Year In Review
{!-- ra:00000000175e49b70000000075037177 --}{if 'Year In Review' == '52home' && category_name == '52home'} {if:else} {/if}It’s Christmas cleanup week. Time to take down the tree, put away gifts, catch some post-holiday sales, and exchange that shirt that didn’t fit. It’s also a time for counting down the last few days until the New Year.
Because we are busy doing all these things that you’re most likely doing, we’re going to take a blogging break of sorts this week. We’ll still be posting every day, but instead of new material, we’ll have a “Year in Review” where we will share the posts from the last six months that have received the most response from you, our readers.
If you had asked me in January of 2005 what a blog was, I would have looked at you with a puzzled expression on my face, “A blog? I have no idea what that is!” I could not have imagined that come June, I would actually be maintaining one of these blogs along with my daughters. How much changes in a year!
As I reflect over this past year, one of the highlights, and true privileges, has been posting on this blog, and in the process, hearing from so many of you. Your encouragement has been over the top—exceedingly meaningful. And we want to say “thank you” once again for all of your kind emails. We have read and been blessed by each and every one of them. We are full of amazement and gratitude to God that he has allowed the GirlTalk blog to encourage you in some small way.
And as we anticipate the coming of this new year, our desire and my daily prayer is that by God’s grace, He would continue to use this blog to bring glory to Him, and that we all may grow in biblical womanhood and love for the Savior.
We hope you enjoy this little retrospective.
It was only our second day of posting (June 21) when I shared these thoughts on “Interruptions.” We heard from many of you who had experienced interruptions of your own that day, both big and small. I hope this reminder encourages you as you head into the New Year.
I wanted to get up early, but C.J. encouraged me to stay in bed a little longer. I had been up quite late the night before. He thought I needed a little more sleep.
By the time I arose, the demands of the day came rushing at me in rapid succession. There was breakfast to fix. Conversations to have. The unexpected phone call. Family members to shuttle from point A to point B. One interruption after another.
It was 10:00 a.m. and I still hadn’t taken a shower, much less made progress on my to-do list. I was struggling. This wasn’t the way my morning was supposed to go. I wasn’t completing the tasks I thought were most important. Peace and joy had vanished.
Then I recalled this perspective-altering thought from C.S. Lewis:
“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it’s hard to remember it all the time.”
—The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (20 December 1943), para. 5, p. 499; quoted in The Quotable Lewis, (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1989), 335.
It is hard to remember. But what a difference it made when I called to mind this biblical truth.
All these interruptions—they weren’t interruptions after all. They were “sovereign deliveries.” These “unpleasant things” were God’s perfect plan for my day.
Contemplating this bit of wisdom brought a smile to my face. And from that moment on, I met each subsequent “interruption” with joy. The shower could wait.
My prayer is that, next time, God will help me to remember this truth. Because Mr. Lewis was right. It’s easy to forget.
“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24