Happy New Year to friends and family. Please take a moment to read our 2006 annual family newsletter click here. I haven’t yet finished the collage, but I did start it. I’ll post a message when I am done. All done. It’s on the menu to your left, or you can click here.The new year is off to a bang in my life. Already I feel emotionally and spiritually stirred. The one emotion that I choose to focus on is hope. I am hopeful that by the end of 2007 I will have become more of myself and more Christlike. Does that sound contradictory? When I say that, I mean that Christ is in me and yet I carry so much baggage that is not part of what He wants for me. As I allow Jesus to reveal himself to me, he transforms me into more of who he made me to be. At the same time, He works in me to drop off the baggage in my life. I believe the end product is Christ in me, my hope of glory. It is not about me. it is about CHRIST IN me. I imagine a day when I can confidently be myself using the talents, strengths and gifts that God built into me, not in a narcissistic way, but where Christ lives in me.
I pray for physical, emotional and spiritual breakthroughs in the coming year to make me more like Jesus. That is like praying for pain and discomfort because God speaks to me when I am uncomfortable (Please see my post on The Jar). I want to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Not because I am a masochist, but because I know that it is through discomfort that change, real change happens… and I want to change more than anything.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)

I wish for you a blessed 2007.