WEEK 52: STOLEN woNDER BY JULIE BRITTAiN & ToNyA RICKS

Well, we made it to the last week of 2020. This time last year feels like 10 years ago. Who knew what 2020 would bring? When we started discussing this community and then finally bringing it into fruition, we never could have anticipated that a few months into the year a global pandemic would hit and life would drastically change.
 
Throughout this year, we would sit in awe when some of the words fell on the weeks they did. Such as hope when the first vaccine was approved and injected into the arms of healthcare workers or when we needed resilience after the tragic death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gigi. These didn’t seem like coincidences. To us, this was part of the “wonder” of 2020.
 
We wanted wonder to be the last word because it seemed the most magical. Charlie Chaplin said, “You’ll never find a rainbow if you’re looking down.” In 2020, it seems like many of us didn’t just look down. We actually closed our eyes to forged ahead. It seemed like 2020 stole our wonder and replaced hope with fear. 
 
In a season of loss and death, is it important to sit back and see the wonder of what came out of this ugly time? This year, Julie heard one of her children saying many times, “I wonder what to do with my life?” She caught herself asking, “I wonder if life will ever go back to normal?” Many of us have wondered, “How do nurses and first responders wear those masks for 16 hours at a time?” These are all valid ways to use the word wonder. Maybe the word was meant to be used in a different way? “The WONDER of it All!” Using it in a magical way, as if we were all still children and not jaded in the reality of a pandemic.
 
Sometimes it feels like 2020 stole our wonder and stole our ability to “look up.” We think 2021 is the year for taking it back. With wonder comes hope. With hope comes motivation to move forward and carry on while also stopping to look up. Keeping our eyes open to endless possibilities and hopeful imagination. Living everyday dealing with reality but knowing what is possible. Some fear “wonder.” They function in what they know is real and what they can see. Wonder is like Love. You keep it in your soul and your eyes. It’s what you see that no one else can. A vision of what’s possible, if you believe. Wonder is what you see when you look up.
 
If the definition of wonder is a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable. You can definitely describe 2020 with all these emotions. All in fearful negative ways we’ve experienced. But… in that horrible suffering, we also witnessed wonder of the human spirit, wrapped in surprise strength, unexpected hope, unfamiliar human resilience, and inexplicable generous love shown by all humans for each other.
 
If you use wonder as a verb, the definition is 1) feeling of desire or 2) feeling of doubt. I guess you can decide which way you forge ahead with the meaning. For us, we hope to hold on to the wonder of what we’ve seen this year and the beauty of what everyone shared in the blogs for this small journey we started. We hope to try one week at a time to emulate what wonder we’ve seen in others as we move into the next year of 2021. We hope to try and stay in the beauty of wonder and not the fear. It’s time to steal “wonder” back and keep looking up. 
 
Thank you for joining us all year and we hope you continue to stay with us and see what the next year brings. Here’s to 2021 and the Wonder of it All!

In all of life's wonders,
Julie and Tonya

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