Hello, friends! Happy New Year!! I hope you all had amazing holidays. Blogging 2014 begins today! And today is back-to-real-life day at our house. No more french toast and bacon breakfasts and shared to-do lists. Grant is back at school and I'm missing him. We get spoiled spending every minute together over Christmas break, but it was an awesome 2 weeks, and now it's time to think about what's ahead... namely, a new baby! The due date is only 10 days from now. TEN DAYS, guys! Not that I've got my heart set on anything happening on the due date, I'm really thinking it will be later than that (Hadley was born 8 days past her due date), but still. It's so soon. And I think we're as ready as we can be. More on this soon. In the meantime, I'm torn... I want to document our sweet Christmas, but I also have so many new blog post ideas burning a hole in my proverbial pocket. Let's first talk about 2014. Because it has begun.

Do you have any new year's resolutions? I have been especially roused at this year-end to remember that life is short and we have a clear purpose for living it. So what is my purpose for living, as a redeemed follower of Jesus Christ? Essentially this: don't sin. The Son of God came to help me stop sinning. (I John 2:1, 3:8) And what does this look like stated positively instead of negatively? It's all summed up in one neat and clean commandment in 1 John 3:23: Trust in Jesus and love one another. That's the entirety of the Christian life... Trusting Jesus, loving people. Trust Jesus, love people! This reminder has been such a gift to me. A purpose to live. (These insights are from the December 25th entry in the Piper devotional app.) So I'm keeping it real simple on my resolution for 2014:


Last year, my resolution was to learn, claim, and memorize more of God's promises, in order to help me believe them more constantly and put them to use them when I need them. Reflecting back on this, 2013 was a crazy wonderful year and it really was because of this firm focus on the promises. I'm so thankful to the Lord for laying it on my heart. He knew just what I needed, and it was incredible to watch how He was faithful to his word. Even after a year of study, His promises still feel like brand new gifts to me and I know this will be the case year after year after year. I'm going to continue using my 50 Promises cards daily, because I don't want to miss out on His gifts for me.