And that seems like an appropriate introduction to our 2020 family update.  It has been an entirely strange year for our family and we currently find ourselves living in a garden flat at my folks.  If it wasn’t for the fact that we learned how to discover meaning in sacrifice before 2020, we would probably be very sad and disappointed.  We were prepped for 2020.  I have learned that it is good to seek the purpose of a season and not to overlook the possibility of growth inside it.  I’m not against rising above circumstances of course, it’s just that sometimes it’s a process and we can either be crushed in the process or discover new things about ourselves during the process, things we may need later.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a family update.  2020 began with big plans.  Our oldest starting Grade 1, signaling that the time had come for us to be adults, you know… time for the struggle years to come to an end as we became parents of a child of formal education age.  With three years of making many sacrifices to build a business that we believed in, we were ready to step into the breakthrough that we had been waiting for. We got really close, we were following the course that we had been pursuing and it seemed to be taking us somewhere good, great even.  We really believed that the number one thing that we needed in 2020 was breakthrough in our business.  Guess what?  That’s not what we got.  Instead of breakthrough, instead of a validating pat on the back to say that all of the hard work and sacrifices had been worth it, we got rest.

We hadn’t even realised how badly we needed rest.  We got rest and it came suddenly.  One day we were managing and planning and organising and juggling and the next day, with our bags packed for a couple of nights stay at an Air BnB, we faced the reality that there was nothing to manage or plan or organise or juggle anymore.  The couple of nights turned into five months.

That’s how we ended up spending five months of 2020 at a beautiful Air BnB overlooking the ocean.  Except I didn’t really explain how we ended up there or why we stayed so long.  What happened was that my sister and her family left the States (where they live) at the very hour the first international travel bans were announced.  On her hubby’s assurance that it would ‘all blow over in a couple of weeks’, they headed to South Africa for their annual family holiday.  When our South African lockdown was announced, we were all together at a seaside holiday house.  We decided that it was not the worst place to spend lockdown and we were happy to be together.  After five weeks, with closed borders and a closed business, we decided that it was not the worst place to spend the indefinite future.

That’s how we ended up spending five months in a seaside village with nothing to do other than soak in the ocean air and process our circumstances.  A luxury really, with life on pause we were given the opportunity to exist without any pressing items on our to-do lists.  Anything that threatened immediate attention was relegated to another day and time.  And so we could spend time wading through our thoughts, feelings and questions with the leisure that only people with nothing to do can.

We had nothing to do but everything to think about, feel and ponder on.  It was a wonderful and at times difficult place to be.  We faced our worst inside a wonderful time of rest and great blessing, we are immensely grateful that we found ourselves within such a secure and comfortable safety net during this time.  We are also grateful that we were able to face our worst.  I can’t get away from the belief that this is what we need to do in order to be our best.

Our circumstances were wonderful.  Days that could have been scary and lonely were filled with family.  Superb meals together every evening, superb sunsets too.  We ran because we love to run.  We ran around and around the garden, and then we ran out of the gate by the light of the moon to the top of a hill where we saw the sky change to pink and then to the fullness of day.  Our children played and played and we played with them.  We convened in the mornings over coffee and rusks and we talked about everything under the sun.  We laughed a lot, we fought only a little and never stopped marveling at the way things had aligned to determine our wonderful circumstances.

It was a very strange year and one that made us think that perhaps the world is not as wonderful as we had thought it was.  Our wonderful circumstances were not because of a wonderful world but were in fact despite a dreadful world.  A very difficult thing to think, but perhaps an entirely necessary thing to think.  It made us think that we are lucky, it made us think that since we are lucky and others aren’t, we should be doing more to stand up and fight the dreadful.  It made us realise that the fact that our lives are wonderful is because others who went before us did just that, they fought back the dreadful for us.

While we enjoyed our five months of rest, we adapted to thinking differently.  I even had to adapt to suddenly letting go of our family home when our landlords decided to sell the house.  Our home was the one thing that I had wanted to hold on to, the one thing that I wanted to make a financial priority.  And then one day I no longer had to hold onto it or prioritise it.  At first I cried and wanted to fight it.  I then felt a weight off my shoulders as I realised the significance of the home was in the three years that we had already spent there and not in the future years that only existed in my imagination.  I began to feel free to imagine something new, something with less limits.

We moved out of a family home that we had not even lived in for five months and then got to spend two more glorious weeks at the beach house with our extended family before moving into a small garden flat.  We were ready, our season of rest had come to an end.

It has been two and a half months since our move ‘back to town’.  On the practical side of things, Fred has taken on a six month position at a local company and I am enjoying having more time to pursue freelancing (see what I do here:  www.annawrites.co.za).  We are also working on a few things under the brand that we worked so hard to build over the past three years (see what we are up to here:  www.frederickandson.co.za).  Beyond that, who knows.  Only God knows and only God knows what we are capable of if we don’t overlook the significance of every opportunity for growth.  This brings us, I suppose, to a place of submission inside this season with its boundaries and restrictions and disappointments.

Maybe what this year has reminded us of, is that although we live in a dreadful, fallen world we can withstand any season because we choose not to copy the behaviour and customs of this world.  We choose rather to let God transform us into a new people by changing the way we think.  He has promised to teach us to know His will for us, which is good and pleasing and perfect (Romans 12:2).

We don’t know yet what the next season will hold for us but we think that’s okay.

Photo gallery of our time at the beach house:

Great is his faithfulness, a song worth listening to