Year in Review

This time of year I can’t help but have a lot of random thoughts that circle my brain. Thoughts about family, beliefs, friends & possessions fill my mind and make it hard for me to close down and sleep at night. In some ways this year has been a year with a lot of upheaval, but in other ways, I guess you could say it has been freeing.


The year started with a family member calling to tell me they were tired and wanted to die. They had a loaded gun lying beside them in their bed. I was at work, and they were in Florida. With much talk and hopefully love, the person didn’t pull the trigger, but also didn’t live up to the promises made to take care of themselves and seek help. This unfortunately resulted in a very stressful situation in which I had to draw some lines.

My daughter decided rather quickly to go teach for a year in China. Amber has always gone to the beat of her own drum, and has lived away most of her adult life, but China!! I haven’t hugged her since February 7, 2012. I have been able to Skype with her and that has been huge, but I cannot wait till January 7, 2013 when I can give her a hug. I miss my girl so much. She wants to move back to California and I have to say, California isn’t so far away now. It’s all about perspective!

I had another incident with a family member in early September. I got a call from our local hospital telling me that my brother was there and needed me to go and pick him up. The surprise in this is that I hadn’t seen this particular brother in about 2 years. I didn’t even know where he was. You see, he and another of my brothers decided long ago that they didn’t like working or going by anyone else’s rules so they have been roaming from place to place for most of their lives. He asked me to take him to the bus station and buy him a ticket to Florida. When they asked if he had any luggage to check, he said no and it hit me that all he owned was in a little bag that he carried with him. Every possession he owned fit in a little sack. I can’t get over the fact that his whole life, his whole legacy, if you will, was in a little paper sack.

On a happier note, my son, Austin, proposed to his girlfriend, Ashley in September. We love her so much and can’t wait to welcome her officially into the family. The wedding will be sometime March 2014.

We all go through things, some much worse than mine and some better. This year I have had a dry spell. A time where I just haven’t felt close that close to God. It seems like things are too heavy, too much, too sad. So many have lost loved ones, so many are going through sickness and even though I haven’t had to face those things, I have still felt sadness deep in my soul this year. A heaviness of heart that makes it hard to even breathe.

This year, I have realized that just because you have the same blood doesn’t mean you are close. I have some incredible friends who will always be more like sisters to me than my own will ever be. I have an incredible immediate family, Toby, Amber, Austin & Ashley, whom I love dearly and am so blessed by God to have. I have a home, and more ‘possessions’ than I really need.

But the most important thing I have relearned this year is that God saved me, He rescued me, He loves me so much. He sent His son, as a baby, knowing that one day He would die for me. If I was the only one on the earth, He would have still sent His son to die for me! I have that assurance and I pray you do as well. What a freeing feeling that is!  This verse, one of my favorites, reminds me of this - "I will not forget you, See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands..." Isaiah 49:15b-16a
My name is engraved on the palms of Gods hands and so is yours!

Looking Up!!!

I am intrigued by the fact that Isabel will spend hours looking up. She is a bird dog, but that’s not what holds her interest. She watches squirrels. (That’s not to say that she doesn’t chase birds, ‘cause she does…there’s not a bird that comes in our yard that doesn’t get attention. That’s not her main focus though.) She will sit for hours a day and just look up at the trees. The squirrels will run up and down the trees and jump from tree to tree, almost as if they are teasing her. She just watches. Sometimes, if they do a lot of running up and down the tree she will run around the tree, barking and chasing. It’s almost as if they have a game going on. On a couple of occasions, she has been so still and quiet that she has actually managed to put her paws on a squirrel. Once she caught one and it startled her so that she lost it almost as soon as she got it. Another time she caught a smaller squirrel and Toby happened to be out back and made her let it go. She was fine with that. To her it’s not so much about the catching as it is about the waiting, the watching, the patient expectation. So she spends hours just sitting under the tree, very still, looking up.

When I am out on the deck watching her, I am reminded that as Christians, that’s how we should be. We should always be looking up. We should strive to be still, watching, waiting and patiently expectant, while always looking up. We run around ‘barking and chasing’ wondering why we haven’t been able to get what we want. Then when we do ‘catch’ what we think we want, we are surprised that it’s not what we really needed or wanted. So, we go back to the foot of the tree and look up, waiting with patient expectation, knowing that God knows what we really need to ‘catch’.