I had the honor and blessing of getting to illustrate this year’s children’s Christmas book that our church will give away during our annual Christmas Eve Candlelight service. What Christ Brings is the third of these books that I’ve had the opportunity to be part of and each experience has been so unique for me due to the season of life I’ve been in.
Last year, I had the privilege of contributing to an Advent devotional book called Advent: Preparing for the Arrival of the Savior. My contribution included Christmas and Advent hymns from church history, with a peek into the theology and history of the hymns. For our blog post today, I have included the introduction that I wrote for that devotional. I hope it encourages you in your own Advent studies this year. May the hymns you sing during Advent encourage and strengthen your faith as you worship the birth of our Savior!
It's really hard to trust God when you don’t know what is coming next. I am a planner; I like to have control over the things in my life. It can be really difficult when I have to relinquish control or admit to myself I never had as much control as I thought I did. The last few years have been a journey of learning how to trust God when he calls me to new seasons of life.
Change. I don’t know why for many of us our gut instinct is to resist change, and we may feel a negative twinge when we know it is inevitable. I think it often happens before we are even born, or it certainly seemed to for my first-born child. He was due July 27 and didn’t decide to make his entry into the world until August 7th on a very hot Oklahoma summer day with the temperatures hitting over 100 degrees. His father and I were on our knees praying the night before that he would decide on his exit strategy or the next day the doctor was going to make the decision for him. And it worked!!
How is it June already? Summer has officially arrived and there are so many fun things to do here in the Oklahoma City area! For me, summer has always been a time of finding ways to make memories with family and friends. I hope that you, too, will take time to enjoy the community around you and the fun that Oklahoma City has to offer this summer? The first thing I will always recommend is a good coffee shop! So, here are a few of my favorites.
Summer is a complicated season. I long for it to arrive and then I am ready for it to move on out. I welcome the slow mornings and sweet summer evenings; it’s the in-between part of the day (yes, the bulk of the day) that can be a struggle. If you are like me, the idea of outings to public places with your young kids is a bit overwhelming and, honestly, could go really well or be a total disaster. I am in a season where man on man defense is preferred and often required for outings to be enjoyable. If you are familiar with my family dynamic, you know that I am incredibly outnumbered at home. All that to say, I have to get creative! I have come up with some fun ideas for slowing things down at home, saving money, and keeping the day moving.
