Category Archives: 3 Celebrations & Festive Events

A record of our gala celebrations and convivial festivities!

On the 12th Day of Christmas – it is Epiphany!

January 6, 20142 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep ChristmasJeanie

12 drummers drumming, people! That is what you get on the 12th day of Christmas!

So this is it. We have finally come to the end of the Christmas season on the Day of Epiphany, a Christian Feast day that celebrates the revelation of God the Son who came as a human being in Jesus Christ, and of course – the observance of the Wise Men visiting Baby Jesus.

I got my Christmas cards done! Now to get them mailed to the out of towners…a whole different project!

And may I just say – getting the one perfect shot for this card…well, it never actually happened. Stormie had to “fix the stall,” and paste in a face or two from a different shot and you might notice the pot near the manger? It isn’t just crooked, it was actually falling. When everyone else looks best in the pot-falling shot, you just ignore the pot!

This is the back of the card. The Nativity in the living room…because we felt Evangeline should not actually have to be in a real barn quite yet…everyone owns a manger, yes?

Nativity-Photoshoot day was as loud as 12 drummers drumming, I can guarantee you that!

It was a wild, hilarious, very short, but intense sliver of time. My little lamb so wanted to scurry away and the littlest Wise Man was an hour past his nap time. The tiny angel’s halo didn’t fit right and the biggest Wise Man’s head gear was strapped on so tight he almost got a headache. There is the cutest shot of Guini laughing, which I thought was maybe her Uncle Rocky being funny, but Averi informed me it was when Kai tooted right in the middle of getting the pictures taken.

Inside, left of the Christmas card

And it is always so funny, because I am always hoping for this one perfect shot for the card, but honestly, when you go back later, it’s the crazy ones that make you laugh and re-live the fun moments of the day. However, for posterity I must write this here: we only used 1 camera and that is a mistake with a big group like this. We’ve usually always had 3 or 4 going and that way – something is bound to work. Must do that again from now on…for as long as these sweet-peas will let me do this.

Baby Jesus slept blissfully through it all, swaddled in a Jessica McClintock fleece and green velvet throw.

This is the inside, right

Amelie Belle told me today that she plans to be Mary next year and Averi says she wants to be a Wise Man. So, I guess it’s still on for 2014! :) Happy Nonna!

On the card, I adapted some of Howard Thurman’s words, which seem appropriate in light of the Christmas season coming to a close:

“When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The real work of Christmas begins.”

Because, Christmas = Christ Mass = Worshiping Jesus Christ. It’s never really over. So it’s time, friends and family to do the works of Jesus (Luke 4) as an act of worship: proclaim good news to the poor, recovery of sight for the blind, proclaim freedom for the prisoners, set the oppressed free and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. We have our marching orders – so much great stuff to do in His Name! Merry Christmas, bright New Year and God’s favor upon you!

Only 352 days until Christmas… :)

A bonus song with a wish for you. May you be blessed in the coming year and find Jesus to be your all in all.

“‘Til the Season Comes ‘Round Again,” by Kenny Rogers

“May the new year be blessed with good tidings

‘Til the next time I see you again

If we must say goodbye

Let the spirit go with you

And we’ll love and we’ll laugh

In the time that we had

‘Til the season comes ’round again”

On the 10th Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me-me-me-me-meeeee

January 4, 20142 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 7 Keep ChristmasJeanie

A whole lot of fluffy, white snow!

It’s cast party day at The Rhoades Ranch. :) That means lots of chicken enchiladas and shredded pork enchiladas ready to pop into the oven, plus a party-size roaster full of my *ahem, famous Swedish Meatballs, among other things. One of those other things is “Christmas Crack,” and I just hope there is some left by the time human beings arrive because I l-o-v-e it sooooooo much!

And we have a marshmallow, snowy, fluffy, white, Christmas-y world outside! How fortuitous that I have LOTS of hot cocoa mix ready to go and a nice big rug for feet-wiping! Finally, on the 10th day of Christmas, it looks it – like Christmas!

The outside lights are going to be aglow for our guests, the cast and crew of Jesus, Mary and Joseph! (otherwise known as “10-Lords-a-Leaping”).

Christmas morning

And so, on this, the 10th Day of Christmas, let’s keep meditating on WHY Jesus came.

