2010

(photo credit: Jason Kovacs photography)

The start of a new decade! I still remember exactly what I was doing NYE 10 years ago. Hard to believe its been 10 years (and this summer will be 10 years since I graduated high school...that is actually sounding old!). 

We've been enjoying every minute of the holiday season this year. We  were home in MD over Christmas (my favorite place to be for Christmas!) and had one of our best Christmases ever! We also enjoyed 2 feet of snow...more on all that later, once I get my pics up, I post about it all.

This is always one of the most relaxing weeks of the year- between Christmas and the New Year. The girls have been thoroughly entertained by all their new toys, and Joe & I have had lots of free evenings at home (a rare treat!). Real life starts back up next week, but we've been enjoying the slow, daily-nap-taking, pace of life (which I think is a nice "recovery" from the wonderful craziness before Christmas)!

On the baby front, I still have a hard time remembering I am pregnant. I'll have people come up and say congratulations, and I am stumped for a brief moment as to what they are congratulating me about! The super tired and nausea's 1st trimester is long gone now (it blew by). I think I am around 16 weeks. We go in to hopefully find out if we're having a boy or girl in TWO WEEKS! Wow, that's amazing to me! Alathea will still proudly proclaim she is having a baby brother... not sure where she got that from. I'm still thinking baby is a girl. I'll be totally thrilled either way.

Some have asked what is going on with our house. We put it back on the market late November, just a week after the previous contract officially fell through. It was initially a disappointing and perplexing season. But I can see God using the disappointment to reveal just how much I was craving a new home...really making an idol out of it. And just how much I was struggling to really believe that God is in control and in his wisdom knows what is BEST for us. Through my feeble human eyes it seemed like the perfect time for us to move (amazing interest rates, new Government tax credit, great house prices and a 3rd baby on the way)...BUT I am learning to lay down what "I  think is best" and rest in the fact that God's ways are perfect and FAR above my ways.  As I pondered my desires for 2010 I thought, "I desire the Lord would bless us with a new house". I felt the Lord immediately speak to me, "I want you to desire ME". THIS is what I am most grateful for is this whole 5 month whirlwind. I've learned how quickly and subtly I begin to love and desire God's gifts above HIM, the giver. I'm learning that one of the wonderful and wise ways he loves us is to sometimes not give us what we are desiring. 

So in regards to the house, we are in a wonderful season of WAITING. My dear friend Jane wrote me a letter a few weeks back that I have read over and over. This is part of an excerpt she read from Paul Tripp's "A Shelter in the Time of Storm". He is writing about Abraham's Faith (from Romans 4:18-21). This is a bit long, but worth the read:

"Why did Abraham grow strong in faith as he waited those many long years? It isn't because he played mental denial games. No, the passage makes it clear that he faced the facts of the situation head on. In his time of waiting, Abraham had a very different experience than we often do, because Abraham did something that we often fail to do. Here it is: the temptation in times of waiting is to focus on the thing we are waiting for, all the  obstacles that are in our way, our inability to make it happen and all of the other people who haven't had to wait. Along with this we rehearse to our ourselves how essential the thing is and how much we are daily losing in its absence. All of this increased our feeling of helplessness, our tendency to think our situation is hopeless, and our judgment that waiting is futile.

While it's true that Abraham considered the facts, they weren't the focus of his meditation. No, his focus was on the God who had made this promise. Every day Abraham would get up and remind himself that the God who had made the promises on which he was waiting was absolutely able to deliver them. The God who made heaven and earth would have no trouble causing an old woman to deliver a promised child! Abraham did not fill his mind with his own weakness and the seeming futility of the situation. No, he filled his mind again and again with the glory of God's immeasurable power, and as he did he grew stronger and stronger in faith."