I find it interesting that 2020 has been a year full of blessings for my family and I, considering that for so many in the world it has been a year full of pain, stress, and trials. To me, it makes sense in a way….. Years before, while so many were blessed and thriving it seemed, I was suffering in some crazy ways. I was going through trial after trial all while watching the world go by with smiles. So many years I felt bitter and jealous. Finally, I had matured and learned to embrace those trials and grow from them. Then here comes 2020, and it was different. The essence of 2020 just felt unique in a weird way. It felt different since the very beginning. We had just finalized on a home, our first house, in our 30s and 40s…. Many get blessed with their first house in their twenties/thirties. Here we were, FINALLY buying our first home, with no one helping us. My health was FINALLY in a stable place. I was feeling peace all around me. It was weird considering I am use to chaos. Feeling peace is a rare delicacy for me.

Then comes covid…. For our family, covid did not do anything to disrupt our flow for we are hermits. We don’t go out to eat. We are very frugal people, so not being able to socialize was a “who cares” type thing for us. As for the cleanliness and masks, we were THRILLED. Finally people were being conscience about covering their coughs and washing their hands. A pandemic had to happen to get people to be as clean as us? Uhhh, ok. We weren’t even affected by the “Toilet Shortage”. Living in our small country town here in the Pacific Northwest helped shun us from a lot of those things that happen mainly in cities.

Again, life wasn’t changing much for us, but it was for the world.

There was a point during the beginning of 2020 where I thought “Oh, here we go. I knew it was too good to be true,” and that was when I was forced to leave my job at a school district to come home during a pandemic because my kids needed to be home schooled, I was giving birth to my third child, and my TO DO List was becoming a mile long in a single day. But that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It gave me a few months to focus on my birth, my baby and my family before being offered an AMAZING job with a much bigger school district who actually values their employees and pays you what you are worth. I went into an Executive position, making double and able to work from home. WOW. Im still dancing inside at scoring such an awesome position.

I also had a chance to take some time to focus on my small business I had started and put on the back burner for a while. Being home allowed me to have more time to see where I can strengthen my tiny company in order to make it a profitable source of income on the side for emergencies. Who knows, maybe it will become something a little bigger down the line, but seeing it grow as much as it did a few months ago (in 2020) was unexpected and a huge blessing.

Alas, here we are, almost at the end of 2020 (I write this in October) and I find myself in a comfortable and content situation…..which is very rare for me. It’s a foreign feeling actually. I can only pray it lasts longer than the hard season coming on the horizon.

Life is full of seasons; hard ones and good ones. We are guaranteed to have to live through both. Some people get better seasons more than hard seasons. I always tend to get mostly hard ones. However, I have learned to make the most of those hard seasons and appreciate what I receive during those months of pain.

“We always get something out of every experience. We just have to look hard enough to see what that something was.”

The holiday season has begun (Let us face it, it starts in October). My natural instinct is to resist getting excited because I am a pessimist, but if 2020 taught me anything, it showed me that I have been wrong. God does want to bless me. Life isn’t all about pain and suffering (for me). Sure, it took me 34 year to finally know what it feels like to be content, but I would rather be the woman I am today feeling this feeling then an arrogant, ignorant woman who had shit handed to her. I wouldn’t appreciate what I have today if I didn’t have to work hard for it. I wouldn’t have this feeling of contentment if I didn’t sweat and bleed to reach this moment.

I am convinced 2020 has been different and unique for each person. 2020 has been a powerful year, and not all power produces good things; thus, we have the eventful year that we have had….

May God strengthen you and bless you this year and the next.