Even though we have packed away our Nativity sets and moved back into life at our usual speed, let’s not forget how the Word-made-Flesh came to us as a vulnerable, fully dependant baby, but with a great purpose. Understand His plan, receive it – or Christmastime is in vain. He came bringing life, and not just life, but life more abundant!

John 10.10 nkjv

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

On the 10th Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me – Abundant Life!

That manger-baby grew up and powerfully counter-acted anything the thief tries to do to you or take from you. By His perfect life, His death and resurrection, Jesus negates that enemy’s power over your life. The gifts of Christmas aren’t over – they’re overwhelmingly true today and everyday! Joy to the World!

So I was sick on the 5th day of Christmas…

December 31, 20131 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 7 Keep ChristmasJeanie

And now it’s the 6th Day of Christmas

I just KNOW there were literal handfuls of you who were wondering where I’d gone, haha!

It was? I don’t know what it was? It was like Thanksgiving went straight into wild Christmas prep and baby countdown into marketing a production into Baking Day which led straight (and I mean straight) into having a baby which led into tech-week for the play and the amazing production that was Jesus, Mary and Joseph! which threw me headlong into a final shopping frenzy for Christmas and then a wonderful, sweeeeeeeet Christmas with my family which morphed straight into 3 crazy-fun and super-exhausting days with the most delightful grandbebes in the known universe and then suddenly, feeling a little bleh on Sunday (which was my rest day) to full-fledged fever-achy-miserable-moaning-and-groaning-shivering poor-me sickness of some sort.

Better today. How about YOU!?? Are you and your familias staying healthy?

Six Things I am thinking about on the 6th Day of Christmas (after all – this is my **thought* – collage*)

1/

Dave got me the Shauna Niequist book, Bread and Wine – A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes. I had borrowed it from the library and could not quit talking about it and now I have a copy I can read again and again and write notes in and underline for emphasis. It’s full of great quotes about the family table, eating together and food and it is just…delicious. Even as just a book, it heightens all my senses because of the words… And as I have written about food and meals together around convivial tables many times here at this very blog, always struggling to find the right/perfect words, it makes me happy that some one else has captured what I have experienced and felt and yet challenged me to embrace and pursue more of it – of the life around the table. She writes so beautifully, I wholeheartedly recommend it!

From my own “about page,” and you may quote me on this

“My true SOUL FOOD belief – breaking bread, enjoying even the humblest meal at a convivial table filled with love and laughter: The best meal you will ever eat. And may you have many of those in your lifetime!”

2/

Dave and I are in a bit of a Christmas compromise. There is a big cast-party at our house this weekend and while it is bright and sunny and a fresh New Year almost is here, I would love the feeling of packing Christmas away for all fresh clean surfaces and new beginnings. Yet he, Mr Christmas, well, he would leave it all up until truly, the 12th Day of Christmas (Epiphany, January 6). In my post-sick weakened state, I figured I’d have to give in and let everything remain, but he got downstairs before me this morning and packed away the Christmas art work and Santa collection and most of the Nativity sets and the kid’s Christmas books and games and cleared surfaces and made room and though the outside lights will remain lit until Epiphany and two gorgeous trees and a greenery-laden bannister remain, things still look fresh and clean and I didn’t even have to do a thing. How sweet is that?

3/

Anne Graham Lotz posted a blog yesterday called “2014: The Year of God’s Presence,” and that has just hit my heart with a breath of joyous, forward-leaning possibility.

4/

2013 was a year of such stripping away. I am not really one of those people who can seem to comprehend that God loves him/her just because He is love, gives love and not because of what she/he does to earn it. Even though I know technically we are saved by grace and not our works, I still have the old “consider the ant and don’t be a sluggard” mantra playing in my mind at all times. Also that scary picture of Jesus cursing the tree that didn’t bear figs. I have always struggled with working my ever-loving behind off trying to force the fruit so I don’t get kicked out (or cursed for eternity, as it were). But the truth is, fruit comes cyclically, in seasons, and then the tree has to go dormant to prepare for the next season.

I asked God, somewhere near the beginning fo 2013, to give me a symbol of my life, some sort of motif that would help me understand the purpose of my very existence and He gave me the tree. A tree. A tree planted by the waters. And at the time it didn’t seem particularly exciting, but later in the year, when I found a note I had written to some one else at a time of despair in their life, I was encouraged by this passage from Job 14.7-9 that I had shared for them:

“At least there is hope for a tree:

If it is cut down, it will sprout again,

and its new shoots will not fail.

