Christmas Newsletter ---New Years ---Happy Birthday Newsletter…..

(I should preface this by saying that it was originally going to be a Christmas letter, and then I was too busy and it was going to be New Years….and then a Birthday one)

I love receiving Christmas news letters and cards.  I don’t receive them that often anymore because I think the practice of sending out Christmas newsletters and cards is slowly dying.  We now have facebook and texting to simultaneously update friends throughout the years or send well wishes to on holidays.

When debating sending out a newsletter I decided that I would of course include a glamor shot of myself with it taken from the perfect angle to make me look attractively single so that when people received the newsletter they would think “Wow, Andrea is looking good, why has some lucky guy not snatched her up?” rather than “Oh, no wonder she is single”.  I’d probably have to rent or borrow a cute puppy for this photo session in order to replace the picture perfect family in matching khakis and sweaters with perfect smiles that I don’t as of yet have.


I realized something while going over the past year and trying to think of newsletter type updates.  This has been an intense year that has completely changed a lot about me and I’ve had to make some decisions about what to hold onto in life and what to let go of.

If I were going to do a positive newsletter snap shot of the past year I would have to include:  I got a promotion at work, I’ve been hanging out with some pretty amazing youth, I’ve been involved in planning camps and weekly lessons, I have some new amazing friends that I have learned to just be myself around, I took a few road trips to Canada to see some awesome godsons worth bragging about, I’ve been enjoying my family rather than tolerating, and I’ve really been enjoying life and where I am at in it.

All that would be true, but the thing about newsletters and updating friends is we always try to showcase the good and edit out the painful, the bad, and the ugly mess that we can sometimes be.  It’s easier that way and we don’t feel as judged.  Doesn’t everyone else have it all together after all?

I was serious when I said I have been enjoying life and where I am at in it.  The truth is though that my life is not where I would have wanted it to be were it up to me.  Thank goodness it is not up to me.  I think it is the “grass is greener on the other side” syndrome that makes us always want to be somewhere else in life than where we are right now.

The thing is though, the plans that I would have made for me, are plans that wouldn’t necessarily instantly make me happy.  I’ve tried to tell God that I’m sure of what would make me happy.  But perhaps my version of happy is not God’s ultimate goal for me.  But joy is.


Realizing the difference between joy in life and just happiness is a long painful road to learn.  Joy for me has been learning that God loves me in the midst of my pain, and that knowing when doors are shut in one direction there is a reason for that.  It can be pretty freeing when being able to look back and see what God has done vs. what I would have planned for my life.  Amazingly enough…God seems to always have bigger and better plans than mine.  The joy I have been experiencing has come from confidence in knowing what God has done for me and that He ultimately does know better.

I wouldn’t say it has just been this year that has made me realize this. It has been a culmination of the past five years and finally being able to look back and see what God has been doing through all my resistance to His plans and desires by using what I would have considered weaknesses, and scraps of my life.

I would say the biggest thing I will take from 2011 is that God knows better.  I got to experience that.  I experienced pain with close friends moving away…and then more close friends moving away.  I got to experience hurt when having to realize a guy I was interested in was not what God wanted for me at this point in my life….again, and again.  I experienced health diagnostics that weren’t exactly ideal.  Most of all this past year I experienced emotional healing though…..which sounds very kooky and mother earthish.


It would take a long time to go into that, but suffice it to say that it is amazing to not feel trapped in the past or held down and to see how God can bring us out of our past pain and rebellion and use it for something beautiful when we don’t try to edit out what He has done for us by shoving it all under a carpet.

So there you have it.  I don’t have a perfect newsletter life I realized.  I have something better.  I have a life that I am learning to be open and willing to let God use. Obviously it has been a while since I have blogged, and I miss it.  I think more so because it allows me to piece together what I am going through and thinking.