New Year's Eve

Here it is New Year's Eve 2012.  I haven't written in my blog but one time since September of 2011 and I didn't publish that one.  Too private.  I have said before that when I am overcome with my thoughts and I can't get past the consuming emotion I find that I usually have to write it down to get over it and go on with life.  So here I am on New Year's Eve writing on my blog.  Exciting huh?  But, you know what?  There is nothing else I would rather be doing.  

I so enjoyed the holidays this year.  I had all my family here on Thanksgiving and actually was able to put together a pretty decent meal for all 31 of them even if I do say so myself.  I kept my calm and carried on when I got frazzled and we all had a good time being together.  This was the first Thanksgiving since Monty and I married that both of his kids and their families and both my kids and their families were altogether and it went very well.  My sister and all her family were here, her son and his family didn't make it until Friday, but for the most part they were all here.  My cousin, both his children and their children were here along with one other cousin.  My 92 year old uncle, the last surviving sibling in my dad's family, that was able to make the trip from Arkansas along with his wife and we were so glad to be able to share the holiday with them also.  

After Thanksgiving came the decorating, parties and gift buying for Christmas.  I enjoyed it all and then abruptly as it started it was over.  Here we are starting a New Year already which blows my mind.  

This past year I would have to say the focus in my life has been all about learning more and more about my Heavenly Father.  I have wondered more than once this past year why it took me so long to learn the things I have learned spiritually this past year.  So much of my life was spent "thinking" I knew the Lord, yet not really having the intimate relationship He desires with each of His children.  And I don't have that intimacy all the time, just when I take the time to develop it.  He tells us in His Word, that we will find him when we desperately seek Him.  The way this relationship came about was not through easy times of peace and joy, it came about with tears and sorrow and desperately seeking Him and finally yielding to Him and saying, "I know you know best for me, for my children and for my life and whatever that is, I will learn to be happy with it because I know you know what is best for me."  Trust, absolutely one of the hardest things humans can do.  There are times that the peace of God so overwhelms me I can barely breathe, and cannot remain without emotion.  Sometimes, especially here lately, when I realize His hand on me and my children, when I see the way He works and experience His grace in each circumstance, I stand amazed in His presence with tears running down my face.  

There is one thing I would like to add to this blog.  As we read and think on the Christmas Story during the holidays, this year the Lord gave me a special insight to see it a little differently than I usually do.  This year as I thought about Mary, unmarried and carrying a child in a culture totally unaccepting of  such things, I didn't see her as the Mary I normally do.  This year it dawned on me that Mary had to be so confused concerning the things that were happening to her, yes she was blessed to carry the Messiah, but what she thought that would mean, had nothing to do with the reality she lived.  Can you imagine as she gave birth to the child fathered by the Holy Spirit, God incarnate, she would deliver Him in a nasty barn, with no place to lay Him except a manger?  What is up with that?  This was the Messiah!  She knew what she was told, she knew how she conceived but she had no one to smooth the path for her.  Remember the angel only told her, no one else what was happening to her.  Joseph was told in a dream, which we all doubt from time to time.   Mary had to trust and I can only imagine how hard that would be when He was rejected, then placed on a cross.  Wait a minute, this is your Messiah, what is going on here, why would you do this?  Can you imagine her crying out to God to DO SOMETHING!  This is your son too!  I would imagine Mary would be wanting another divine visit explaining all the strange goings on to her but we are never told in the Bible that it ever took place.  She had to trust her Lord just the way we do when we think we have it all figured out and then everything falls apart.  We are told she pondered things and held them in her heart.   Our Lord tells us, "My ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts."  He is still sovereign, He is still Holy, He is still Righteous and He is still ultimately in control.  He knows what is best for us all.  When we are in the midst of a tough situation, and we could see so many ways that God could "fix it" and doesn't then we have to trust once again that He alone is in control and our biggest job is to yield to Him.  

Please Lord, help me remember this Christmas and your Amazing Grace to me!