Communication

I love my family!

I am so blessed to have the four of us. Then we are triply blessed since we have 3 of the kids grandparents living close by. Wow! The kids have never even had to have a baby-sitter. And the legacy of watching and learning from them first-hand is even better than just what we tell the kids.

However, we do have quite a bit of extended family, too. Most live in this same state, but we don't see them often enough.

How do I attempt to keep in touch? Well, unfortunately, I am not very good at it. I try to send email birthday cards (since I don't think about it the week before).

But, some of the family only seems to be on Facebook (which I only go look at and don't spend time there), one has a blog, some only do email but don't have 'real' Internet access. I even have one person that doesn't even have a computer at her house! (Can you imagine that?)

In the past few months, I have been making an attempt to actually sit down and write a real letter to my non-electronic family member.

When my boy was little, and even for the first couple of years of my girl, I regularly sent out an email to family that I called "Boonie News". I always got comments when I saw family, but I didn't hear much from them. Mostly, I did it as a journal for myself, I thought.

Recently, I have been asked to do a similar thing at least once a month for some of my email family.

Now, letter writing, blogging, journaling and emailing..... Are folks really that interested in us? I suppose it doesn't even really matter what I say, just that I thought of them when I sent it.

Hmmmm....that's worth writing for.

Bindings

Happy New Year! I do hope to be better at blogging. Maybe once a week?

Bindings... We all seem to have them. Things that we do that we blame on our childhood, or how we were traumatized, or something else that happened TO us as some point in time.

I have begun to wonder more and more why it is that I have to be bound to things from 20+ years ago.

Really? I mean, I have been married for 28 1/2 years. Why am I still categorized, labeled, and think of myself as that foolish, floundering teen? And I do it to myself.

II Corinthians 5:17 says, "...all things have become new." New? One of the definitions for new is "not known or experienced before".

One teacher said, God doesn't just refurbish us. He doesn't just take our old junk and turn it into something that might be reusable. He actually makes us new.

I am slowly learning that when a brother hurts me, I have a choice. When my husband disappoints me (only about once every 10 years, ya know), I have a choice. When my children frustrate me, I have a choice.

I can choose to be new or I can choose to be bound. I can choose what God is doing in me or I can choose to take up the mantra of the enemy that has been whispering since my teens, or before.

I am trying to make those choices that will allow me to choose to be new.