A 2020 Christmas

Counting My Blessings

Sharing our holiday photos is one of my favorite things to do every year. Decorating the tree, devouring cookies, laughing together, and just enjoying the season. My photos look a little different this year. We weren't able to all be together this year. Only two kids were at home, and one of them was finishing out a 14 day quarantine in the basement bedroom. I know how lucky we are, that we are all alive, healthy, and taken care of. It was hard to muster the will to do any of those little celebrations when we know just how many people are suffering, mourning, feeling lost and hopeless.

2020 had it's ups and downs for us as a family. The eldest stayed at her apartment, three hours away, to keep her baby brother and I safe. I was diagnosed with a horrible tick-borne disease, and spent most of the year on one medication or another, trying to fight it into remission. We sent the eldest boy off to college. We decided to start house hunting, and ended up finding our dream home. This pushed us into a frenzy to list and sell our house, pack up everything, and move. During a global pandemic. It was a wild ride, but we moved in ten days before Christmas (thus the moving boxes stacked everywhere.)

I suspended my portrait business and switched entirely over to products and vehicles, to lesson our risk factor. We started having groceries delivered, cooked every meal at home, got really good at zoom calls, bought stock in hand sanitizer companies, and learned to exist in our bubble.

My prayer for 2021 is that the world can begin to recover, that people can begin to heal, that the pain of this last year will begin to fade. The trauma will never go away completely, not with so many lives lost and so many families torn apart, but, hopefully, compassion, peace, and love will take over.