Don’t fear trials, but seek lessons in new year
THE year 2020 was a rough one year for many people. 2021 is here with the promise that it can’t get worse than 2020! Countless trials abounded last year — COVID-19 was the centre of chaos we could have never dreamt of before last year.
For example, I could have never imagined a world where it was illegal to take my children to church, yet with the limits on how many people can attend religious gatherings, my children haven’t gone to church since March. I hate that! I feel it is so healthy for children to be raised with multiple voices speaking truth into their lives.
On that same note, we have hosted a weekly Bible study for decades — literally over 25 years. For months, we totally stopped it until we started back on Zoom, but it is just not the same when you are trying to encourage one another on such a deep personal level and the internet keeps freezing and people’s voices keep cutting. That is a snapshot into the trials COVID-19 put on our family’s spiritual life.
It doesn’t end there. We weren’t able to travel back to America, where my family is, for Christmas this year because international travel has become so complicated and unpredictable. Many friends I know who have travelled back to America this year have literally gotten stuck there unexpectedly for months because of various restrictions which prohibited them from coming back. Even just to travel to my husband’s home village, we have to apply for a permit and hope we can get the government’s permission to go see his parents.
Then, let’s talk about business. Very few people can say that last year was a great business year. I personally do a lot of public motivational speaking and team building for companies, which of course is difficult when public gatherings have so many restrictions that most of the corporate events I was scheduled to speak at were cancelled.
One silver lining is since COVID-19 normalised Zoom meetings, I was able to “speak” in places I normally could have never gone to because distance was no longer an option! That is exciting!
My husband and I wrote a marriage book last year. That is my third book and normally books sell when I do public speaking at events to market the book or book signings at book stores. None of that was possible in the “corona world”. We did start a website www.ashleythaba.com and put the book in soft copy there if people want to buy it, but it seems people still prefer a hard copy in their hands.
Many lost so much money — restaurant businesses which had countless restrictions placed on them, event planning businesses, airlines that found themselves grounded for months on end, entertainment businesses which could have never foreseen that 2020 would be a time people couldn’t just go to a movie anytime they wanted. I could go on and on. Almost everyone I know was impacted negatively in some way by COVID-19.