Year in Review 2020

2020. Goodness, what a year. We wanted to give the year a proper reflection, noting the joys and sorrows of the year. We wrote a little thing, and produced a little video. I hope you enjoy it.
From our family to yours. 

-the watsons 5. 

Watson Family; 2020 Year In Review

Introduction
This year has been so different, different for all of us. As much as any other year, we all entered 2020 with some plan, some sense of what the days and months ahead would hold. For the Watsons, we anticipated school years ending and beginning again. We anticipated watching the kids continue with their musical pursuits and athletic endeavors. We anticipated new beginnings, and new adventures.

But, very little of this year has looked like how we imagined. And yet, through it all…in the midst of it all, our family has been able to uncover joy, surprise, adventure, and hope even in pandemics, and uncertainties.

Cuba
One of the biggest joys of the year took place early in 2020. In February, we traveled to Cuba with my Dad, Oto, and younger sister Amy. It was amazing to travel to such a beautiful country, and to be in a place that has so much history for my family, the Rodriguez’s. We spent a week in the country traveling to breathtaking places such as the valleys dotted with tobacco fields where we road horseback;

serene beaches of where we let the waves advance and retreat over our skin and our souls and there seemed to be nothing else in the world except for the pale sand, the turquoise sea and the blue skies overhead.

We walked old city streets, rode around in old Chevrolets, and imagined what life was like in the 1950’s when my Abuela called this city home. We also made a pilgrimage to the town of Pinar Del Rio, where my Grandfather lived for so many years and helped found a Bible College that is still in existence and continues to train pastors for ministry. We saw the house where Dad grew up and heard stories of mischief and fun and the foundations of a family rooted in faith during a time of turbulence.

Our trip to Cuba was the highlight of the year and will hold memories and experiences that shapes us as a family for years to come. We hope to make that trip again.

Other trips
Throughout 2020, there would be other trips too – to secluded mountain hideaways in the Shenandoah’s, to South Carolina beaches, and much needed times with family. Each of these trips served to refresh our spirits, especially as the pandemic wore on.

There were moments this year when it seemed that time was passing so slowly. When each day seemed just like the one before carrying a monotony and sadness knowing so much loss was happening in the world. And there were other times, like seeing the faces of those we love and have missed dearly, that we realized seasons pass faster than we want to admit and time doesn’t slow down, even for pandemics.

Family Updates
Although this year was dotted with chances to get away, it was mostly, was spent at home, on our block in our little corner of Capitol Hill. In March the full weight of the Coronavirus would hit D.C. changing our patterns of life, work, school, and hospitality.

In-person classes would be suspended and have yet to resume. So, for the past 8 months, the kid’s play room was transformed into a virtual learning space that sometimes looks like the offices of a tech start up.

Nathan
Nathan finished Middle School on virtual learning and has now begun his first year of High School online. It is a little weird to realize that at the half-way point of the school year, Nathan has yet to step foot in his new school. One of the things that Nate has taken on this year is exploring the city on his BMX bike, learning new tricks, and seeing the city as his personal BMX trick track. Although some of the lessons have come with some personal costs, he’s enjoying the sport, biking miles each day, and every now and then getting his mom and dad to ride with him.

Elias
Elias has continued at his charter school, but as all students in D.C., his school is also all online; for now. One of the new things Elias tried this year was auditioning for the school play. The play was unique in that it too was all online and was written with a virtual audience in mind. Elias played a flamboyant news reporter with a wildly popular Tik Tok account. We were proud of his acting, but more proud of his courage to try something new.

Annelies
Annelies stretched her public performance legs this year as well auditioning for her school’s talent show. She did a fantastic version of ‘True Colors’. Hearing her practice in the days leading up to the performance was a brilliant reminder to us all that while it can be hard to take courage, inside us all is a source of joy, love, and resilience.

Lisa
2020 witnessed Lisa closing one chapter in her professional career and beginning a new one.

After 8 amazing years on staff with the Christian Community Development Association as the Director of Leadership Development, Lisa joins Missio Alliance as their new National Director. Missio provides a number of resources for ministry leaders in the form of articles, webinars, conferences, and podcasts that focus on theology, culture, soul care, and holistic mission.

In just 6 months in her role at Missio, Lisa has already written a number of articles, a half dozen book endorsements, been featured in recently published books on global and local mission and has written a draft for a chapter for a forthcoming book due out in 2021!

