Welcome to 2015

Well, it's 2015.  2014 was a pretty eventful year - some major life events, lots of minor ones

First, the major:

• Graduated summa cum Laude with a BS in Interdisciplinary Studies from Liberty University
• Started a new job as Administrative Assistant to the Worship/Executive Pastor at my church
• Moved my daughter to Minnesota, where she is following the Lord's leading by attending Kairos, a discipleship training school under the umbrella of Reign Ministries. 

The minor:

• Tried my hand at several new recipes. Some were keepers, others not so much.  I think this year I need to expand my blog to include those, especially the successes, although most of them I've found in other places on the Web.  Most of them, however, I've made my own by varying ingredients to suit our tastes.  
• Finished one quilt, but have two more sitting, waiting paitently.
• Discovered that my job requires much more artistic creativity!  I've broken out my Cricuit again!  Now, maybe I'll actually get some scrapbooking done this year as well

This was a practice for gifts I gave out as Christmas gifts. For the gifts, I used gold lettering and mounted them in black frames.

 I'm really enjoying my job, but it is far more challenging than I thought it would be. I've been there about 3 months now, and I still make far more mistakes than I should.  For whatever reason, I'm so afraid of disappointing my boss, that the anxiety can be overwhelming at times.  I really need to work on that, and on trusting the Lord.  I'm really dealing lately with a lot of self-esteem issues, which is silly.  I've proven I can do things, and do them well, so what's my problem?  The job may become even more challenging this month.  If so, then I will learn even more to trust on the Lord, and do my best.

One of the things I really like about the job is that we have accountability groups every week.  We are held accountable for reading our Bible/quiet time; prayer time - specifically prayer time for our church and its leaders and  sharing our testimony and witnessing.  We have to choose and memorize a staff verse, and have been assigned reading - this year it's John Piper's Desiring God. I've started to read it, and have found a study guide on line that I'm going to work on as well. Because we have to memorize our staff verse, I've decided to join in with Beth Moore's Living Proof Ministries (blog.lproof.org) Siesta Scripture Memory Team 2015 (SSMT).   I played around a little today, and came up with this for my first verse:

 I think I'm going to try to do something similar for every verse that I memorize over the course of the year.

Last year I did pretty good with reading. In addition to reading for school, I also read Good to Great in God's Eyes, by Chip Ingram; Wounded by God's People, by Anne Graham Lotz; Transforming Together,  by Ele Parrot; and The Pursuit of God,  by A. W. Tozer.  I've started both Miracles, by Eric Metaxas, GodLess America, by Todd Starnes, and God's Pursuit of Man, by Tozer.  I don't know how far I'll get in those three, I'm going to concentrate on the assigned reading first. I hope to be able to blog after each chapter.

I'm really proud of Amanda and how she has let the Lord work in her life. She's learning a lot, growing a lot - not only mentally, but more importantly, spiritually.  It's exciting to watch her learn to trust the Lord for everything.  The program is totally faith based, so she has to raise funds. We are helping to support her some, mostly with her personal finances, but the rest come from donors.  Seeing how God provides is exciting - scary and challenging, but exciting.

What will 2015 bring? I don't know.  But the year is the Lord's and I'm leaving it up to Him!