It's late... but not too late to celebrate!

What a wonderful world!  Truly.  We are so very blessed by the amazing creation all around us.  Even in the deadness of winter, His heart sings to us.... even in the silent stillness of cold night falling in early hours.

I have been reflecting on 2011:  The Year of Practice for me.  Ann Voskamp writes of do-overs.  Yes, I suppose I could use a do-over... if that's the way it worked.  But she and I both know, that isn't how it's intended to be.  Perfection isn't expected on this side of things.... at least not as it relates to the high ideals of communion, thanksgiving, intentionality, and yes... even practice.  We can perfect our execution of a math equation, we don't perfect our soul.  That is squarely His territory.  So I will continue to "practice" as I set out in 2011 to practice such things as kindness and thoughtfulness and prayerfulness.  But as themes go, it's time to move on.

Here, in 2012, my family and I are going to give some intentional thought and consideration to what and how we create.  We do so much of this without even really thinking about it.  I wonder what will happen if we slow down and pay some better attention to detail.  What might it be like to dream up a vision of something and teach our head and hands how to make it reality?  I'll confess that, in part, this idea was born out of my own struggle with and journey toward finding and celebrating true beauty.  I see and hear SO many conflicting messages about beauty.  I have heard countless victims (mostly female) of our current youth culture bemoan the fact that they are "less than", "not enough", "too fat, too light, too dark, too short, too tall, too freckled, too wrinkled, too pimpled, too stringy, too frumpy...."  just too much of all the wrong things and so they are just simply... not enough.

How this saddens me.  And I've been there.... I've lived in that place of "not enough".  I know whereof I speak, so I can't be fooled.  Everyone gets their wake-up call in a different time and place.  For me, it has come with having children and wanting more for them than I used to accept for myself.  What I now know about my value in Christ... I want them to know now.   Self-loathing is the stuff of fools.  It's the easy trap of our enemy and we foolishly take the bait.  There is no upside to it.  It is.... an....utter... waste of time.  The learning doesn't come in the loathing.  It comes in the waking up.
 The devil is no teacher, my friends.

So why a Year to Create?  Because it is about how we reflect our Creator, the Beautiful One.  What will happen when we are more about what we produce, than what we consume?  More about what we give than what we take?

My hypothesis is that there is life and living and fruitfulness in this.  I invite you to come over to our family's new blog:  Imagination Nexus.  Just click the button below and take some time to see, will you join us this year?


l"/>


And now, counting with Ann and the Gratitude Community:

Shopping dates with my love

Lights, lights, lights!

My daddy singing at the table

holding his hand in church

his prayers and exhortations

My mom cooking with me

the way we laugh together

her reading to us from this book.

Being together.

The house at night

calls from sisters

birthday fun

middle-eastern food

Persian friends

a friend who loves at all times

a taste of liberation

This message of not one resolution, but 10,000 instead

and how that fits... just right.