Hindsight, 2020

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It has unquestionably been an awful, terrible year.  For me, it started with the worst illness I can remember having in decades.  I tested negative for strep.  Negative for the flu.  Sick for a couple weeks then still puny for several more.  Just as I'm feeling better, covid-19 makes it's U.S. debut.  Or maybe it was already here... shutting down schools, jobs, stores, everything, for two weeks.  Even longer in some places.

For many of us, we settled in to binge watching our favorite series, catching up on our reading list and baking.  Lots of baking...  It was a forced vacation and we werent really sorry to get it.  At least, not at first.  

Things slowly opened again only to repeatedly shut back down while governors added further restrictions in what seems to have been fruitless attempts to stem the relentless spread of this new strain of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, across the country, a senseless death sparked riots and looting.  And a meaningful movement for justice was quickly overshadowed by those rioters and looters.

Social experiments, government over-reach, financial struggle for so many, weddings attended by zoom.  Funerals attended by zoom.  Fear.  Overwhelming despair felt by those we love but whom we cannot hug, cannot visit.  We stand six feet apart, like strangers on a first date.  Awkward.  Our personalities masked by the covers on our faces.

We watched loved ones go into the hospital or into quarantine and barely make it out weeks later, after they've looked Death in the eye and lived to tell about it.  We've prayed over them.  We've prayed for the families of the ones who dont live and for those who cared for them and bore the exhaustion and the weight of the loss with those families.

We've voted.  We stuck campaign signs in our yards like it's a 'normal' year and we went to the polls.  But, like so many other things this year, the election was anything but normal and we are still in limbo.  Questions of fraud.  Legal wrangling.  Demonstrations.

Treatment options are explored and rejected.  Use this, dont use this.  Mask up.  Dont mask up.  Open up the restaurants.  Close them down again.  Open the schools.  Struggle with distance learning.  Churches are divided.  Families are divided.  And the 'science' is anything but settled.  Even the experts contradict each other.

And we cried.  Daily.  From grief, isolation, depression, frustration, exhaustion.  I've cried more often and more easily than I may have done ever in my life before, and I wasnt alone.  There's been an epidemic of tears.

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Yesterday, on the last day of this horrible year, my reading fell to Psalm 65.  It's possibly  my favorite passage and I often post verses from it in images with beautiful photography and carefully chosen fonts.

But yesterday, as is often the case when you are re-reading a long loved passage, I read and saw something new.  Something stood out that hadnt registered in quite the way it did yesterday.  At the end of this awful, terrible, HORRIBLE year God gives me a reminder.

His Providence is lavishly displayed through every verse of Psalm 65 and, because I read in images, I see the fields and streams, I see the crashing waves and the mountains.  I see the earth dressed in it's finest with flocks and grain and hills 'robed with joy' and I'm grateful for such a good God.

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But then, verse 11.

This year?  This horrible year?  How can I find the goodness in this year???  It feels like the entire year was just....lost.  Psalm 65 speaks of God's goodness in such extravagant measure yet, I feel like we barely squeaked through this awful year.

Then, right on the heels of that question to myself, I hear answers.  Little feet come bursting through the front door.  Little voices call for me and I leave my reading for a while but the question stays in my head and I ruminate on it over night. 

Those little ones are safe and well, along with their parents.  I had family members nearly die, who were spared and others, who got covid, are recovering without serious illness.  Before the restrictions hit, I traveled and renewed old ties with family and friends who live far away.  I went to weddings!  One by zoom and one outdoor wedding.  I had a new friend visit as they passed through to thier new home.  There were babies born, engagements announced and degrees earned and celebrated in subdued fashions.

I was given a sweet glimpse of the hearts of my grandchildren every time they colored pictures and wrote notes to a Great, Great Granny that they rarely saw but loved so much anyway.

I saw family members go home to Christ and, despite the pang of loss, I have the deep blessing of knowing that their hope is complete!

Many of us are seeing a renewed appreciation in ourselves for the smallest gifts of joy.  We've learned to savor every hug, every conversation and yes, even every wave of the hand from six feet away.

I am reminded that momentary tears are just that.  Momentary.  Yes, it was a terrible year.  And it was a very, very hard year.  It wont be the last hard year, I'm sure.  But, I was reminded in Psalm 65 that, what is out of our control, is not out of God's control.

  

Despite what was a bad year, it was crowned with goodness.

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