Matthew
Matthew continues to serve on the pastoral team of Christ City Church, alongside an amazing group of pastors, ministers, and elders. This year, Matthew’s role changed with a new title; Pastor of Teaching and Outreach. With these changes comes opportunities to focus on his passions of preaching, teaching, writing and local and global outreach. Just after the start of the school year, Matthew was appointed to the DC Public Schools Chancellor’s Advisory Board which has been an insightful and fascinating experience, especially given all the challenges facing schools this year. Amidst all of this, he still continues to find time to barbecue, believing himself to be the best barbecue man in D.C. He’s also working with the boys to convert our garage into a boxing gym since we won’t be going to the gym anytime soon.

Conclusion
This year isn’t what any of us expected. Most years rarely are. Yet, as we look to step into 2021 there is a hesitancy. Not a hesitancy born of fear, but one born of reflection – a backward glance and a forward gaze.  A contemplation on all that has been and consideration of what could be ahead. As a family, we move forward knowing that the Lord of all our years will meet us in the year ahead. We know we will find Him there and be found by him there. And we pray that as it is with us, it will be for you too.

Dear friends, happiest of new years to you.

With great love.

The Watsons

The burdens of Jesus

Recently, I was invited to write a couple of blogs for the CCDA Blog for their Lenten series. It was a tremendous honor. Below is one of the blogs I wrote for that series. You can find their other blogs HERE. 
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Mark 15:21-22
21 A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. 22 They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”). 

I’ll be honest, it hasn’t felt like Holy Week to me. So much of life has been disrupted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that it has been hard keeping rhythms, and keeping track of days and keeping track of seasons. The constant grind of checking in on family, friends, neighbors, church members; sheltering in place, working to maintain some semblance of routine for the children and the nonstop flood of tragic news of loved ones lost to the virus can leave us weary. 

If COVID wasn’t sinister enough, it has partnered with the systemic racism embedded in health care systems allowing the deadly effects of the virus to bear down most viciously on Black communities throughout the U.S.

The cumulative result of this season is a weariness born of grief and loss. The song of ascent in Psalm 121, and its opening refrain, ”where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord,   the Maker of heaven and earth”(Ps. 121:1-2) can sound more like a lament than a song sung on the way to worship. Because, that’s what can happen when weighted with burdens that feel too great to bear.

During the crucifixion, as Jesus, carried his cross to the place where he would eventually be killed, the Gospels point out that that a man, Simon, took Jesus’ cross and helped carry the burden. Simon, and African man from the city of Cyrene, was the one who helped Jesus in his moment of weariness, grief and pain.

In that moment, we are reminded that we don’t have to carry our crosses alone. Jesus didn’t. And neither should we.

This season that is marked by distance, isolation, sickness and death is a burden that we ought not weather by ourselves. Even in the requirements to distance and 6 foot barriers we work to erect between us Simon of Cyrene’s story dropped in the passion of Christ quickly and quietly admonishes us against carrying our burdens by ourselves.

We have seen this beautiful truth lived out as New York City neighbors cheer on the doctors, nurses and medical professionals from the rooftops and balconies of their apartment buildings. We’ve seen the spirit of Simon of Cyrene in the 400 Memphis seamstresses displaying their own humble grit as they sew new elastic on tens of thousands of N95 masks for local hospitals. We’ve witnessed it in D.C. as hundreds of volunteers are matched with hundreds of elderly and homebound families to run errands, grocery shop and safely check in on those that are particularly vulnerable. Each example a generous reminder that we aren’t meant to bear our burdens and pains on our own. Crosses are heavy. Even for a Savior.

As we continue our own walk towards resurrection celebrations, let us ask the Spirit to guide us in answering these questions for us: 1) to whom do I need to be a Simon? 2) Where in my life is a Simon needed? In other words, who is God asking me to come alongside so I can be a burden-bearer for them and with them? And where in my life, is it appropriate for me, following in Jesus’ footsteps, to begin asking for help.

Many of us already carry so many of our communities’ burdens. We are Simons already for families in distress, for neighborhoods under oppression and communities under attack. The crosses we bear can sometimes feel like they are not ours to bear, yet on our shoulders they are placed. To you, Simon might remind that, even in the cross-bearing, Jesus remains with us. And Jesus doesn’t just walk with us to Golgatha. But He walks with us through the tomb and to the resurrection that is just ahead.

