Christmas letter

So every year my family (my mom :-)) publishes a Christmas letter informing distant relatives and just-barely-kept-in-touch-with friends of all our latest doings (does your family do this?). Anyway, now that I'm "18 and my own person" (kinda/sorta/maybe/not really :-)), I decided to publish my own Christmas letter, and figured you all might be interested to see it, so here it is (enjoy! ;-)):

God is so good, isn’t He? Mind if I take a moment to recount His blessings to me this year? They are so many!

∞ Having had my wisdom teeth at the beginning of this year, I recovered well and was swing dancing by the end of the week! Yay! :-)

∞ Speaking of swing dancing, I’ve been enjoying many activities with my friends… book studies, Bible study, youth group, (homeschool) senior class events, swing dancing, etc. God has blessed me so richly in my friends… I am thankful for all of you! As I told my Uncle Steve a year or two ago, you are really fun people, but you are also about more than fun-you care about God. Thank you for that!

∞ My community college classes have been especially noteworthy this year. In the spring, I took English I, Precalculus II, and Spanish II. In a sentence: Spanish II, aside from being (I’ve been told) a very difficult class, was an online class with a harried foreign teacher who didn’t seem to know much about computers. Clinging to Christ’s promise that ‘tribulation produces perseverance (better translated by the King James as ‘longsuffering’ :-)), perseverance, character, and character, hope, which will never disappoint’ (Romans 5:3-5), I made it through… even earning a B grade (by God’s grace alone!)

∞ This fall, I took a chemistry class at the community college, and made a new friend – Marwa!

∞ In both the spring and the fall, I taught worship dance. Although worship dance (and teaching) is something I love, it never seems to come easily for me, and this year was no exception. In the spring, I fell in love with a song. God gave me a dance for it, and although I originally didn’t think that it would work for the spring semester, I began to think that God was leading me to include it, and I was very glad. However, I eventually realized that that was not God’s plan. Although it was hard to understand why God would seem to lead me both ways at once, after some struggle, He gave me grace to say: “He gives and takes away, blessed be the Name of the Lord” (Job 1:21)

∞ Then, at the end of that semester, a week or two before the presentation (performance), several dancers couldn’t dance in the presentation (one girl dropped out entirely). Fortunately, I was able to rearrange and to dance one of the girls’ parts, and God gave me patience in it :-).

∞ This semester, one of my “problem dancers,” a girl who was disobedient and disruptive in the past, asked to rejoin my class. Since the request came after the beginning of the semester, I could have refused. However, after prayer and consultations with other teachers and my mom, I decided to allow her in. God had really been working in her life, and I was able to encourage her with that. The rest of the semester went well.

∞ Over the summer, I kept my family’s garden again, learning a lot about Scriptural agricultural metaphors:-) as I worked with my many tomatoes(:-)), plus bell peppers, cucumbers, green beans, potatoes, onions and carrots.

∞ I also attended a 2-week Summit worldview camp this summer. I’m grateful for the good friends and good teaching I enjoyed there, and for how well it went in general, being my first sleep-away camp and all that :-). I’m also grateful for the friends I made there who have kept in touch!

∞ Also this summer, my family and I enjoyed my aunt and uncle’s lake house again – always a blast!

∞ I am very grateful that the SAT and ACT (both taken twice) are over forever and that my most onerous scholarship applications are as well… if only I could say the same about my choice of a major… :-)

∞ I turned 18, and imagine what a difference it has made! Mom and Dad are talking about several things (“because you’re 18…”), I get to sign my own forms (oh hip hip hooray… :-)), I am a member of my church in my own right, everybody looks scared when I tell them my age (fun, fun! :-)), and of course, there’s my big news: I got a Facebook (which Mom and Dad are now pinning to the 18th birthday).

∞ Morfar, GranMuffy, Aunt Marilyn, Calvin, and Tomomi, all my mom’s family, came in for Christmas… it was fun to see them all again!

And of course many other things occurred, too innumerable to mention, all evidence of Christ at work …in retrospect at least :-). But that is always the way it is, isn’t it? He works all things for our good (Romans 8).

Blessings on your new years!