I could not bring myself to do my review of 2020 until today. Something in me was too afraid of what I would see or wouldn’t see. A little while ago I looked back and I saw a letter I wrote at the beginning of the year and I begged God for peace and justice in the world, “save us from this darkness.” School shootings were happening basically every week and darkness and division and people were suffering in their loneliness.

This year, we got broken. In a whole lot of ways, our capacity to pretend everything was okay was shredded from us. I know what this feels like because it happened to me in 2019, so many struggles piled on top of me that I could not longer pretend that I could figure a way out.

Somehow there is something lighter in acknowledging that things are messed up and we have a long way to go. We developed a radical reliance on God(in many different ways of understanding Him, but still-God) in a public way that hasn’t existed in a long time. We depended on each other in ways more profound and vulnerable than we could before. Maybe most importantly, we were honest, with ourselves and with each other, “this is hard, but I’m trying.”

I think, or hope maybe, that we were not broken without a reason. Like ground is broken just before seeds are planted or a homes foundation is laid, I hope that God is doing something here with us. I have seen incredible things come from the suffering we have experienced, but I know that for some the struggle is too deep to even hope for that, and my heart is heavy with that knowledge. So as we journey into 2021 together, I hope for you and for me that this year we will see the beginning of peace and love, and that we will see a world where the vulnerable and the alone are held, where the hungry are fed, the homeless are home, and the lost are safe.

Until then, I pray “May His favor be upon you, and your children and your children.”

theblessing #karijobe #hope #hopeforthefuture #peace #peaceofmind #yearinreview #2020 #happynewyear2021 #mammamary #stjoseph