Thoughts on Promises and 2021

Happy New Year! We’ve made it to 2021. I have a lot of thoughts to share but may save them for a future post. One thing I do want to share, though, is that this is one of the last illustrations I created in 2020. The girl in the dress is me, dancing with my husband on our wedding day.

When you make your wedding vows, you don’t know what’s coming. That’s kind of the point. We promised to be loving and faithful – for better or worse, in plenty and want, in joy and sorrow, in sickness and health.

The past two years have not been what we expected but I’m so glad we promised to stick together through them – the worse, the sorrow, the sickness (the sickness being infertility).

I thought 2020 was going to be our year. And really, I thought 2019 might be. It might seem natural to say I’m not really holding my breath for 2021, but the truth is, I’m feeling peaceful and hopeful. Hope is hard to squash and I’m really glad that’s the case.

I’m looking forward to a lot of things in 2021 - the things I have planned (especially creatively!), and the unplanned things that may come along the way. If I learned anything in 2020, it’s to hold it all loosely and be open to changes • in • the • plan (I learned a lot more than that. But this was a big one).

While 2021 isn’t going to be better by default, it seems we’ve all learned a lot from 2020 and are better because of it. So, one more time – Happy New Year!