A few years back I heard someone talk about using Christmas cards to pray for their friends. I thought it was a great idea but never really got my post-Christmas self in gear to make it happen.  And our boys were never really both at the developmental point at the same time for it to be entirely practical. (I can’t for the life of me remember who told me about this so feel free to claim the idea in the comments and I’ll give you credit! I feel like maybe it was related to MOPS at Vienna Presbyterian years ago?!)

SO, before you toss that Christmas card stack into the trash or a box think about keeping them and using them for a fun family project.

As we received cards from friends this year I took a tip from one of my favorite blogs… A Barefoot Day and hung our cards to enjoy for the season. Simple…twine and clothes pins.  Nothing fru fru!

So far since Christmas we have just kept our cards hanging on the twine that we hung on our front window.  Most evenings after dinner we let one of the boys pick a card and we talk about and pray for those friends.

So far it is serving a few purposes:

1. Taking time to pray for friends! For their jobs, safety, health, joy…

2. (one I hadn’t anticipated) To help our boys get to know family and friends that we may not see so often. It isn’t uncommon for the boys to not know everyone in the picture so it’s a fun way to introduce them (or refresh their memories) to our friends/extended family and their children.

3. Teaching the boys to pray…what it means to “talk to God” and pray for others. It has been such a neat way to teach the boys more about prayer and having others in mind when we pray. I won’t lie, there have been some silly prayers. But they are learning. We are all learning.  I don’t know about you but I want to be mindful of others needs and I often get a bit stuck in a rut and distracted by our own family needs. Praying for others helps get our attention off ourselves. And the visual reminders of the cards is helpful!

Sometimes we are aware of what friends are going through currently and can pray specifically, other times we just pray for them to be healthy, happy, etc. And I am attempting to send people a short message after the boys pick their card just to let them know that we care about them and spent some time in prayer for their family. That part is harder for me to remember to follow up on!

I am getting a little antsy to get things completely back in order around here and as much as I love seeing the cheerful cards, I am ready to take them down. So I took them all off the twine and punched a hole in them. I tied them together with a snippet of the twine (you could use ribbon, a ring, slip them into an old album, whatever you have). There are lots of ideas on pintrest for making them into a book to keep as a memento, which is fun too.  But for now, I just want to keep them together so we can continue our family project and not have them scattered.

So rescue the stack of cards before the recycling bin and join us as we start this New Year!

I have sat down a few times now to crank out “our year in review” and have come up empty. A few days ago I looked through the calendar of our year and it has once again in true Kolb-style been a wild ride. We started the year by meeting with a realtor, which led to putting in an offer on a foreclosure and eventually getting the home. That mixed in with preparing for a move, living life to the fullest in our last months in Switzerland followed by diving right in here, preparing for Kindergarten, two broken limbs, a miscarriage, birthdays, lots of laughs, a few lot of cries, and so much in between. 2012 is memorable like all of the years before.   It wasn’t predictable and I think at my ripe old age I am beginning to realize it never will be. Routines roll into new routines, boys outgrow habits and clothes, grey hairs increase. Life is dynamic and there is no stopping it. There is no waiting around for things to feel settled or to slow down. There is just the need to learn to enjoy it as it comes. Which at times in our house feels to be at break neck speeds.

In the new year I have very few new goals…most roll over!

1. Carving out times for quiet to have the time to grow and to see the fruits of spiritual growth.

2. Always working on getting/staying in shape and losing weight. Guessing I will think about it the day I die and still not have let that one go. Hoping to have a healthier view of it all.

3.Working on having more patience with the boys and not raising my voice!

4. Taking a photography class

5. Fostering meaningful relationships. Not the side salad type, more the steak type. I want to pour into others and get to know them for real. I have the treat of having people in my life like this already but we are in a new neighborhood and essentially a new church since there are so many people we don’t know.

