Cousins, cousins

Christmases the last two years have been pretty "blah" for me. As you get older Christmas starts to lose a lot of it's luster and until you have kids I think it has a tendency to stay in the "blah" zone.

But at least Christmas means that I get to see my cousins. And although I won't get to see all of them this year, I will get to see most of them. And for the first Christmas ever (since I was 3 or so anyway) I'll get to see my cousin's from my mom's side of the family over the holidays.

Here's to hoping that 2010 makes for a much better Christmas than 2009! At least this Christmas will be spent with family. =)

Spending Time - Part 2

About a month ago I wrote a long post about convictions I've had this year about how I spend my time and about my attitude towards the things that are a constant part of my life.

Tonight while I was driving home I had a familiar realization come to me. That realization was that I've drawn closer to God going through this stressful year than I have during less stressful times of my life. and what it all boils down to is that I'm content to live on cruise control (set at MY speed) and as long as life is going well I just continue on. It's not  until I hit a bump in the road (stress, strained relationships, etc) that I come running back to Him. And once I weather that storm by leaning on Him I then slowly start going back to relying on myself instead of Him. It's a cycle that I can look back on my 23 years on this planet and see it over and over again.

I don't doubt that I'm going to fail yet again. But maybe, just maybe, I can learn to start leaning on God during the good times too. And maybe, just maybe, I'll stop relying on my own abilities to run my life and give it over to the Holy Spirit's leading.

It's pretty quaint that this is happening at the end of the year. I could say something dumb like "this is my 2011 new year's resolution". But this isn't my 2010 new year's resolution. This is the rest of my life.