Hope in Ashes

Recently, I was invited to write a couple of blogs for the CCDA Blog for their Lenten series. It was a tremendous honor. Below is one of the blogs I wrote for that series. You can find their other blogs HERE. 

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Hope in the Ashes
Matthew Watson
April 2020 

Two weeks ago, I found myself standing in my bathroom looking in the mirror. I couldn’t take my eyes off of my forehead.

Emblazoned on my head was a dark, ashen cross; a reminder of my frailty and limitations. A visual to cue me in to the brokenness of the world, lest I forget.

It had been marked on my head with the words “from dust you’ve come and to dust you will return”.  Words that I repeated to nearly 100 people earlier in the day.

Ash Wednesday; Christ City ChurchThroughout the Bible, ashes are signs of repentance and sorrow over sin – the sin of individuals and the sins of a community. The ashes also point to our own mortality, and the limitations of our lives. I want to believe that I’m guiltless and limitless, but the ashes remind me that neither of those things are true.

Traditionally, the ashes used for Ash Wednesday’s service were made from burned palm branches from the previous year’s Palm Sunday celebration. The very branches that were used to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem ahead of his crucifixion, were to be subsequently burned and the ashes to be used the following year to mark the beginning of Lent.

The riotous celebration of Palm Sunday is lost in the fire, but found in the ashes. There is a death, but there is a resurrection. There is a cross, but there is a Kingdom. And in this way, the story of the ashes, the sorrow of the ashes, the lament of the dust gives way to the hope found in their message. There is hope in the ashes.

Our sin doesn’t overwhelm us, because we know that there is a Savior. Our limitations don’t diminish us, because they show us there is a God.

Many of us feel enticed by the false narratives that we can be one without boundaries - we can be limitless. But the truth is we do have limits. We are not boundless. There is a railing to our lives.

We only have so much energy in a given day. We can only send so many emails and text messages and phone calls. We can’t attend every community meeting. We can only do so much work before we get tired.

We won’t accomplish everything we hope to accomplish. We won’t live as faithfully as we hope to. We may not live as long as we want to. We will die and return to dust.

But this isn’t all of the story. Because of Jesus, because of the fire and the ashes, there is a fuller story. There is resurrection. There is new life right now and eternal life to come. The ashes remind us of that too.

When I run into a limitation, it now serves as a sign of God’s love to me. When I work a day, and end it with more work left to do, I’m able to remember that God works even when I tire. And I can rest in that truth.

When there are more people to care for than I can hold – in my family, in my church, in my neighborhood, in my city, in my world -  I’m reminded that God’s care isn’t limited by time and space and geography. For that reason Jesus sent the limitless Holy Spirit to hold us all. When we fail, God reminds us that he is faithful.

These limits are not signs of sin or insufficiency, but signs of God’s great grace and mercy and love. They are reminders that I’m not God, but there is one who is and He delights over me. So much so, that he doesn’t leave me in ashes any more than Jesus was left in the tomb. 

This Lenten season, let us begin a collective journey of remembering that what is lost in the fire is found in the ashes of God’s love put on full display in Jesus’ empty tomb.

Thanks be to God.

My dad supports the Kennedy Center

Lisa and I have been members of the Kennedy Center off and on since we moved to D.C. One of the whimsical things about our membership is that it is actually in the name of my father, Wayne.

Mom & Dad; Harley Davidson, 2001My dad passed away years ago and never once went to the Kennedy Center, and to my knowledge never in his life attended a play, an orchestra recital, opera, ballet performance or any of the other performing arts that one might find in a place like the Kennedy Center. Never. Not anywhere. Not anytime. He was a man more given to pool halls and beer joints than opera houses.

Nevertheless, by some strange twist of fate, about a year after I moved to D.C., I began to get solicitations to become a supporting member of the Kennedy Center yet they were all addressed to ‘Wayne Watson’ with my address. I have no idea how this happened. I can only assume that one of the lists that nonprofits buy of potential donors got bought somewhere somehow and in some weird miscommunication, my Dad’s name ended up on it.

Initially it caused me to laugh out loud and then to cry because I miss my old man. So, in tribute to my dad, a man who dropped out of high school and spent his working years on construction sites I became a member…or should I say, Wayne Watson, became a member and financial supporter of one of the premier arts centers in America.

