I’m taking a rare moment of downtime to say farewell to 2013. It’s been a crazy busy year.
My church moved to our own facility. Our children’s ministry finally has rooms that we decorated. But to be honest, there are more things to finish and plans to start. We also had our own kingdom themed VBS (because we’re called Kingdom Kids, get it?). I wrote the lessons and produced the videos. Our awesome worship leader wrote the songs. She’s amaaaazing! And we both agreed that this was the hardest VBS we’ve ever had because a lot of things kinda went last minute. And if – IF – we write our own VBS again, we’re going to need to plan at least one year ahead. Props to all the VBS publishers out there. You rock. And in case you’re wondering, we’re going for Lifeway’s Agency D3 for 2014. Maybe we’ll write another VBS, but it won’t be implemented until another year or two…or five. I am planning to make our kingdom VBS available for free, but it needs massive editing and double checking to make sure I’m not stepping on anybody’s rights (which means the music won’t be available for free, so sorry). We also had a big Minute to Win It game night and a Christmas musical that I was stress dreaming about.
So on that news, the musical went great! Praise God! There were hiccups and line-tripping nerves, but the feedback was positive. There were a lot of people from the community that showed up Friday night, our first performance. I hope the message of the musical stayed with them and made their Christmas more positive and uplifting. Church was packed that Sunday, and I learned some lessons about church productions that I’ll blog about later.
This year, my grandfather passed away in March. Then another grandfather in church passed away in July. THEN a father in church was walking when a drunk driver rear-ended him in August. His death was ruled a homicide (reckless disregard for human life). It felt like we, as a church, barely started breathing before another passing happened. We do celebrate our eternal life through Christ Jesus and know that we will see them again. And in what seems like God’s balancing act, five girls were born to us this year (one of them was born premature and is in need of prayer)
I failed my annual New Year’s resolution to visit a US state I’ve never visited before. I cut my hair short, and then shorter. My brother got his driving license yesterday which means…I’M OFF CARPOOL DUTY! Celebrate good times, come on! Alright, we haven’t been doing carpool since our neighbor got his license, but I’ve been picking up or dropping off kids to school since my brother was old enough to go to school. Whoa, that just made me think about time.
Anyway, what else happened this year? Oh right, I started this blog! I started blogging when I was a teen, but was never an intentional blogger. Even when I wanted to have a successful blog, I was very inconsistent. This blog is different. It’s me answering God’s call to honor Him with my writing, and to encourage and challenge you ladies out there. So bear with me as I’m still learning WordPress and changing things around (like my header. I edited it while Bluehost was down today :-)), but stay tuned because there are many things in the works that I hope you’ll like. Thank you for stopping by, and please subscribe with your email or follow me on bloglovin or twitter.
And may our wonderful God, who is faithful and loving, abundant in grace and mercy, bless you and your family in 2014 and the many years to come. To Him be all the glory and the praise!
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Corinthians 5:17
