A New Year Note

Dear Friends and Family,

Happy New Year! We look forward to 2016 even as we reflect on what God has done for us as this year closes.

This year has been one of blessings , challenges, changes, and perseverance.  As a family we have witnessed God's love and mercy, His faithfulness and patience with us, and His reminder to us that He is real and that He cares about every detail of the plans He has for us.

Bryan and I celebrated our 25th year of marriage all year long.  We enjoyed sunny Orlando and even sunnier (except when we were there!) Jamaica as quiet get-a-ways from our busy daily life.   It has been wonderful to reminisce and remind one another of the beginning of our love life together.  How far we've come and how much our lives have been shaped by our love for each other and by the love of God in our lives.

Justin graduated from Grove City College in May and secured a teaching position for the 2015-2016 school year at a Classical Christian school in Beaufort, SC.  We see him (and make room for him) every weekend as he travels 3.5 hours to and from the coast.  It may sound like he's had a hard time separating from us, but in reality he comes home every weekend to see Sarah, to whom he is now engaged! (Yay!)

Joanna started her college career in January at University of South Carolina Lancaster.  She is a teacher's assistant and is balancing classes, work, piano lessons, and teaching Sunday school.  She has been blessed in all her endeavors and truly enjoys life as a college student right now.  She wants to study history and possibly minor in music and will have to decide if she will continue her schooling at USC or transfer to a smaller private college in the next year or two.

Aaron works at Chick Fil A, has been accepted to Liberty University next year, and is in choir, has a garage band, and plays soccer and rugby.  He is in his senior year of high school , always a challenging year trying to figure out what comes next and what to study in college.   He has grown in his faith this year and is a blessing to us as we help him work through all the possible ways he feels called to serve the Lord.

Abigail is in Year 8 in our home school.  She plays soccer, enjoys choir and has good friendships near and far.  She is learning to play the ukulele along with her piano lessons.  She is such a good help to me regularly in the house and a joy to teach.  It will be strange to have only one student in our home school next fall but I look forward to it.

We've seen both sets of our parents this year deal with health stresses that they have faced.  It has been such an encouragement and testimony to us and to our kids to see older saints who are facing life-changing news by trusting in God and calling on His mercy and His healing.   My parents and Bryan's parents are living out their faith and trust in their Savior and do not hesitate to show how much God has cared for them in the big and small things.

It has been a year of reconnecting with family even though we may not see them face to face.  We have had our ups and downs as a family, but feel the love and encouragement even if we can't be with each other in the same room, house, city, state, or even country!  We know that prayers and Christian love surrounds us as we share our lives with one another, even at a distance.

Our hope and comfort has always and continues to be in our faithful Saviour to meet all our needs.   Through disappointments, trials of faith, suffering for Christ's sake, blessings, and trusting in what is unseen but sure, we will face the new year as we did the last: with confidence and joy. 

Blessings

Count your blessings,

Name them one by one,

Count your every blessing,

See what God has done!

When I was young we had a children's recording with a song that had these words. The chorus has echoed in my head this week over and over again. It made me think of a verse that talks about counting, only in a different context: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you face trials of all kinds, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. And let patience have it's perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. (James 1:2-3) I had the privilege this week of counting blessings and letting patience do it's perfect work in me and I wanted to share some of what I've learned from it.

You may be asking: what does counting your blessings have to do with trials or patience? I have discovered that they are closely related. Let me explain by experience. This week began with counting blessings when our family looked at a house we were considering buying. It is a house that would meet desires for space, for privacy, for exercising hospitality, for enjoyment of man-made, God-given things, like hardwood floors, spacious kitchens, large decks, and more. There was excitement that we could actually live in this house and enjoy these things. Woven into the excitement was the knowledge that a desire we have could be a desire that God also has for us. In other words, I was blessed in knowing that God may be saying 'yes' to a desire that our family had to put aside for awhile as we were trained in a different area of our faith (but I'll leave that for another post).

My mind ran through the many ways God has blessed us as we learn to depend on Him to meet true needs. We've experienced blessing through trial and blessing through waiting on the Lord, blessing through answered prayer even when the answer has been 'no,' or 'wait.' Now it seemed as if the answer could be 'yes'.

The next verse in James is: "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him as of God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, without doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. Let not that man suppose he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways."

This verse brings me to the facing of trials and producing patience. The last two days have been a time of prayer and wondering if our offer on the 'dream' house would be accepted. The verses in James have been recalled many times as I prayed for joy, for patience, for wisdom, and for faith.

The Lord is good and gracious; and I would still be saying that if we didn't get the house! I spent long parts of the day yesterday in prayer, asking God to change my heart if His answer was no to the house, to be ready to give it up if the deal didn't go through. To be ready to trust in Him to find us a different place or to direct us in some other way if this wasn't to be. Towards the end, I didn't think the sellers were going to sell it to us; and that was going to be ok.

But all the while that I was praying, I was trusting and believing that it might happen; we were working all day de-cluttering and packing bedroom closets AS IF we were going to move. I did not want to exercise doubt; I wanted to exercise faith. I had to make a conscious effort to exercise my faith, believing that until I knew otherwise, I would proceed as if God were saying, 'yes' to us about buying the house. Several times I thought, "Will this all be for nothing? will we be waiting and searching for months or maybe never move?"

But when those thoughts entered my mind, I asked God to remove them; I couldn't go down that path of thinking or I would have wallowed in the mud there.

My walk with the Lord was more like crawling on my knees, trying to stand up and face whichever path He wanted for me. After knowing that our offer was accepted, I wondered if I would have stood as tall with a smile inside (joy) if the answer had been 'no'. I know that the Lord would have worked the smile (joy) into me over time. A blessing of a spiritual kind, not material.

I continue to pray that my desires will be only what the Lord desires for me, that if He meets desires or wants, He will use them for His glory and my good. I know He showers me with blessings, blessings of trial to grow my faith, and spiritual and material blessings that can be used for His kingdom work. I want to count it all joy in any circumstance that the Lord places me.

Are you counting your blessings? Can you name them one by one? Do you count it joy to face trials and have patience worked in you? Do you ask for wisdom, trusting in God to work His will for you in the best way, but in His way, not yours? These are the questions I've pondered this week. I'm thankful that the Lord has walked me through them.