Its roots may grow old in the ground

and its stump die in the soil,

yet at the scent of water it will bud

and put forth shoots like a plant.”

And I can tell you that trying to remove a tree from your yard is hard work. I tried this summer with several seedlings that had self-planted and it was an ongoing battle. And that is how the devil should see me. At the scent of water…

5/

God can make all things new. He can redeem any situation. Anything! What the enemy means for evil, God uses for good to accomplish His plan and His purpose. His ways are mysterious and too wonderful for me to comprehend. I don’t know how He will fix all the broken pieces or heal the bloody parts in the messiest parts of our lives, my life, but we have this hope –

Surely He has borne our griefs

And carried our sorrows;

Yet we esteemed Him stricken,

Smitten by God, and afflicted.

But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53.4-6 NKJV

6/

My dog is old, going blind, losing her hearing and pretty arthritic, but when I give her the tiniest bit of attention, pet her and love on her, she leaps and twirls and wags her tail, acting just like a young pup. That is what a little time showing love can do – for anybody, really. We should all do it more for the people and pets in our lives, shouldn’t we?

I leave you with this, today’s verse-of-the-day from Bible Gateway (because it is so perfectly perfect):

This is what the Lord says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:16, 18-19 NIV

Good-bye, 2013. Thanks for the stripping away, for the renewal and growth of our familia – for the 3 beautiful new grandbebes, and for the time with my love. And now – for the new thing to spring up… :)

I have OPENING NIGHT Jitters…and I’m not even in the play!

December 20, 20132 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Thinkcallback theater company, dave powers, dave rhoades, dave rhoades-author, jesus-mary-and-joseph! play, rhoades family, rocky rhoades, tristand and stephanie kelleyJeanie

TONIGHT! And Tomorrow Night at 7:00 pm..

I HAVE to thank Chantell Hinkle for taking the solo for me!

With a grandbebe’s birth and Christmas things to do, and working, well…I just thank her from the bottom of my heart! She’ll be singing a song I used to sing every Christmas at malls and airports and schools and churches from the early 1980s on, “Merry Christmas with Love,” by Sandi Patty. I KNOW she will be amazing!!!

The FIRST FIVE grandbebes are in the production, which is so cool.

They even got headshots done for the lobby board! Gavin and Hunter are both part of the principal cast. I cannot wait to see them!

or th

ALSO – an INTERMISSION band that is so crazy good and they also just so happen to be my kids, but they are REALLY good either way! :)

These peeps:

+ this one = GOOD STUFF!

Omygoodness!!!

So exciting! Several of my besties are in the cast! Music, dancing, laugh-out-loud funny, I’ve been told. I haven’t actually seen it yet, but the rumors are out there. :) Plus heartwarming and some Christmas magic – how can you lose? I am so proud of my talented husband, the infamous Dave Rhoades, who wrote it (he is a great character-writer!), and is directing and acting in it and all of the WONDERFUL cast and crew who make it all come together so I don’t have to, haha!

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

Merry Christmas and God bless America!

Prepare the Way! Advent music filling the air over here

December 17, 20131 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmasadvent, advent song, charlie hall, christmas, evangeline, grandbebes, musicJeanie

BIG announcement below…

I have never actually seen an Advent-Music category at a music store and while I do have a pretty high stack of Christmas records (the old vinyl kind, ya know) and CDs, I don’t have an Advent music category. I am just visiting all styles and types of music with words that seem appropriate for this high-church tradition of the days leading up to the {12} days of Christmas, as evidenced by most of my blog posts these last 2 1/2 weeks or so.

What I am doing is trying to make sure I just take a few minutes, the length of the time of the song, to observe these days from a perspective I was not raised in (I come from the day-after-Thanksgiving-to-the-day-of-Christmas-is-just-a-mad-rush-to-but-to-bake-to-have-a-gazillion-church-activities-and-parties-and-then-collapse-in-utter-fatigues-the-end variety) and think about {in expectant waiting and preparation} Jesus – and all His coming changed, the first time…

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned.” Isaiah 9.2

And I don’t want to be as blind and as busy and as un-expectant as those who may have missed Him the first time. We are people of the Light and we just live like…nothing is different (I included you in that sentence so I wouldn’t have to take all the blame, *wink).

