between Christmas and New Year's

well, I've been home for almost a week, and with different things happening on both sides of the good-bad spectrum, it's balanced out to be...not worse than I expected. So that's good. But it's still been hard. Being here makes me want a family, simply because I lack one. It's me and my mom at one house, and my brother and sister and dad at another. How much more split up can you get? Besides everyone being alone, and at least that isn't the case.

Usually I love Christmas, I love the season and the music and everything that goes with it. This year, it's different. I don't really know what else to say, it's just different. I love Jesus. And when I'm here, and I remember my past and I see what's going on now, I see- the experiential, heartfelt, spiritual kind of see -God's mercy. My mom makes these comments that I'm smarter than she was (this was around the age when she married my dad), but I hate that, because I know I'm not, God just had mercy on me. I would have gotten married if I had had my way. I was set on it. The only difference was one little answer to prayer. So why was I spared everything? But is that really the right way to look at it? If all of this lead my mother to faith, it was good. God knows what He's doing, I just have a hard time understanding why I can't understand His way. I want to understand. But that doesn't come this side of heaven.

Truth is a major theme this holiday break. I'm learning lots of things I didn't want to know, but it's good that I know. I'm revealing things that I never had the courage to reveal before, and most of that is because of my mom and her courage. And because I am changed. I am completely different from who I was even just three short years ago. I'm a new creation. Sometimes it's hard to believe that, others it's not. Right now, I don't know what to think. Two things I am glad of: 1) that truth doesn't depend on how I feel in a given situation and 2) that God's plans cannot be thwarted by man. Because I seriously do everything I can to mess with them. But He hems me in, I'm brought to my knees again, and He reminds me who the Creator is, who the Father is, and who Love is.

anger, nothingness, brokenness, hurt, brokenness, perseverance...Hope. And Hope does not disappoint us. If God is for us, who can be against us? Bring on the New Year. I'm ready.