2019 has been a little bit rough for these Andersons.

It started in January when the day after my birthday i tapped a BMW with our Getz which did R12000 damage to our little Hyundai which pretty much folded up and the people with the BMW even remarked when they sent me the picture of the back of their car that you couldn’t see the damage in the photo.

Scratch

Their insurance company thought differently though and so, because we had not had insurance at the time, we suddenly owed them close to R40 000 although they were completely deviant and insiduous and deceptive throughout the whole process.

[Six months later we finally managed to settle for R30 000 which felt slightly more realistic for no visible damage and thanks to some friends in a Common Change group in the States and a church over here we were able to put together the funds needed]

Val missed out a job that had seemed completely locked in, her mom’s health took a serious dip at the start of the year and she passed away in late Feb while i was in America and a number of close friends got really sick [some with mysterious scary diseases] or lost people who were close to them. One of Val’s colleagues at The Warehouse also passed away fairly suddenly.

We could look back to the end of last year when our house was broken into and a bunch of our stuff stolen and then just thing after thing after thing [some really big as mentioned, others small but all piling up]

Eventually Val said “Enough!” [paraphrased!] and we came up with a plan to defeat 2019’s hold on us!

Christmas in July

So tomorrow we are hosting a Christmas in July party for some of our close friends and for some other people we know that 2019 has been a really sucky year for. That’s right, we are going to fool 2019 into thinking that it’s over and it’s going to stop being so menacing to us. Well, that’s the plan anyways. And as superstitious as that may sound, we only really half believe it. It’s more taking an opportunity to gather with some people we love that we know love us and share good food and drinks and positive vibes [and i’m sure i’ll be responsible for some sort of sugar concoction!] and speak life into 2019 as a group. We are going to have an open mic at one point and have invited people to share positive vibes in the form of a song or poem or spoken word.

It’s going to be great. The power of community.

But in the background, while this all feels somewhat necessary and important, we don’t for a second forget the absolute privilege we have, firstly in life, where our living conditions are so much better than the majority of people in the world and in this country. But more especially through the people we know – pure gold in so many cases – people who are incredibly gifted and are using their various gifts to bring transformation to a bruised and bloodied country, and world, in so many different ways.

We are so grateful for the people we have in and around our lives. They got us here. They loved and supported and fed and listened and gifted and visited and board gamed and more… this celebration is a tribute to all of them.

Bring it on. Watch out 2019, we see you and refuse to be taken down any more.