I’m so excited about our WM spring retreat this year!

Traveling Together – Road Trip 2010!


Here’s the itinerary:
Friday:
• Check in as early as 3:00 pm.
Take a nap, walk the grounds, enjoy nearby shopping.
• Dinner with friends on your own.
• Session 1 starts at 6:30 pm.
• After hours Pajama Party!

Saturday:
• Breakfast
• Session 2 with small groups
• Lunch
• Session 3 with small groups
• Closing worship
• Ends at 4:00
• Optional Detour – shopping or dinner with friends on the way home!

It is going to be such a great time of fun, fellowship and encouragement from the Scriptures.

For more details and to register online, click on the “Gatherings” page.
Registration deadline - FEB 7!

Let’s hit the road!

Carolyn Jones
Director of Women’s Ministry

Holidays. Today is the last one of the year! New Year’s Eve.

Maybe by now, you are sick of the holidays and just want to get back to a normal schedule! Ha - I’m kind of there myself!

Of all the holidays though, I confess that deep down I love New Year’s Day best of all. I think it is because I am a future thinker. I love to plan and dream of the possibilities. At the new year I see the whole, unexplored year stretching out in front of me; unsullied by problems, failure, and hurts. My optimistic spirit plans only for the good times, success, accomplishment.

And I can get a cool new planner/calendar that is fresh and clean … maybe at half price! I’m a sucker for new planners!

Most years I like to ask God for a word or phrase that can be my focus for the year; to pray and process with Him. In the past, He’s given me “love”, “light”, and my personal favorite “it’s not about you.” That one is an ongoing theme. J

2010 will be “Trust God.”

There are so many amazing verses in scripture about trusting God. The Psalms are full of them. I plan to meditate and chew on them over the year. Here’s one to start on. Psalm 31:14 But as for me, I trust in You, O Lord, I say, “You are my God.”

I know that 2010 will have its challenges and heartaches along with the triumphs and fun. Through it all … through the year may my foundation be – Trust God.

Victor Hugo (author of Les Miserable’s) eloquently summarizes my resolution for 2010:

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones;
and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task,
go to sleep in peace.
God is awake.

Leave a comment and share what you are thinking about 2010!

resolved to trust,
Carolyn Jones
Director of Women's Ministry

Confession: I love the SUN ... hot, dry weather ... days and days of blue skies - basically summer! Specifically, summer in sunny California where I grew up.

Winter ... wind, rain, cold ... not so much. 

In spite of my natural bent toward wamth and light, one of my favorite Christmas carols is from Christina Rossetti's poem In the Bleak Midwinter written in 1872. She so vividly descriibes the cold, dark and lonely conditions that characterize winter and the state of the world that Jesus came to so long ago.

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.




Sadly, these words often describe the state of my heart - cold, hard. So easily distracted and brought to despair by the darkness in the world and circumstances of life.
Can you relate?

Thanks be to God that He did not leave us there ...

Our God, heaven cannot hold him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign;
In the bleak midwinter
A stable place sufficed
The Lord God incarnate,
Jesus Christ.

Into the cold darkness of the world ... and my heart, Jesus came - God with us, Immanuel!

And with His coming, He brought LIGHT!



Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the LIGHT OF LIFE."
John 18:12

The bleak midwinter is the dark backdrop in contrast to the light of the world.
My prayer this Christmas - "Oh Jesus, teach me to not walk in darkness but to follow hard after You, the source of Life."

Rossetti's last line ...

If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what can I give Him —
Give my heart.

grace and peace,

Carolyn Jones
Director of Women's Ministry

Tyne and Caleb White were part of our Grace family in college and as young marrieds. They currently live with their four children under the age of five in the beautiful piney woods of East Texas.

Thanks Tyne for being WM's first guest blogger!



TWENTY MINUTES!

In an ongoing discussion to always try to make our marriage honoring to the Lord and a joy to be a part of, Caleb and I visited on how to make his return from work each day more enjoyable.

You see, after a day with all these darling children, mama's a little worn thin. With the constant loving correction and firm discipline and feeding and cleaning and playing and diapers and diapers and diapers and accidents in the pants and loving correction and firm discipline and fitting in Cinderella dresses that are 6 sizes too small for me and cooking and cleaning and wiping of noses and loving correction and firm discipline and diapers and diapers and teaching children appropriate social skills... it gets a little exhausting.

I love it, it is a joy to be gifted with this wonderful opportunity. I am so thankful that God allows me to be such an intricate part of my children's formative years. Really, that is how I feel. Until 4 o'clock.

But at the end of the day, when Caleb walks in the door after a long day of whatever he does so well, so I am able to do what I do, I literally crash.

He greets me with a kiss and three little ones run to his embrace, and then he asks the question-
"How was your day today?"

And then it comes. The opportunity to finally projectile vomit to a grown-up how the last hour and a half has been. Every little detail. From the burning of dinner to the three nasty diapers to the intervention on sibling WWF.

Back to the ongoing discussion, Caleb asked me to please wait twenty minutes after he walks in the door to tell him all of the brutal details of the day. And as a wife who desires to please the Lord and her husband, I told him I would try.



So yesterday when he walked in the door and asked me how my day was, naturally I replied,

"I'll tell you in twenty minutes."