Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Our New Year Celebration

How did you celebrate the New Year?  We went to our church for some great family fellowship.  We had dinner and games and good company.  It is wonderful to see church as family, loving on one another, catching up and helping each other out.  So FUN!

Since Brian had to go to work the next morning, we left before midnight.  We got home and spent some time together as a family and let Brian go to bed.  Then the kids and I had a wonderful hour and a half discussing the last year and our prayers for 2012.  It was a fantastic bit of conversation about how God works in our lives. 

One of the metaphors that came up was being in a boat.  As we travel, we get tossed from side to side, jostled, bumped and bruised.  We wonder why God would allow us such sufferings.  But then we look back and see these dangers that our paths missed.  How did we not see those?!  Now we can understand why we felt jerked around—we were being precisely navigated around whirlpools, storms and predators.

 

When midnight finally came, we went outside to celebrate with little poppers that the kids got in their stockings.  Since this is our first New Year in this house, I wasn’t sure what to expect in the neighborhood.  I went out cautiously, not wanting to be too loud.  But then we heard fireworks—fireworks in the forest!  So I figured we we were good to set off a few Dollar Tree poppers. 

The celebration in the neighborhood continued, and I realized that I was no longer hearing fireworks.  Those were gunshots!  Holy Moly, says the city girl.  I had joked about moving up here with mountain lions and having nothing to fear because we would be the ONLY household without firearms.  I hadn’t realized that the fact would be on full display New Year’s midnight!

Once we were done, we hugged and all went to bed.  Only when I was lying down did I become nearly panicked at the thought that I let my kids and dogs run around our backyard while an unknown number of guns were firing randomly into the air!  I had to do some fervent praying to still my heart!  What was I thinking?

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