6. Getting back into writing notes and doing more thoughtful things for Seth. When we were dating and prior to kids I was so much more creative and thoughtful. I loved surprising him with a note in his briefcase or his favorite meal. Survival mode with tots sort of  reduces taking the time to step back and take the time to do the extras.

7. Doing projects and creative things even if I don’t think I will be good at them. I have a sewing machine and fabric for a little curtain…and yet it sits. I hate doing things I will likely fail at.  I know I won’t be good at many things and that is why we are blessed with friends with varying  skills and talents…but I want to not avoid things just because they aren’t my strength.

8. Letting myself be silly with the boys. Laughing at their jokes, listening better to their stories (not encouraging the abridged version), racing them to the mailbox, reading more with them…

I am cautiously optimistic about the new year. I am tempted to hang on the tails of 2012 just because a whole new year feels a bit intimidating. In the past I was optimistic about an upcoming year particularly if it wasn’t slatted for an international move combined with being 8 months pregnant or caring  for a newborn. I think I am in the clear on that possibility but I don’t pretend to know what to anticipate anymore.

One thing is for sure, we will learn and grown and change and we will be guided and provided for by our faithful Lord. We have seen His faithfulness in years past and we wait in expectation to see what he has in store for our family this year.

On this rather gloomy afternoon in Northern Virginia the house is slowly winding down for nap and both little birds are back in the nest. I have never been so thankful for the shorter day of school on a Monday. My lips are chapped from nervously licking them all morning. Did I think Jackson was going to go to school and there would be another shooting?! No. I didn’t. But I hated to let him go. He didn’t have a clue that I came home  from school drop off and stormed through the house cleaning like a mad woman to keep this momma brain occupied on something other than the possibilities.  He hurried into school excitedly and exited with pride in his accomplishments and excited chatter about gingerbread houses.

I remember when the oncologist gave us Jackson’s diagnosis, along with hours of information much of which left us with a very dark prognosis and much heartache. On the way home that first day from the medical center I said something along the lines of “why on earth would God give us this precious gift and then take him away from us?” I came to that scenario with a good bit of faith and yet it shook me, and if I’m honest it continues to. I can’t imagine the tremors going on in the lives of those that are living lives in homes that lack a person they love. I can’t go to Target alone without pushing the automatic door button for their door because the boys are so much a part of my life. I can’t imagine opening the fridge and seeing that child’s favorite food waiting, but never to be eaten. Or trying to come back to life while processing such grief and opening the washing machine to see the child or family members clothes, worn the day before when life seemed so normal. They will never be the same.  Why, Lord? Why? I know we live in a fallen world but oh how we long for it to be different.

As the world continues to spin conversations about gun control, homeschooling, mental health it is easy to get caught up in it all.  This world is a scary place. Our love of privacy and self sufficiency is back-firing. We think we can cuddle up in our private homes with our problems and deal with them on our own. We selfishly think it’s better to protect our pride and family name than it is to share what life looks like inside the walls.  Somehow we think it’s all about us and we don’t realize how much our secrets and sins affect the lives of others. We close the windows when our child screams in a tantrum, we smile and straighten the kids clothes as we enter church trying to not look phased about the argument we had on the way, we try to compare ourselves and encourage ourselves that what we deal with just isn’t so bad. At least I do. I might not be able to change gun laws, home school my kids, or revolutionize our countries mental health system but I can continue to work here in this space and through my family to share our lives and to be real. To share the hope we have in Christ. I can see hurting people and actually take the time to listen when I pass by and ask how they are. I can ask deeper questions and I can allow life to be more inconvenient if it means going deeper and building relationships that can be safety nets in crisis.

This morning I woke up and just knew I would struggle with fear. Somewhere during the time when I was loading the kids into the car for the ride to school a song from my childhood came to my mind. One that I had not heard or song in probably 25 yrs. The words were from the Bible, Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you may go.” He expects us to go, not to hunker down at home. I normally pray for the boys on the way to school but today I taught them this song.  If my kids have to live in this dark world I want them to know the truth of the hope. When they face times in their lives I want them to have words that come to mind that remind them of the truths we have.  I am so thankful for that song that I buried long ago.

