Happy New Year!!!!

So a new year comes and with it comes the desire to start fresh on some things, get order to some things and change some things!

From the practical side of life I am getting organized this year. Every corner of this house will be subject to being overhauled or gotten rid of. I am working already on a new home management plan that I think will be great for my season, I have begun to organize and purge and feel freer already and the weekly schedule is printed in pretty colors and posted. I even made a pretty envelope thingy to hold my cash in its categories! And the meal planning system is next! I do not feel overwhelmed but instead feel like adding these systems will make my life simpler and that is what I am aiming for.

From the personal side of things, I feel like the Lord has really been helping me be loosened from things I have held to tightly to this past years. my fears, my plans, my hopes, my agdendas. As I have seen friends and family deal with many heartbreaking difficult things I find myself accepting the fact that we live lives that take many twists and turns and we travel up many hills and down into many valleys but the sovereign God will never leave us and will always be about our good. I know I am not immune to the same things happening to me. I have no guarantee that tomorrow everyone I love will still be here or that their will be unity and peace in my little world. I have seen may go through these types of trials and I know it can happen to me, but I have found that I worry less now and pray more. The book "A Praying Life" by Paul Miller changed my life and there is no exaggeration there. I am desperate for God and therefore I pray. If I don't pray, it shows that I think I am in control and don't need him. I find the personal conveniences that I would have called "needs" are just conveniences and I can do without. I want to live a life that is spent on dying to myself that others may feel his love. I want my life known for living all for His glory.

I know this year has some interesting things ahead for us. We are already strategizing and praying. I hold all my dreams and desiring loosely, I trust my God will have his way in us and no good thing will he withhold. I hope that when I write my last entry for the year in 2010 there is fruit to these thoughts, otherwise they will be like so many other empty New Year's resolutions. I believe there will be because I believe what I am feeling is a work of the Holy Spirit in me. I want to care less about me and more about Him. Does it really matter if I am right about something? Does it really matter if I get that item I was hoping for? Does it really matter if you make a mistake and offend me? When I get to see my Savior will I really care what happened down here? Life on this earth is but a blink of the eye. I want to live for the life that never ends. By the grace of God I hope I do.