Every show I go and see, every ‘early bird for members only’ ticket I purchase, every V.I.P. event I attend, when I arrive, I am greeted at the Kennedy Cente by an usher who says, “Wayne Watson, welcome” I smile and wink and think that somewhere in the cosmos, my dad is looking down laughing his ass off.

If only they knew.

And dear Kennedy Center, Wayne’s membership renewal is in the mail. He’s a proud supporter.

Cheering on GGG

I am a boxing fan. Have been nearly my whole life. 

First there was Sweet Pea
When I was a kid, my dad took me to the Olympic trials where I got to see Tyrell Biggs and Pernell Whitaker. I remember getting Biggs’ autograph, but I became a much bigger fan of Whitaker.

I watched Sweet Pea a bunch of times growing up. His speed and shifty-ness were mezmerising for fight fans and enfuriating for opponents. Sweet Pea had knockout power, but that wasn’t his way most of the time. He toyed, he frustrated, he dodged, he mastered the art of hitting and not getting hit. He was slick during an era of boxing when slick wasn’t the way most fighters fought. And I liked that. I have a soft spot for contrarians.

Then Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin
Sweet Pea retired years ago (and tragically passed away in June of this year). Over the last decade there’s been another fighter that I’ve followed closely. Gennady “Triple G” Golovkin. GGG’s story and style are uniquely his own. He’s from a smaller, less known country – Kazakhstan – and his rise to stardom and championship status has been gritty, grinding yet consistent. He too is an Olympian, earning a silver medal in the 2000 olympics.

What I like about GGG is he stalks. He moves forward, cuts off the ring and marches toward his opponent. He’s not a brute or a brawler, but neither is he quick, shifty or elusive in the ways Sweet Pea was. But, GGG is efficient. During one stretch of his career he had 23 straight knockouts. Of his 41 fights, he has 35 knockouts. He would circle his opponent, take a round or two or three to get a sense of what was needed to neutralize the other boxer’s strategy and then he’d pounce. And it would be brutal and sometimes fast.

I watched him dismantle heavy hitting David Lemieux in Madison Square Garden forcing Lemieux into a TKO because of crushing body shots.

He had two great fights with wildly popular (and great) Canelo Alvarez. There’s bad blood between Canelo and GGG. They fought twice. The first to a draw, the second a split decision that went Canelo’s way. Many boxing fans (myself included) believe GGG won the first and the second was a draw. There has been talk of a third fight between them, but I doubt it will happen.

One more time…maybe two?
GGG has a fight this weekend. Back at Madison Square Garden where he’s fought several times before. He’s facing a hard hitting Sergey Derevchenko. It should be a good fight. But I’m nervous. I’m nervous because in some ways GGG means a coming of age for me.

Sweet Pea was the boxer of my youth. GGG is the boxer of my adult years. And at 37 GGG is getting old for a boxer. I’m just a few years older than GGG and am now in that stage of life where my athletic heroes are no longer older than me, and neither are they my age peers, but they are younger…soon they’ll be my children’s ages and that will take some getting use to.

Watching GGG line ‘em up and knock ‘em down inspired me because I could see myself in him. I’m not a boxer, but still there was something within GGG that I wanted to identify with. I was inspired to identify a task, see a vision, pursue a goal…stalking it down, efficiency of movement, unshakable, taking licks but still coming forward, being elusive when necessary, nuanced yet strong. There’s a power and a stamina in that that I appreciate and am attracted to.

But I’m getting older too. Now, I’ve still got years and miles ahead, for sure…and good ones at that. But this is a season for reflection for me. I’m not as young as I used to be. As poet Harry Baker rightly notes, “I’m too old to train to be a Jedi”.

I hope GGG wins this weekend. I hope he’s got a couple more fights in him. But I know I’m watching his last ones. I hope he goes out on top, retires with championship belts at middleweight. 

The thing is though, I don’t know what GGG will do when he retires from boxing. I suspect he’ll do a bit of charity work for the country of Kazakhstan. He’s already begun some good will projects around education in rural parts of the country. And when he stops boxing, I can imagine him taking that same, stalking, steady, efficient, dogged approach to humanitarian efforts that he’s taken throughout his fighting career. I hope so. Because I want him to continue to inspire me in a new, future season of life just as he has in this present season.

Good luck GGG. I’m in your corner.