So for Advent, I am remembering that the Light, Jesus, He came and that we’ll be celebrating that in a few days. But that He is not finished and He has gone to prepare a place for us and He will come again and we are looking for Him, preparing for Him and waiting for this momentous occasion with expectant joy, on earth as it is in heaven!

Today’s happy-song of watching and waiting: Prepare the Way by Charlie Hall

Prepare the way, because we still can for so many living in darkness. An oldie, but goodie. :)

I didn’t post yesterday (because of something BIG). But I did observe Advent in probably its’ most recognizable heart-longing way, which I shall explain…

I won’t tell the whole story here, but there will be details to follow, I am sure. BUT, on Sunday, we had our Annual Girl’s Baking Day at the house. We get together with sugar and flour flying through the air. Nuts are chopped, pretzels are dipped, chocolate is melted, icing is squeezed…and at 6 pm, all the guys show up and ooh-and-aah over tables and counters full of Christmas treats and sweets. Every year, we cut back, waaaaaaaay back. And yet yearly, there are just mountains of sweets and Christmas treats – it is crazy! But then everyone has some festive goodies to get them to December 25th, or to share with neighbors and friends. It is ONLY once a year! Because otherwise….no bueno.

So, we did that on Sunday. Ay-yi-yi! We worked our buns off. And Tredessa, completely pregnant, with a baby due THE NEXT DAY, worked and worked and worked! We were hoping she’s go into labor because of it. Instead, we wore her out! And me, too – the doula!

9 pm…whew! Tired. Everybody leaves, everybody is exhausted by the merry-making. Everyone has been up since before the days-shortened dawn. Then, suddenly…her water breaks at that moment, at that least-expected, boy-we-could-sure-use-a–good-night’s-sleep moment as she was leaving.

We get to the hospital a couple of hours later and blah-blah-blah…

EVANGELINE WAS BORN! happy-dance singing and rejoicing

She came at 1:23 pm on her “due date.” She was 20″ long, weighed 7 pounds and 10 ounces and has some curly looking honey-colored hair and is just gorgeous-gorgeous-gorgeous! I LOVE her!

Stephanie took this one, a first glimpse at Evangeline

So I didn’t post a song yesterday but it was mainly because I was in a room filled with longing and expectancy, a birthing room. The room was filled with holy music the entire time and it was beautiful and all I could manage to do was Tweet about it.

After they told Tredessa, late morning, she was dilated to 5 cm and she had been hoping to be so much further, I backed away as she and Ryan literally danced through contractions. He’d reach out his hand to her like they were at any romantic event and she would lean into his chest and they’d sway softly, Tredessa breathing carefully while Ryan cheered her on and encouraged her. Then as the contraction would subside, she’d sit down to rest for a minute or two and then he’d say, “Let’s have another contraction. Are you ready?” And he’d reach out his hand and lift her, as if he had just said, “May I have this dance?” And they had a contraction every single time, on and on, for nearly an hour. And I sat in front of my majestic snow-capped mountain backdrop on this perfect sunlit day praying for them, praying for my sweet daughter to have the strength she needed, and I wept. They were working hard for their love, for this baby…

This was part of what we saw through the window at the hospital

The birth of a granbebe shows me the Advent-Christmas connection in Technicolor. You wait with longing for 9 months, you labor through dark hours hoping, concentrating, wondering if you can see this thing through…then in a moment of total surrender, when you believe you cannot go on – she arrives…LIFE!

Welcome to the world, little Evangeline Lilly. Your Nonna already loves you.

And now to Ryan and Tredessa: Prepare the way for Baby Eva! Eva!!!

Church Christmas Decorating

December 8, 20133 Celebrations & Festive Events, 7 Keep Christmaschurch, church christmas decor, church christmas decorating, large-scale christmas decor, recycle old christmas treesJeanie

I just noticed in my dashboard site stats that I’m getting hits on some church christmas decorating I have done in the past. I think I will dig through my digital photos and see what I can find. I got to decorate at Northern Hills for 3 years, I believe and it was so much fun!

Here is one shot of the Celebration Center in 2009.

The 3 wreaths hanging in the center over the stage look deceptively small in the pictures. You can’t just buy these at the store. I made them from recycling Christmas trees other people want to get rid of. I basically did a Craigslist ad asking for old artificial trees for a non-profit organization and people would call and I picked them up. These three wreaths used the branches of 7 trees. We built a wooden frame and stapled them on. The one in the middle is almost 7 feet tall and the 2 flanking it are about 5 1/2 feet tall. I used 2 102″ red table cloths sewn together in the middle to drape through the wreaths.

