‎”You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” -Richard Buckminster Fuller

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And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

I thought I would share with you guys the top five songs that I’m loving right now. I hope you like them, too.
(I know some of the videos are kind of really cheesy, but I wanted to be able to link you to the music.)

Something Holy by Stellar Kart

Hold Us Together by Matt Maher

Better Than A Hallelujah by Amy Grant

You Are More by Tenth Avenue North

Get Back Up by TobyMac

Today, Elijah took communion for the first time. He was saved on Thanksgiving Day this year, and I can’t thank God enough for that. Today was very special to me, as his mother. I sat beside of him in church, and when we were preparing to take communion I whispered to him, “You can take communion today, Elijah.”

His eyes lit up. “I can?” he asked me.

I told him, yes, that now that he was saved, he was commanded to remember the Lord’s death by taking communion.

While the pastor addressed the congregation, I whispered to Elijah reminding him why we take communion. I told him how Jesus Himself told us to remember His death until He comes by eating the bread and drinking from the cup. I told him how the bread represented Jesus’ body. I told him that when he ate it, He was to remember how Jesus gave His body as a sacrifice for our sins. I told him that when we drink the grape juice, it represents Jesus’ blood. I told him when he drinks it, He should remember that Jesus shed his blood for him. I told him that we take communion to remember Jesus’ death on the cross.

During our whispered consultation, he looked solemnly at me with big blue-green eyes. I knew that he got it. He really understood, as best as a six year old boy can, why we were doing this.

This mother’s heart was bursting, just as it was the day that I held the same whispered conversation with Kyra when she took communion for the first time. There really is no greater joy than seeing your children embrace your faith, and accept Jesus for themselves.

Yes. Today was a special day for me. A day when an ordinary Sunday morning slipped into the sacred and my firstborn son’s childish eyes locked with mine and he smiled at me, bursting with joy.

We are children of God!

LITTLE GIDDING
(No. 4 of ‘Four Quartets’)
T.S. Eliot

(Part V)
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

I am really glad to see this new year.
2010 was a mixed bag of good, great, bad, and terrible. I was ready to let it go, and to welcome in this spotless new year.

I don’t have any really specific “new year’s resolutions”, but I do have some general ones.

1. I want to be a more involved, invested, and intentional wife and mother this year.

2. I want to have a more regular, dedicated “quiet time” in the mornings, and spend more time with God.

3. I want to be true to who I am, and quit worrying so much about what people think about me.

Happy 2011, Friends. I hope this year brings you joy, and that God gives you exactly what you need. In the words of Henry the Penguin… “No more. No less.”