Happy New Year...or Christus Victor

Happy New Year...

It's 9:00 a.m. here and no one else is awake.  The kids were up late to celebrate New Year's...we did our midnight at 9:00 p.m. with some of our dearest friends, but it was still after 10:00 before all were in bed.

I am thinking about this new year and how it isn't so happy for many I know.  And in that case, Christmas wasn't so merry either.  The world is full of pain, and yet so often we seem to eat, drink, and be merry.  We pull up our boot straps, put on a happy face, and pretend like the sun is shining.

 

 

When my mom passed away, it was a loss of innocence for me.  Before that the world actually seemed like an okay place to live.  Now I understand what it truly means to hurt in a heart being pulled out your chest, can't breathe, want to put your fist through a wall kind of way.

However, having a year and a half to walk this journey, I believe I can say I'm through the darkest part.  I say that with trepidation however, knowing that there are so many dear to me that I can't bear the thought of losing.   Relationships are complicated like that.  Eventually they will all end (either by choice or death), but we can't live without them.  

For a while it seemed like "nobody gets close, nobody gets hurt" may be  the wisest way to live.  But, God couldn't let me stay there.  He's working on me...He's showing me His love, and He is patient and kind.  He's letting me drink a small taste of the "wages of sin", so that my cup can overflow with His love and grace.  He's revealing to me how amazing it is that His son, the man of sorrows, died on the cross for wretched, sinful me.  God is no stranger to grief, and I am never alone.

So, where to go from here?  My motto this past year has been "Jesus is Victor."  It is no small statement.  God has been teaching me bit by bit, and I will never fully understand this side of Heaven, but this truth trumps every circumstance.  So, I move humbly forward in thanks and praise to God.  My faith was shaken, but the strands that remain are genuine and worth far more than the list of answers I previously had.

2015 is an open book.  I don't know what it will hold, I don't know if it will be happy or not.  But, I do know (and trust) Him who holds all things together.  

Thanks be to God. 

(And if you read through all this, thank you for putting up with my scattered, grammatically incorrect thoughts...it is truly embarrassing to me to put personal thoughts out there, and yet here I am.)