The New Year was welcomed in with the joy and fellowship of family and friends, and now 2015 is a not-so-distant memory. How to even being to summarize a year like 2015! What a year! I think of where I was a year ago, and I am amazed to see where God has brought me. Last night, I was writing in my diary and listing some of the highlights and surprises that God brought my way, and I was delighted at the list I came up with. A list like this helps me to see God’s faithfulness – This list of memories serves as a reminder of how God is truly active and involved and how He has put each of these opportunities in my way to grow me and give me joy, if I’m willing to grow and open to receiving gifts from God’s hand.
Looking back on myself at the end of 2014, I was exhausted, crabby, somewhat depressed, ready to be in South Dakota, and I was concerned. Concerned that I wouldn’t manage to pass my recital preview and I’d end up without a college diploma. Concerned about the snug living arrangements once we moved. Concerned about finding a church home. Concerned about finding a job that I liked. Concerned about making friends and developing relationships. Concerned that my writing would take a back burner to other things. Concerned about moving to a place where the opportunities for music would be different. Concerned about not having a piano…Just concerned.
What wasted energy! What needless concern! Each and every one of these fears was graciously alleviated – God is good. I passed my preview and gave a successful recital. I received my diploma with the added surprise that I graduated magna cum laude. The living arrangements here are snug but very workable. My church home is even more like family than I thought possible. I ended up with not one job but four, and enjoyed each and every one of them. I have grown closer to my sisters and we’ve also been blessed by a close circle of friends who all happen to attend our church. True, I’ve not worked as much on my fiction writing as I wanted, but this blog has been a wonderful, growing writing project, and I know my experiences this past year have served to grow me as a writer. The music opportunities have been fewer but my heated, passionate desire to pursue music has cooled. I attribute that to God’s goodness and His grace. No, I still don’t have a piano, but I have a very decent electric piano, and have finally been able to start playing and singing again, and have found that my enjoyment is better than it was before.
And many things happened that were never even on my radar. Delving back into photography, starting a botany photography portfolio, winning Best of Show in photography at the Custer County Fair, buying a DSLR camera, seeing one of my articles published in MaryJane’s Farm, working cattle in Wyoming, opening an Etsy shop to sell doll clothes, teaching Sunday School at church, and beginning work as a medical scribe in Rapid City.
Over the past year, I’ve learned more about what it means to trust God. I’ve learned more about God’s faithfulness, even when by earthly standards something seems impossible. I’ve learned that church truly can and should be a place of beautiful fellowship, loving one another in Christ, intimacy, openness, frankness, honesty about our shortcomings, brotherly and sisterly affection, all because of Christ’s love for us. I’ve learned that I have a long way to go. I’ve learned that it is possible to live in a tiny house and to still function normally. I’ve learned that my soul is truly refreshed in Creation. I’ve learned again that I love writing. I’ve learned that I love photography. I’ve learned that my heart is in this place, this wonderful place. 
I’ve learned that contentment is more a function of my heart than it is a function of my environment. I’ve learned that God’s gifts are visible every day, even on the bleakest days. I’ve learned again and again that God does provide, and His will is powerful and undeniable. I’ve learned again and again that I am a fallen, pathetic sinner in desperate need of God’s grace on a daily basis. I’ve learned more about grace and acceptance and love and growth by loving and being loved by my new-found church family.
And now the New Year is here, and I look forward with eagerness and anticipation to see what God does with this coming year. I hope to get to the end of 2016 and not be the same person I am today. By God’s grace, I’ll have grown, matured, and been refined. By God’s grace, I’ll love God more then than I do now. By God’s grace, I’ll love my family with greater grace than I do now. All by God’s grace.
After a morning of cleaning the church with Roy, Anna and I went over to make gingerbread houses with Hannah and Jacob, who also go to our church. They take their gingerbread house making very seriously – They’re pros. It turns out a number of people at Southern Hills take gingerbread house making very seriously. We might need to have a church gingerbread house making party and contest sometime.
For Christians, even the secular traditions should be a reminder to us of what we are celebrating – We are celebrating the coming of God to earth, the long-promised, long-awaited Messiah, the Blessing of Abraham, the Davidic King who will reign forever, the one who will one day destroy Satan and dry all tears. That is something to celebrate!
Every day, winter moves a day closer and Christmas is right around the corner. Traditions and family habits mingle with new ways of doing things, in our new home in the Hills. The smell of cookies baking recalls last year, and the year before, and the year before, and the festive bustle of preparation adds a spice to otherwise ordinary activities. The hymns are sung in church with perhaps a little more gusto than during the rest of the year. “Joy to the World” rings loud in the sanctuary. We have such cause to celebrate! What a beautiful time of year.
