Goodbye 2010

I'm not going to do a recap of this year - I know all the other bloggers are doing it, but I don't have the energy or time. My two second recap: this year we started the adoption process and paid off a lot of debt. And we went to Costa Rica and had a great time with our friends and family. :)

Matt and I spent New Year's Eve with Jessica, Shelby, Tonya, Kevin, Tia (her husband Joel had to work) and Tia's girls at Jessica's parents' lakehouse. We played board games, ate yummy food and got a good workout on the xBox 360 Kinect that Tia's family received for Christmas and Rock Band. Spending time with friends is the best way to ring in the New Year. After the countdown, we headed out to the outdoor screened in porch and sat by the fire chatting until 2:30 a.m.

Me, Tia, Jessica and Tonya at the lake house

Jessica and her husband Shelby playing Kinect

Me and Matt. Not the most flattering picture but it was so fun!

As I headed to bed, I sent a Facebook birthday message to my bestie Crystal who was the first baby born in Watauga County, NC in 1979.

Ain't she precious? This is her wedding day. My hair is so short!

Here is the most recent picture of us - this summer we spent a week at her family's house in Georgia before they moved to Arkansas. When we said goodbye, I started bawling, like really boo-hooing. This is the farthest away we've ever been from one another and I miss her terribly.
From left, Elizabeth and her daughter Emma Kate, me, Crystal and her youngest daughter Leland June, Mary Stuart who is holding Crystal's oldest daughter Greenlee Noelle.

I was reading Oswald Chambers last night and his December 31st entry brought me to tears. Take 5 minutes and read it. It will change you, I promise.

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December 31 - "The God of Israel will be your rereward." Isaiah 52:12

Security from Yesterday. "God requireth that which is past." At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise from remembering the yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God's grace is apt to be checked by the memory of yesterday's sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present.

Security for Tomorrow. "For the Lord will go before you." This is a gracious revelation, that God will garrison where we have failed to. He will watch lest things trip us up again into like failure, as they assuredly would do if He were not our rereward. God's hand reaches back to the past and makes a clearing-house for conscience.

Security for Today. "For ye shall not go out with haste." As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, unremembering delight, nor with the flight of impulsive thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ.

Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.
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Cheers to 2011! May your irresistible future be filled with everything you hope for. We're hoping our 2011 is filled with a baby ;)