as so many in this country and around the world have and still are), but as we come up for air on the other side of the 2020 experience, we are alright. 

Financially

While so many people in the country have taken a huge financial hit, Mr.'s work has remained stable (for now - he's in aerospace, so there will be long term repercussions if people continue to fly less) and except for a three-week furlough at 80% pay, he has just continued to do his work from home.

As for me, just as the first lockdown came in I began taking on agency work as an electronic notetaker: right at the time that all the universities had to suddenly deliver their courses online! So demand for notetakers was huge, and I was able to take on as much work as I could fit around the kids. This has helped our financial situation tremendously - we've gone from turning every penny over twice and still having more month that money, to having the freedom to pay for kids' sports classes here and there, having coffee out without impacting our grocery budget etc. ... it's actually taken a big, daily burden of stress off our shoulders.

Since April I've continued working a few hours a week, as many as I could fit around the kids, and my hope and prayer is that this work will continue to be available.

Family life

At the start of 2020, one of the main ambitions for me was to try and incorporate a "slow day" at home every week. Because, as I've written before, I have never been good at staying home, and we would be out and about every day at a pace that I was beginning to feel detracted from our quality of life. 

Well, did I ever get a crash course in staying home this year!

I'm not saying I loved every minute, but for me personally it was an eye opening, beautiful experience to find that being at home could be relationship building, purposeful, and fulfilling. I had always considered any day spent at home as a wasted day. That is truly no longer the case.

We have lived this year much more intensely together, as a family. 

On the downside, during the first lockdown, we never saw the kids grandparents, for months! And because once we started seeing them regularly again, we needed to limit our outside interactions so as to protect them, we have been unable to meet with friends for nine months now. The children have been missing their friends more than I have, because I'm able to stay in touch using technology, whereas for them, there's a pretty complete break. My heart hurt as they kept asking for their friends, and it hurt even more as they asked less and less, knowing what the answer would be. Seeing friends, being part of our community, is the most precious thing we have had to give up for the duration, and we can't wait to get back to that.

Faith life

At the end of 2019, I had a deep conversation with Mr. - putting out in the open for the first time, after years of contemplation and prayer and so much inner struggle - and told him that I have been so drawn to Catholicism (for a myriad of reasons, which I might put in a blog post sometime) that I could no longer hide... that I wanted to live in full integrity and follow Jesus where he led me.

It stunned him, and he took several months to think, pray, and wrap his mind around this. Finally in August, when we were at last able to see our church leaders in person (albeit in the garden), we let them know and parted ways in friendship in Christ. 

This wasn't a calculated move and certainly the timing of mid-pandemic hasn't helped us to build new relationships with people in our parish, but that again is something we hope to get stuck into in 2021. For now, we are feeling very much out at sea and on our own, but we know that Jesus is able both to calm the storm and to walk with us through it - and as long as we have him, we have everything we need.

So farewell, 2020, strange year we will remember when our grandchildren one day ask about it. We will tell them about how the world suddenly stopped, but we all also tell them about the many ways in which we were protected, and how much good came out of a challenging time. It is well.

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