If I were to sum up the primary focus of 2010 in my life and our family's life I would have to say "relationships".
It has been an intense year of rebuilding and restoring relationships that have been stretched and stressed almost to the point of breaking within our family due to cross-cultural stress, the addition of two sweet boys to our family, etc.
God is a God of relationships. He seeks us out. He desires for us to talk to Him. He is passionate about us.
He wants us to model that in our relationships with each other - marriage, parent to child, friend to friend.
I am thankful for the godly counselor He has brought into our lives to help us through some of the tough times we've had this year.
I am thankful for His continual faithfulness and leading.
Romans 8:15
15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves,
so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father."
Favourite Quotes from this year by one of my favourite authors
"Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion."
-- Brennan Manning (Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging)
"To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means."
-- Brennan Manning
"If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don't find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don't cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God's truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition. "
-- Brennan Manning
I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone. I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery. "
-- Brennan Manning