At the time, the church had 3 really beautiful 9′ trees and I used one in the cafe and the other 2 on the stage, but the room is large, so I wanted to make them seem more grand and did so by placing them on 5 foot round tables draped in fabric.

The illuminated angels were the beautiful styrofoam silhouettes my amazingly artistic friend Pearl had created for the Garage venue a year or two earlier. It broke up the black background and we uplighted them.

We lined the front of the stage with a giant “garland” also re-fashioned from recycled/upcycled old Christmas trees. You really can’t just buy garland because a room that big will just swallow it up. It is really quite large. The “ribbon” was that florist-mesh wrap which can be twisted and tucked and glows prettily in the lights.

We used thousands of lights on everything because you have to overdo in a big space. I think I had gotten all those gold-potted poinsettias for like 98-cents in an after-Christmas clearance the year before. They are handy for lining edges and covering cords.

see more pics from 2009 here :)

Very simple, clean look. The musicians and pastors need their space! It was fun. I miss doing it (plus I wasn’t out of ideas)!!! Pastor Scott??

The Jesse Tree at Advent

December 2, 20133 Celebrations & Festive Events, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually ThinkJeanie

Isaiah 11:1 “Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.”

Remember – I do not come from high-church tradition, so I am muddling along – looking for ways to observe this season in meaningful ways. You can google-search and learn all about Jesse Trees {here is one}. But I have decided to stop for a few minutes daily and listen to a song and meditate on all Jesus came to do via lyric and melody.

O Christmas Tree.

I love the trees of Christmas. I love lights on them and sparkly ornaments that reflect the light (isn’t the spiritual connection just so obvious?). I love that the trees are evergreens. Because everything about all of it that my mom or Sunday School teachers ever taught me? I believe, still and I am reminded and renewed in my gratefulness for the Savior annually.

My Christmas tree’s branches are green, representing the eternal life Jesus’s death and resurrection made available to us. But if you stripped away the needles and greenery to the bare trunk and you attached a large branch across, you’d seen the barren tree of a curse where God once hung His greatest gift to us. Jesus wasn’t the gift under the tree, but the gift on a tree.

So annually, we plop a tree up in the living room and string it with lights to remember and observe. This will never be a pagan ritual for me. It will ever and always symbolize a Savior, redemption from the curse and green-everlasting and eternal life.

So, pondering this today, I thought of another scripture I love so much. It speaks to the things that come to try to take our freedom from the curse of sin and death. It speaks to the heartbreak of broken relationships and addictions or any gut-wrenching pain that has invaded our homes. It brings hope to the heaviness of our past which may try to rest on us, and against those things that tear our families apart. It promises hope and healing for the diseased and iniquities. There is hope for a tree, it says in Job:

“At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant.” Job 14.7-9

Is this good news, or what? You know it’s true. You know a tree can be struck by lightning, mangled by a runaway car or chopped down by a property owner. It can seem totally defeated by age and bad care, but suddenly, after a rain, new shoots!

So the song I listened to today, to give me that short, song-length reprieve from all the other innumerable things there are to do, is an old Kent Henry song, “Lord I Live by Your Word.”

So many scriptures use the tree as imagery. The Tree of Life in Genesis shows up again in the last chapter of Revelation. Jesus is the way to God, He is the Living Word, the Tree of Life. And in my living room, there is a green tree filled with lights reminding me that the long awaited Savior did all He came to do – in an everlasting way!

www.aholyexperience.com

Keeping Christmas

December 1, 20133 Celebrations & Festive Events, 7 Keep ChristmasJeanie

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!” ~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Song for a Sunday // In Expectancy and Preparation

December 1, 20132 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 7 Keep Christmasadvent, advent music, christmas, grandbebe, hopeJeanie

We wait.

We wait with expectant joy. A baby is coming. Joy will be fulfilled and realized with the final Aaaaahhhh-she is here! She has come! We understand the anticipation and longing there was for the Messiah “for a people living in darkness…” this year with more vivid zeal and holy anxiousness than ever. Like children who can barely get to sleep on Christmas Eve as they excitedly anticipate the gifts they’ll find from mommies and daddies who love to give them good things, we await Evangeline’s arrival, sometime before Christmas.

