A Year of Blessing-October, November, December

In October, our biggest blessing that I can remember is being able to celebrate Halloween. I know that may sound weird, but I'm glad that we can, even as Christians, allow our children to have fun on what some may consider an "evil" holiday. I know all of the history behind it and even understand why many believers choose to not take part. The thing I love about my husband and about us as a family is that we always explain these things to our children. We let them know the "why" of things and then explain what we believe and what God asks of us. We love to let them have fun like the "world" yet they understand that our family is different. We also like to find representations of Christ in the things we do. For example, we explain how a jack o' lantern is like what Jesus does when a person asks Him to be his or her Savior: Jesus "scoops out" all the yucky stuff and then makes us "shine" from the inside out! Does that make sense? (Now before you give us any credit for that deep, theological explanation, know that we stole it from a cute children's book.) Here is a picture of the boys being grossed out by the insides of the pumpkin we carved:



In early November, we decided to head to Florida to visit with our family since we knew we'd be unable to go for the holidays since Aron's job is in retail and that's their busiest time of year. Well, that trip would prove to produce our biggest blessing of our lives, let alone 2009! In a freak accident while driving on I-75, our tire blew and we ended up flipping our SUV and landing in the median. God saw fit to spare our lives and we will never forget that! He was not done with our family because everything could have so easily turned out differently. Someone, if not all of us, should have died or at least gotten severely injured, yet the worst injury was the my mother-in-law's shin got cut. Unbelievable!!! Besides the amazing blessing of not getting hurt or worse, friends and family stepped in to help us....a carseat for Libbie, another one for Caleb, money for a carseat (and enough for another one when Libbie gets bigger!) for Anna, $1000 given to put towards a new vehicle!!!!, and countless prayers on our behalf. Again, unbelievable! Here's a picture of our SUV at the impound lot...picture this upside down, because that's how we landed:

Whew, I'm still reeling over November! Well, we found an awesome deal on another SUV (even bigger!) and made it safely back home to NC. Little did we know that our accident would cause even more blessings later on into 2010(Stay tuned for that story...). December rolled around and we were doing well with our one vehicle (our Camry had "died" before we'd went to FL) and while it was a challenge, we were just grateful. Nathan had his 7th birthday on December 20th and what a blessing that was! I still can't believe he's that old! Here's a picture of him with his favorite gift:
Christmas Day came and it was our first one away from family. At first we were ok with it, but as the day rolled on, we felt the loss. Our small group had assembled some gift bags full of little goodies to bless those in the community who had to work on Christmas, so instead of wallowing in our sadness of being "alone," we headed out to be a blessing to those who really were. We dressed everyone in their Christmas red and headed to the local nursing home. We walked around and passed out our gift bags to the residents who were least likely to have a visitor on that Christmas Day. I was so proud of how sweet and non-judgmental my children were of the elderly men and women we met that day. We left there feeling much less "alone" and so thankful for all that we have. We also left knowing that we'd just made a new tradition that we plan to continue for many Christmases to come. Here's a picture of me and the kiddos walking up to the nursing home:

Well, that pretty much wraps up 2009....wow, what a year of blessings it was! To continue with the story of how our accident continued to be used in 2010, here's how that went: so if you've read my earlier posts about 2009, you might remember me mentioning a local camp where Aron has made some contacts. Well, through the director of The Refuge (the camp), we were blessed with another vehicle not long after our accident! They had a 1997 Plymouth Voyager that was given to them that they no longer needed and they decided to GIVE it to us! How long it will last us is yet to be seen (it has 187,000 miles on it!!!), but the sheer fact that it was GIVEN to us, for FREE, is huge!!! Seriously, a FREE VAN?! Only God could orchestrate that stuff!!

And there's more! A group of musicians from our church, who'd made a Christmas CD as a challenge to raise money to give back to God somehow, prayed about how they'd use the money that God had allowed them to make through the selling of their CD. They'd made so much more money than they'd ever thought they would and were able to bless some needy families through our church's Christmas Outreach. However, they had quite a bit left over and so what did they do with it? They GAVE IT TO US!!!! Now, I'm not talking about $100. Not even $1000. They gave us over $3000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And this amount was only $38 less than what Aron needed to pay for the Outdoor Leadership Course he will be going to in June! Are you kidding me???? Again, only by the grace of God!!!

While in church at the beginning of 2010, Aron felt that God said this was the year to fight for KingMaker Ministry, and that is what we've been doing. Aron has pursued further trainings to be the most qualified he can be and God has provided everything we've needed for him to attend. We have no idea what the rest of 2010 holds, but we're confident that "He who began a good work" WILL "be faithful to complete it!"