It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

family pic from Christmas card photo day

It's Monday morning of Christmas week! woohoo!! We took our travel trailer, the Wildwood, out to the lake near our house for a few days so we've been camping, sort of, on and off since Thursday. It was nice to sit around the campfire and roast marshmallows and relax. The highlight of the camping trip, however, had to be when the girls' team came from behind to win bocce ball. Yeah, it was awesome! And yesterday we went to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra at American Airlines Center. Amazing!

Decorating done. check. The staff Christmas brunch was here at our house last week. check. Christmas cards have all been sent. check. Mostly done with shopping...just waiting on the UPS man for a couple of items. We have a couple of family tradition-type things to do this week and I do have to make one more trip (I hope only one more) to the grocery store. All-in-all, it should be a glorious week.

I am totally thankful for a great 2010. In some ways it has been a super, hard year. The fall turned out to be probably both one of the best and one of the most difficult in recent years. In fact, I tried to write a blog a couple of weeks ago about the fog (the only word I can think of to describe it) I seemed to be in. I didn't post it, or finish it for that matter, because it was just too depressing. I tried to describe it to a friend and she asked me if it was spiritual. I get so frustrated when people say they are "burned out" in ministry -- where is that in Scripture? Yet, we also see those times when Jesus retreated. He went to be alone with the Father. Listen, if the only Son of God needed that then we, as mere mortals, do too. Absolutely, without a doubt. So, I took a couple of weeks off from teaching my class - thankfully, I have a couple of ladies that I can count on to pinch hit for me on occasion. I rested both physically and in God's Word. I wasn't prepping for a class, a mission trip, or a study that I will be teaching. I just soaked it in for me. I've been doing a word study on the word rescue and it was been a breath of fresh air - maybe more like a resuscitating breath, actually. I'm ready for all the fun of Christmas and the celebration of the bringing in of the New Year. I'm looking forward to what 2011 has in store and am anticipating what God will bring for my family and myself.

Serving the King,

Jeanette