- I got to help a dear friend make a book of her life story and publish it for her family. What an amazing experience - one I highly recommend if your parents or grandparents are still living. Get the stories on video (or at least audio). I wish I had done this while my mom was alive. Be sure you don't have to say the same thing.
- My daughter's engagement! I'm getting a son! We've already begun shopping for dresses and scouting locations - it's a surreal experience for me.
Because this was just the other day...
- Studying God's word with a wonderful group of women.
- A family vacation at the beach with all five of us (that doesn't happen too often any more).
- Jeff got to spend three weeks in Ethiopia, which was a highlight for me because he'd been wanting to go ever since I went in 2008. It made me so happy for him!
- Yet another year of God's faithfulness - through unemployment, aging parents, physical pain, prayers yet to be answered, loss of our family dog and even menopause (did I really just type that?).
- Helping 26 families and 34 children find each other through adoption from Ethiopia. These families are some of my greatest heroes - because this process is not easy! But their commitment to bring their children home, at great expense and through many months of waiting, means that those without a future or a hope will now be firmly rooted in loving families! It's a picture of our own adoption into God's family.
What shall we say about such wonderful things as these?
If God is for us, who can ever be against us?
Since He did not spare even His own Son but gave Him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?
Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for His own?
No one—for God Himself has given us right standing with Himself.
Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and He is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.
Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love?
Does it mean He no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?
As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”
No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.
Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.
No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:31-39
Happy New Year!
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