Just a year ago, we were hoping-waiting-cautiously-opening-our-hearts for Malakai. He came early. In January. It was sweet and the consummation of so much prayer and eager yearning. So sweet…

Kai is here today, checking this Santa character out. He isn’t sure about him. Malakai will be full-fledged walking and running by Christmas morning, I am sure of it.

Advent

And today, the first Sunday of Advent, we remember, with exceeding joy, that the long-awaited Savior of the world, once a mystery and a desiring, yet He already was waiting for us and we acknowledge the beauty of His coming and look for Him again. He is the Promise. The Hope and Perfection of all things!

I had an idea!

I didn’t grow up in high-church tradition, so we didn’t observe Advent and the traditional readings and candle-lightings and services that went with the four Sundays leading to Christmas, nor the daily devotionals. But I discovered them when my children were small and have so so so always tried (or maybe more accurate: wanted to try) to implement the observation, the wreath, the candle-lightings.

Today, after all, the first Sunday of Advent is about HOPE. It is about the story of the Old Testament Patriarchs, Jesus’s ancestors, looking, waiting, hoping, longing for His coming. Hope is needed now more than ever…

So, as I was wondering, what song to do for Song for a Sunday, I realized how Advent could totally be a time of songs, too. Which it probably already is, but I am going to set myself to selecting songs for this season, each one to sing and think about, each to represent our longing and worship as we enter this busy season.

I plan to set apart a few minutes each day, at least long enough for a song, to meditate on the Joy of my Desiring, a Savior! I’ll share with you if you’d like. I think this could help lots of busy families who want to observe and celebrate Advent, but can’t find the time. A song!

Today, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel by Francesca Battistelli

And my anticipation is doubled because soon, a new grandbebe. And this year, I will comprehend in deeper ways. And look for Him in my day to day…And this is blessed.

And we watch. And we wait.

Seven years ago today

November 29, 20132 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, Stuff I Actually ThinkJeanie

Today!

When I started blogging on November 29, 2006 {seven years ago today}, I only had three grandbebes. I tried to make the first post lighthearted to cover up a pretty dark time in which I was seeing much of my life’s “work” as a total waste, my churchy-ness/ministry as being much too motivated by the fear of man (“The fear of man is a snare“), rather than by love and basically realizing what a Pharisee I had been. Pride. It was not a pretty sight. But I thought I’d just write into “the air,” sneak in some confessions about my ridiculousness and and hope people only read the cute grandbebe stories.

First blog ever, called “Top Ten Reasons I’m Blogging Now”

I’ve told on myself a thousand times since then. And haven’t told on myself thousands of times because, geesh, I wouldn’t want anyone to know how thoroughly rotten I can be.

It took me two months into the blog to really say the shocking thing out loud, that I was mourning loss. My heart palpitated as I pressed “publish.” I laugh now, because I wasn’t very transparent. {{see here}}

Then I confessed to my prideful religiousness. Dung happens. {{see here}}

And I shan’t show you all my yuck-stuff, but I wrote about how I know that “It takes one to know one” is true. Bleh. {{see here}}

Lots has changed since I started this blog. I have 8 grandbebes now. Almost nine. I’m older, sweeter {*ahem}, less certain of my once rock-solid-strong opinions and I’m much more hopeful for all the days I have left than worried over the ones I have lost. Though I haven’t aced life’s testings, I am pretty happy with my grade. I {{love}} so much more now than I did then, I am more grateful for my heritage and so thankful for all the people along the way who have touched my life and altered its course and blessed me so much. My family has grown by leaps and bounds and songs are in my heart again. I had tomatoes from my garden at my Thanksgiving table (first time in years) and I am learning to receive the {completely unmerited, but so freely given} love of the Father, rather than just trying to work my tail off impressing Him.

One thing that hasn’t changed and likely never will? My blog posts are too stinking long and I cannot curb my wordiness. That is just how it is. I thought I’d have run out of all the silly nothings that spill out of my brain and heart and onto the screen. But I haven’t. More words to come. Thanks for those of you who stop by and read. I LOVE that!!! :)

Here is the thing~

Here at my Thought Collage, I have tried to say, in a million ways, God is faithful. He is so faithful. Please promise me you’ll always-always-always look past me to Him and don’t ever let anything I have done or said disappoint you in the Everlasting Father. Because- He. is. Faithful. For sure. Forever!

So, on the occasion of the 7th anniversary of my very first blog post ever~

Hi, mom. Hope you’re still reading! xxoo