An incredibly popular ice breaker question that comes up whenever someone is trying to be deep without being too deep is “What in your life would you change?” The theory is you look back at your life and find this moment you deeply regret and say, “I would do this instead,” or some such like that.
I hate that question. I know Star Trek V is a trash movie, but it had one scene that taught 10/11 year old me an important lesson.
“I need my pain.” It’s what makes me who I am. My alcoholic father, my painful shyness and inability to transition to Texas so I retreated into books, my Mom’s car accident, my Dad died when I was 23, my miscarriage, and a dozen other wounds I’ve suffered. All of that makes me who I am now.
As do my joys.
How do we know what the highest mountain or the sunniest day is like if we don’t have valleys or stormy days?
We need more than moments.
With that, here is why I’m thankful for 2020
The memes have been amazing!
Life can be hard. My reaction to difficulties is to look for the laugh, and there was plenty to laugh at this year.
After having several of my shared memes deleted by FB, I started screenshotting the ones I particularly enjoyed to save for later. I rather want to make a 2020 meme book. It would make me smile and laugh for hours.
I enjoyed laughing about apocalypse bingo. Or trying to predict the crazy things people were panic buying.
I laughed at the comparisons made to different events.
New friends were made
This is going to be hard to explain, but I’ll do my best.
Our church, like most churches, divides kids by grade and gender. Going into the quarantine we had tried mixing the girls up from time to time to try and break up cliques and break up kids who distracted each other.
After lockdown, we had assigned groups. I was assigned the quieter, bookworms and musical fans. This suited me perfectly and over the course of 8 months, we’ve created a great group that supports each other and spurs each other towards God.
I don’t think that would have happened without lockdown. We would have kept on with our non-functioning plan, trying to make it work.
My boys built a community of nerds among homeschoolers. They’ve got a thriving Discord channel that is filled with memes (YAY memes!) and lots of inside jokes.
The school year began with a looser lockdown, and our co-op was able to meet in person, to a limited extent. Since our co-op is mainly meeting at parks, it’s all out in the open.
BUT, there’s been a huge influx of high school boys, and by huge I mean the number of boys possibly doubled, and my boys just added them all to their group of friends.
They run a D and D group of boys that’s probably 10 or so kids, and it makes me smile each time the boys talk about it.
We learned new things about ourselves
I actually deleted what I first wrote, as I reread the post because I realized it wasn’t mine to share. My kids have all learned things about themselves and who they are as people. They learned things I’m incredibly proud of them for learning at 14 and 15 years old, but it’s not mine to share.
And what I learned I’m still not sure how to say in ways that make any sense. Having written yet another long statement and deleted it.
I’m thankful for 2020
Sucky year that it was, I’m still thankful for it. I’ve seen God do some amazing things during this year, and I’ve seen how people responded to each other.
Yes, there was a heck ton of idiocy, and a heck ton of people being horrid to one another. I occasionally had to back away from the social media world and limit what I watched or listened to because people became so hateful. But I’m happy for this year, and all it held.
This is the most generous and positive description of 2020 I’ve read. You are right – it was a horrid year for many people but it still had its good parts – both for individuals and maybe even for societies. Only the future will tell.