It's hard to even put enough words together to form a post, hence nothing since Elliana's birthday. And honestly, I think 2020 is such a unique year, that reflecting back on it feels odd. Because in some ways, it feels like we are still living the bad stuff of 2020. Covid is not gone, racial injustice still runs rampant, and the most polarizing election of my life still feels unresolved. I am still hearing political campaigns on the radio, and I'm just so over it. But alas.
I'm going to start with the most obvious of things...
COVID-19
We are living during a global pandemic. Nine months of this year have been lived under a different kind of stress. I remember in early April, I would have this desperate desire to run away. There was no where to run to. We were under Shelter in Place orders, but I just needed out. I needed to not be around my children every moment of every day. I needed to not have to make any more decisions or wonder about the tiniest of choices if they were jeopardizing our health. I just needed the fatigue of this new stress to relent for an hour. As the weeks marched on, I found myself feeling compelled to disappear less and less. We adapted. We settled in. I found myself relieved on Saturdays that we weren't managing schedules, figuring out how to not be too busy. We were busy never. I remember playing soccer with the kids in the backyard and just feeling really ok with how life was going. But things still got tough mentally at times. The isolation wore on me. Thoughts were camping out in my head that I knew weren't good, but I wasn't sure if they were true or not. And to have to spend anymore mental energy than already necessary sifting through and dwelling on the validity of them felt so taxing.
But we did have a lot of family time. Adam got to see Elliana more than either of the boys in the first year of life, and that was really sweet. I baked so much! SO MUCH! We walked our neighborhood so many times. Adam's boss gave us their old trampoline, and it pretty much saved us this year. There was a lot of good that came out of COVID. But I am still so ready to see it go!!
CHURCH
This will be quick. Church has been one of the harder parts of the pandemic. We switched churches right before this hit, and so no one knows us. We know close to no one. It has been hard. I wasn't sold on the church we were going to, and so it's felt like we've just been drifting and drifting and lost sight of where land is. It's really been since we left the church that had a dramatic split that we've been involved and immersed in a church body. And man, I'm weary. We'll find out our church's plan for meeting in 2021, but it all feels daunting. Like really? We're going to establish community at this church in the middle of a pandemic?
COACHING
I made the difficult decision to coach this year, even though we are living through a pandemic. It was a calculated risk that having this small outlet was going to outweigh the potential harm. This year I coached middle school, and I enjoyed it so much more than last year. Middle school is ROUGH, and I still find that age group more challenging than high school to coach. But I enjoyed the girls. I enjoyed thinking about something other than what happens at home and the chaos of the world. It absolutely added stress to my life and the whole family, realistically. There were plenty of days I asked myself why I was doing this. But now that my season has been over for almost a month, I'm glad I did it. I really loved and mostly enjoyed the girls. They got first place at both of their competitions, which is shocking they even got to compete during this pandemic. And I'm glad I got to facilitate a little bit of normal for these girls when their worlds have drastically shifted, too.
FAMILY
Wow, this year really helped me appreciate family more. Not just my 5 person family here in the walls of this house, but the greater scope of our families, too. We are fortunate that we have been able to see our families, which I know a lot of people haven't. In the spring, I was so nervous for both sets of our parents, thinking about how dangerous this virus could be for any of them to contract it. I still get nervous if I think too much about it. But gosh, do we savor family gatherings! My boys were so thrilled when they could hug their grandparents. They were truly giddy when we gathered at the lake with family for the first time. Our beach trip this year didn't have ideal weather, but none of the kids cared because they were together. And I was right there with them. I cherish these people, and I'm so thankful we've stayed healthy.
Things I'm proud of thinking back on 2020
I nursed Elliana for a full year. And that was hard for me. We found out when she was 6 months old she was allergic to not just peanuts but also milk and egg, the option to switch to formula was no longer an option. And that rainy March day, I realized that I would be breastfeeding until baby girl turned 1. I did it! And I was so happy when it was time to stop! Oddly enough, no one was particularly proud of me for this, but it felt like a huge accomplishment to me.
I read the entire Bible in 90 days. Some of my friends and I decided to do this together, starting September 1. It was A LOT of reading every day. And the fear of falling behind is honestly what kept me on track. We had a book that provided the reading plan and commentary on each book. We read it chronologically, and it was very interesting. I had never read the Bible that way. I would not recommend the 90 days part, but I absolutely would recommend reading the Bible in chronological order.
Fun Friday! Oh my word, starting from the first week of shut down, I started this. And it was both awesome and exhausting! I tried to make all school assignments and learning extra fun, we tried a new recipe to bake together, and we got donuts a lot of Friday mornings. The boys truly looked forward to Fun Fridays! And the required a lot of effort on my part. I decided Fun Fridays would stop when summer officially started, though the boys pleaded for them weeks into June.
I started running in July. I HATED running. It is not an enjoyable way to exercise for me AT ALL. I love strength training! Tell me to squat 100 pounds, and I'm there! Running is just hard for me. And that's why I started back at it. I was mentally not in a great place, and I decided to gamble on running to prove to myself that I can do hard things. It's the last day of the year, and I actually started my workout with a run. Running further and faster than I thought I could proved to be thrilling for me. I did injure my IT band in October, just weeks before I was planning to run a half marathon, and I did in fact cry over this many times. But, I kind of pushed through. I'm still running, but I maybe have accepted that my knee can't handle training the way I was doing it. I'm still figuring it out.
There's a few other things I could probably really reflect on, but my people are getting pretty rowdy downstairs. 2020. Man. I can so vividly remember being at counseling the first week of January 2020 with Adam, and he was saying with such confidence that this was going to be the Year of the Tomberlins after we had endured a pretty painful 2 years. We laugh about it now. This has certainly been the year of covid, NOT the Tomberlins. But I'm so thankful I've had Adam with me. He's a pretty incredible dad, and I cannot fathom allllllllll of this time at home without a partner who is IN IT with me.
2020- you were kind of crappy, but you had some treasures for us. And I'll take those treasures and trash the rest!
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