I don’t know about you but I struggle to feel merry and bright in this time when our country grieves. I have felt guilty being excited about a date night tonight for our anniversary or for reviewing the list again for our birthday and Christmas festivities that approach.  I feel sad. Yet there is so much to be thankful for and to celebrate. In our society 7 yrs of marriage is a darn good accomplishment and turning 3 is nothing short of a miracle with a brother with 2 casts. So this week although I continue to pray and grieve with the families who have lost their beloved ones in Connecticut, I also know I need to savor this season.  Tears, chapped lips and all. We can’t seize every moment and make every moment a hallmark one, but we can be present. We can sit with grief and embrace joy. For each day is a gift.

I have had some interesting conversations lately will a few people on suffering. I am not sure if it’s our season of life but it sometimes feels like so many people we know are going through big things. This won’t be so much an enlightening post as it is me processing and sharing as I process myself.

I can remember so vividly as we walked the halls of the Embassy in Bogota the day we got Jackson’s cancer diagnosis. We had to go to the Embassy to schedule our medevac for the next morning and Seth had to gather his things from his desk.  We had no idea if and when we would return. We went from knowing people as simply colleagues to them seeing us in some of our most vulnerable moments.  I remember a colleague of Seth walking up to us and saying “this can’t be true, bad things don’t happen to good people, you are too good for your son to have cancer”. It struck a chord with me, don’t we all want to believe that if we are just good enough that good will come to us. The truth is bad things happen to good people and people who do bad don’t always appear to reap the consequences of their actions.   As our pastor talked about yesterday in his sermon, we live in a fallen world and this is not the way God intended it.

And on top of the truth that bad things happen to good people there unfortunately isn’t a quota system. If there was I could sigh in relief that we checked the broken bone box, or the miscarriage box,  the loss of a friend box. We all have things that have become part of our pasts and often are woven into our futures. They are painful and growing and defeating and humbling.

But as a Christian I believe that God does work things for the good of those who love him. We may not see where the good will come from but he does use sufferings to refine us. When I look at Owen in light of my miscarriage I am aware that sweet Owen who was made perfectly to fit into our family would not have been here had it not been for the pain and heartache we experienced before him. You hear stories about the person who got delayed leaving their home only to have their route interrupted and avoiding a car crash.  I heard a speaker a few weeks ago talk about how she got pregnant years ago just after getting married. It hadn’t been part of their 5 year plan and she was completely thrown. A year and a half later she delivered a baby still born. As she walked back into her home after leaving the hospital her first born ran to her and at that moment she had an overwhelming sense of God’s provision and providence. This little boy that was a surprise to her was the little love that showed light and joy in some of her most sorrowful moments.  But then there are the cancers and unexplainable deaths. Those don’t add up as easily. And even when we can see the good or the reverse side of the coin oh how we long to have both/and.

I think this is the most challenging part about faith. It’s easy to have faith and thanksgiving on days when things are going our way. But what about when it doesn’t look like you imagined it.  Why would a loving God allow the ones he created to suffer? We live in a fallen world.   This is not the way He intended it.

The blessings of this Thanksgiving week are not lost on me.  There is so much to be thankful for.  It might take me a lifetime to learn to rejoice in suffering but I am thankful for a loving God who knows our hearts and loves us through the tough times. For those of you that are suffering I pray that this thanksgiving would be one that you feel showered with peace.  It seems many of our friends are experiencing big things right now and I am sure each of you know people that are going through hard times.  Holidays are tough when you have lost…a job, a loved one, a marriage.  If you are feeling on top of the world with your turkey roasting and your pies baking, take a moment to not only be thankful for your current abundance but pray for those that struggle to feel thankful through their tough times.