long time

Wow, I haven't post since October! Crazy! I've meant to over and over, even wrote drafts, just never quite got around to finishing. So time for a quick update on our lives over the past 4 months.

 Here's the highlights:
 Spent Thanksgiving with my aunt and cousins in Ilinois, so fun black friday shopping together!
Mariam turned 1, hard to believe it. She had a small party with 1 other family and some of the basketball guys. It wasn't your usual guest list for a 1 year old :).
 Christmas was fun of course. Jason was on call though and it was a little iffy if he was going to be home for present opening. He made it just when the kids got up though!
In January Nathan turned 5 and we went to Disney World! None of us had ever been and we were impressed! It was so much fun for all of us. We weren't quite ready to get back to reality when we got back.
We've been back for 4 weeks now and at least 1 person in our family has been sick that whole time. Most of the time sick enough that we've had to stay home. We've had a day or 2 where it seemed we were getting well, then a new sickness would strike. I'm ready for health for sure! I do wonder if God is trying to teach me to slow down and focus on home for a bit.

Ministry stuff is going as usual, but we've had to bow out for a few weeks while we've been sick. I've been thinking alot over the past few months about the busyness in our lives, and about suffering that God has called many of our fellow Christians too. There are times when I want to bow out as we have for the past month with illness, times when I wish we lived in a nicer home, a nicer neighborhood, didn't feel the call to go to a hard place overseas with our kids. Then I pray or I read scripture or I hear from another Christ follower about their hard path and the call on their life. Then my perspective changes. I remember what I'm doing here. I remember that we are here to work, not to rest. Rest does come. God gives periods of inner reflection and breaks from the work for sure. But just as a vacation is meant to refresh you for the work you have to do, these breaks are the same. We are not meant to live in them. We are meant to enjoy them and then get back to the work God has put before us. The day will come for rest, for pleasure, for the end of suffering. Until then we must run the race set before us knowing that our reward in heaven will be all the sweeter for the work we've done here on earth.


Here's some picture's from our most recent "rest" :).