Okay, let's see who all is out there...

Question 1)

*What is youre best/favorite Christmas memory?

Question 2)

*What is the best thing you have given at Christmas?

Question 3)

What is your best memory of giving/helping someone out around Christmas?

Mom was talking to us today about how we get so caught up in the activities of our lives that we forget to be a part of people's lives. She said that one of our church members, who is recently widowed, had a group of people stop by her house and clean her gutters, trim her bushes and offer to paint her house...all at no cost. It was a group from a church in the area who had decided to adopt that block and help them out. Shouldn't it have been her church family coming over to help her, without her having to ask. Our bulletin's are full of dinners and activites for the upcoming weeks, our schools offer so many programs, our jobs require more and more time (or so we think) that we forget in all of this the people who are around us. What if for every activity we removed from our lives, we replaced it with helping/loving someone around us, what a difference we could make. What if for every hour we didn't stay late at work, we took dinner to someone who just needs a friend, how could God use us? Just thinking about it and typing it out in this blog is really making me think about how we, as a church and as individuals, need to transition our thinking from how can we provide activities to new people so they will want to come to our church to how can we show the people around us God's love so that they will want to come to God. Just a little something I will be thinking about this week.

What cute boys!

* Will is 4 months younger than Carson, can you tell?
*The Royals won 9 of 10 times Carson was at the game and 8 of 8 times Will was there (over the past 2 seasons).
*They are both big Royals fans but Carson is a Chiefs fan and Will is a Colts fan (but still supports his hometown football team unless they are playing the Colts) "Blue 18 Baby"
*Carson's favorite sport - Basketball (he surfs the TV until he finds a game and then sits there in awe)
*Will's favorite sport - Soccer (thanks to his Papa and to cousin Sierra who is an amazing soccer player)
*Will just started saying ball but when he says it, he says really loudly "BAH" over and over. (Which sounds a lot like what he says when he's playing peak a boo.
*Both boys are the apple of their mother's eyes!!! And their Nana kind of likes them too!

Well, Here I am. Set up with a blog. Don't know who will read it but...here I am.

These last few weeks have been a growing time for me as a Christian. Well, not as a Christian but a growing time for my relationship with God. I have made time, not always consistantly, for talking with God and reading His word. It's funny, when I don't really think I have time in the morning for reading the Bible but stop and do it anyway, I have been early to where I need to go. I guess in our humanness we think that we're too busy and can't fit in time for God or we make excuses...but God is showing me that if I make time for Him, he will work out everything else.

Every time I think of being busy and fitting things into "my" schedule I remember a speaker on a radio show a few years ago. She said, we try to put all the wrong things into our schedule first. If you take a jar and try to fit all one size of rock in and then the next and the next, it doesn't always fit. But if you take the important things (time with God, family, etc) and put those in first, then put in all the little things (grocery shopping, washing clothes, etc), it fits in around the other things.

That said, my life is full and the jar can't hold anymore...at least from my perspective. When I think of what I can cut back on...I have an excuse for keeping everything in my jar as is. It may be because I ejoy that area or I don't think there is anyone who wants to or can do it or I just am a helper...it's in my nature as a first born of 6 or I don't want to disappoint someone. It's easy to say, put the important things in first and then fill in the rest...but to actually do it.

I'm writing this as a friend is beginning brain surgery to remove a tumor. I have peace from God that she will be okay and that He has big plans for her but it puts my own life in perspective. If I had to go through something like that right now, would all the things that I think are not able to be done by someone else or that I think someone will be disappointed if I stop doing be of any importance? Honestly, no.

So, Here I Am God, show me. Teach me. Release me from my own thinking.