The Best of 2010

I would LOVE to know if any of my posts really touched you. I would like to know if you have a favorite. Any on post that you remember or that particularly touched you?

Here are a few links to my favorites of 2010:

Poop Cake
God Cracked the Egg
Got Floss?
Mittens in Summer
Water

Please share with me what you think! I want to encourage and lift you all up! So doing this will help me help you. 😉

Have a wonderful, blessed, 2011!!!! Happy New Year dear ones!

My New Year Word

I love this time of year.
Christmas, the time we celebrate the birth of our God-man,
baby-king, Word-became flesh, God with us.

Then the end of the year.
The time to think back about the year we are leaving
and look forward to the New Year.

I have to admit I am a bit of a sap. I tear up at the thought of the end of the year, good-bye to 2010 never to be again.

Yet I love the possibilities of the new one coming. What new exciting, faith stretching, God-sized thing is God calling me to? What will happen? Who will I meet? Funny how I only plan on the good things, the exciting things, and yet I know hard things are to come as well.

In all my type-A personality, I have never set resolutions or goals because I fear failure. I look at a list of goals and if I don’t make it I think I failed. I have even stopped making lists for daily things. This is not a positive trait. It is just me and through God’s grace, I am working on it.

So in all my thinking about this past year and looking into the next, I have been praying for God to show me what this year was and what God is calling me to do next year….Drum-roll please….

2010 can best be described as stretching…
Serious stretching beyond me.
Letting God take over my hopes and dreams.
Letting Him do it His way and doing it all beyond me.
Opening up my mind and heart to God-sized things He can do if I follow Him.

My word for 2011 is growth.
Now that God has stretched me, I need to grow into the stretched out areas God created in 2010.
I need to persevere.
I need to grow beyond what I think is possible.

What about you? What did God do for you in 2010? What is He calling you to in 2011? Let me know I can’t wait to hear what He is up to!

Joy and Grief Mingle, at Least Here

I long for the day when grief no longer taints joy.

Our most joyful days on earth are tainted. Pain, fear, grief mingle and mix with our joy.

Day I accepted Jesus as my Savior…Joy of forgiveness of sins, pure love from heaven washed the fear of hell away. Yet knowing some would still choose hell over grace and mercy caused grief.

Graduating High School…The joy of accomplishment, the fear of what is next, the grief of friends lost during the journey.

Wedding Day…Joy, excitement, my man, my soul-mate, my life-partner mix with the sadness of leaving my family to cleave to my husband. The joy of making our own way entangled with the fear of leaving all I have known.

Birth of children…Incredible joy, love, and excitement. Mixed with PAIN in the process, fear of failure, and for some grief due to illness or tragedy.

Is the grief, pain, and fear in the joy a reminder for us? Is it God’s loving way to remind us Earth is not our home?

It points to what is not, but what “should be.” Does the pointing mean there is more? Does it mean that at some point the “should be” is what will be?

I believe that the answer is yes. I long and wait in fear and joyful expectation for that day. That DAY when:

“‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Revelation 21:4

Oh that I would allow those painful, fearful, grieving, joyful moments to turn my heart and mind to His return. That I would wait in hopeful expectation of that day –
when joy and grief no longer cling;
when tears, mourning, death, and pain are no more.

Oh what a day that will be!