One tradition, though, almost got sidelined this Christmas because of space constraints, but the girls and I raised a cry of opposition – We live in a tiny house, but when it was suggested that we wouldn’t decorate a tree this year…Well, we didn’t hesitate to voice our opinion. So Saturday morning, Dad and I hopped in the truck and went out to cut us down a Christmas tree. It was a chilly, cloudy, breezy December morning, but the trees don’t mind. We were looking for a small tree, one that would sit on top of a table by our window, so it couldn’t be any more than three or four feet tall. We went out to a stand of trees near the highway, and started hunting.
We cut down about ten trees, I think, trying to find one that would work. If an “environmentalist” had seen us, they probably would have burst an artery. But we called it “thinning.” These little stands of trees reseed and become overgrown in a matter of years, and responsible land maintenance would include thinning them or clearing parts of them completely in the next few years. Some environmentalist efforts in the Black Hills have included leaving the forest entirely alone until it is so overgrown that even animals don’t want to live there (the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve, for instance). So anyway, we chopped down a passel. There are literally millions of trees on the home place. There isn’t a shortage. There is an over-supply.
While Dad and I were looking for the perfect tree, Remington and Dove were nearby. The cold seemed to have gotten into Remington’s blood and made him frisky. He kept coming up close, then galloping off, bucking and kicking and racing circles through the open meadow. Little Dove kept to herself, but watched us. I don’t think the cold worked in her veins the same way it worked in Remington’s.
That evening, we opened boxes of ornaments, like opening boxes of memories – Each one has some sort of memory tied to it. Whether it was a gift from a special friend, or whether it was Mom and Dad’s first Christmas ornament (they got married two days after Christmas, in 1989), or whether it was handmade at a girls’ craft evening, or whether we simply remember laughing at how funny certain ornaments look, each of the ornaments has a memory tied to it. We packed as many strands of Christmas lights on our little tree, as many as we could, and hung as many of the special ornaments as would fit. We made every twig earn its keep.
Our Creche is my favorite of our Christmas decorations. When I was little, Dad started buying the pieces of the Creche for Mom, and gave them as Christmas gifts over several years. I loved it as a child, and I love it still – The pieces each look like a watercolor portrait, and the wistful, worshipful expression on Mary’s face is such a beautiful interpretation of the Virgin Mother.
Christmastime is possibly my favorite time of year. It is a time to celebrate, to remember, to rejoice, to mourn, to sing and make music to God, to fellowship – Although the cultural view leaves Christ out of Christmas, many still don’t. And, if I may say so, those of us who don’t leave Christ out of Christmas have so much more cause to be joyful, to celebrate, to make merry, than those to whom Christmas is simply a time to spend money and receive presents. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the gift-giving, the tree, the lights, the other traditions. But without Christ as the reason for the celebrating, Christmas would be a dead holiday. But it isn’t a dead holiday. At Christmas, Christians celebrate the coming of a living Messiah, who came to fulfill the promises in the Old Testament, the promise of a Person who will one day defeat and destroy Satan, the promise of a Blessing which all families of earth can enjoy, the promise of a Davidic King, a King who is reigning now and will reign forever and judge righteously, the promise of a Prince of Peace who will one day return. What a cause to celebrate!
The fall is over, practically speaking, and will be over in actuality in another two and a half weeks. October and November breezed by in the flickering light of golden leaves, the sparkle of frost in the mornings, and the first snows. What a glorious time of year, with the lingering warm days recalling the summer and the hints of the coming winter fresh in the air in the evenings. Hurried end-of-the-summer outings punctuated the otherwise steady flow of life. The last hikes before the cold set in, the savoring of the last of the fall colors, reveling in the last of the long days.
We enjoyed what produce successfully ripened in the garden, in spite of the multiple hail storms, early frost, and other inclement forces of nature. If you want a seemingly deer-proof plant, grow turnips – The leaves are prickly and the deer won’t eat them, even though they’ll meticulously rip up and devour every single beet and carrot in the garden. Turnips, leeks, tomatoes, basil, all found their way into savory, fresh soups. We’re looking forward to our garden next year already.
The majority of our very small tomato crop was pretty badly hail-damaged and the cold set in early, so many didn’t ripen. Mom turned what she could of those into small batches of fresh salsa, not to be canned. But at the end of the greenhouse season, Sarah’s boss at Dakota Greens in Custer let her and Mom pick the remaining tomatoes in the greenhouse, and they came home with roughly 130 pounds of tomatoes, mostly red but some green. Mom was thrilled to have something to can, and we spent a couple days processing the tomatoes. Salsa, plain tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, and piccalilly relish, are all stacked neatly in our pantry cabinet now.
The last couple weeks of November felt like winter – The first snows, snapping cold, heavy frosts, and snow-melt fog. Thanksgiving found me with a very thankful heart, for such a memorable and life-changing past year, as well as for the simple pleasures and little blessings God sends our way. We have a freezer full of venison, a warm house, good employment, a great church home, and family we can see on a regular basis. What more could I ask?
Song Dog Journal 