Wide Open Spaces

We're currently traveling 6 deep in a giant SUV from Plainview, Texas to Lubbock, Texas. Let me tell you, my husband was not lying when he said, 'Its the only place you can watch your dog run away for three days.'We are so thankful for a quiet space, the chance to sleep in, and a sinful amount of movies and sweets. I even watched five hours of football yesterday... And enjoyed it. SIC 'EM BEARS.Reflecting on this last year, I am astonished at all we have done. All our travels and adventures, achievements and relationships, outreaches and events, our failures and disappointments, our weariness and pain have made us stronger and more in tune with our purpose, with what we truly value.While I feel a great urgency in my heart to keep the 'pedal to the metal', I feel intentionality swelling. And while intentions are just fine, I want my true intentions reflected in my habits, found in my actions, revealed in my character.The longing for deeper relationship with The Lord is undeniable. I am aware that the only way we did this year was through Him. His presence has sustained me and no matter what we faced as a family this year, my confidence in His faithfulness never wavered. It may have taken 10 years for me to know this, but He is tried and true. His love never fails.More than ever, it's His wisdom I seek. It's the history in the Bible. It's all the context I am missing, the gap between my interpretation of His word and what He really meant. The basics are both simple and complicated - there is still so much I don't know, still so much to learn.Unfathomable God. Yet so easy, so gracious, so loving, so strong.I am excited to learn Him and know Him, to love Him and serve Him. And I am grateful people are an inseparable part of that journey. I hope for a greater awareness of His presence in our home, in our marriage, more faith filled conversations in the new year, richer relationships centered in Christ, more opportunities to be the hands and feet of Jesus in practical and miraculous ways.More of Him and less of me. That is my prayer. I hope to learn what it really means to be a Daughter, to walk in the 'unforced rhythms of grace', to love and live freely. More of Him.Less of me.

Ephesians 1:20-23 All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.