Hello there friends, wow has it been a while, but I am so glad to be back in this space taking time to create and connect with you once again.
There’s almost so much to say about 2020 that it feels like there is nothing to say, do you know the feeling?
I would rather just press on to 2021 intentions and skip over 2020 and all that it was, but if there is anything I learned from last year it would be that it’s important to take time to slow down and acknowledge how we are feeling about things, even if those things are painful and difficult to work through.
2020 was just that for me, a year of slowing down.
I had a career shift in the Spring and planned to go freelance as a Wardrobe Stylists for commercial and film productions, and then the world stopped…
Somehow amazingly I still had a slow but somewhat steady stream of work rolling in, and for me, I can only attribute that to God providing for us when things were scary and so undefined.
So for that I am eternally thankful.
As for a more personal look inside 2020 – fear, anxiety, and self doubt were a few things I had to confront again and overcome last year that surfaced from old childhood traumas.
One of which (for those of you that may not know) was an auto immune disease that taught me to not trust my body, to shy away from what might cause pain or failure, and to not believe or see what I am capable of!
As a quick spoiler alert, years after being diagnosed I did experienced what I can only say is a miracle, as I was completely healed by God after the elders of my church prayed over me. Praise to Him that my story did not end in sickness.
But for many years of my life after the fact I was faced with a journey of letting fear and self doubt be transformed into strength, belief, and love. So I am always a little surprised when confronted with it again, even though this year I shouldn’t have been since the security of all of our health was put at risk on a global level.
Even still I was.
Ultimately, I am so thankful that I had an opportunity to overcome some old challenges in new and deeper ways because I believe the Lord used them to make me stronger and more resolved in the woman he created me to be and I have overcome those old feelings in a deeper way this year.
I’ve shied away from sharing this more personal piece of my life in the past for many reasons, but this year has shown me how much we really need each other to show up in deeper ways, and how we need to know we are not alone in our struggles, hurts, growth and joys alike.
So here I am… and with that, I’d love to share a few more obvious positives of 2020.
2020 caused Daniel and I (my husband) to really slow down and take a look at our lives and what we want from it.
It caused us to know each other on a deeper level, to depend on God in a deeper way, and to take daily action to live as the people we want to be and say that we are.
We learned to speak truth over ourselves even when we didn’t believe it internally, we learned to work more as a team with our health, and our goals.
We had a beautiful opportunity to travel together more than ever in 2020 because we did not feel comfortable flying, so we drove wherever we needed to be. We saw family that we normally didn’t get to see and formed deeper relationships. We even were able to save more money than ever towards our goals even with our rocky job situation, and are much closer to our dream of owning a home.
So many beautiful things came out of 2020 and even though I grieved things for myself and for those around me (because there was so much loss), I also saw so much life come out of so much death this last year.
More babies were born than I ever could have imagined, more love for neighbors shown than I had ever seen before, more growth in marriages, more creativity with time and gifts, more letting going of what is not important to us, and more collective vision for how we all want to live.
So that my friends is worth celebrating, don’t you think?
I was planning to go into personal intentions for 2021 and some new ideas for what I want my blog to look like this year, but I think I’ll save that for a part 2 coming to you very soon.
For now though I just want to take a moment to acknowledge whatever you have been through in 2020, there is no one that has been untouched by all that transpired last year and I just want you to feel more than anything that you are not alone.
Moving into 2021 my hope is that we are more unified than ever before and that we would choose love over correctness and division. What do you hope for in 2021? I hope it’s for big things.
On that note… I’ll see ya in the 2021 post…thanks for tuning in.
xx,
Mary Beth
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