Onward

Those of you who have been reading Weekly Fifty long enough know that I like to schedule my posts well in advance–weeks, even months before they go live. As I write this it’s about a month prior to the post being published, and we’re coming up on the end of a pretty rough year for a lot of people. 2020 has been soul-crushing in a lot of ways for a lot of folks, and if you have been hit hard by the pandemic then please know my heart goes out to you and I hope you are doing OK and starting the new year with a sense of optimism and even excitement. It’s been tough to see the silver lining with everything that has been unfolding these past several months, and yet, it is there if we look hard enough. There is news of a vaccine on the horizon, and the Biden administration will undoubtedly bring a host of changes from the past four years, and even though you are reading this during the cold of January it’s only a few months until things warm up and the browns and grays give way to green grass and bright blue skies.

And this photo, I hope, brings a tiny bit of a sense of optimism to you as you start the new year.

I rarely share photos of my kids here on Weekly Fifty (and even when I do, I never show their faces) but I thought this would be worth posting as we all begin 2021 together. I shot this over Thanksgiving break when my wife and I took our boys to Lake Carl Blackwell just west of town and spent the afternoon walking on trails we had never seen before. We didn’t know where we were going and had no map or GPS to guide us, and instead just told our oldest son to lead the way while our youngest followed close behind. Some spots on this trail (which I think was an equestrian trail, but I’m not sure) were muddy, others were covered in leaves, and a few spots were nothing but knee-deep trenches through the dirt and mud. It was exciting not knowing where we were going or what we would find along the way, and through it all our kids just kept forging ahead without a plan other than to see what was just around the bend.

And that’s kind of how I feel going into 2021. There’s uncertainty, of course, but I also have a sense of hope and excitement as opposed to the overbearing foreboding which has characterized much of 2020. What lies ahead I’m not sure, but I know we’ll get through this with the Lord’s help, and hopefully we will soon leave COVID-19 and the pandemic in the rearview mirror for a long, long time.