Hope Going Forward

Sunday, December 26th, 2021

Thank you all for joining me during Advent 2021. I so appreciate the comments, feedback, pings and most especially the connectedness of the WP family. I am also thankful to my friends, family, coworkers and FB followers. I look forward to more reading and writing in the new year. I hope everyone had the Christmas they had hoped for. My hope for the season was to spend time with those I love, mission partly accomplished. I worked through the holiday but have plans to see my dad, brother, and my niece and her family and hopefully more relatives too on my next days off. I was blessed to recently spend time with my aunt, my cousin and her daughter. We made several dozens of cookies, candies and other sweet treats but the best part with being together. We reminisced about the past and family members no longer with us physically. I miss the Christmas’ of past, waking early to open presents, staying up late wrapping presents and assembling toys for the morning. Such joys!! Our memories are priceless!

🎄 ✝️ 🌟 ❤️ ✨ 🎁 🎄 ✝️ 🌟 ❤️ ✨ 🎁 🎄

I love Christmas for all the reasons; family, food, friends and faith! In recent years, this one included I have not set the bar very high with regards to the holidays. I love blogging and sharing my faith perspectives and gift giving. I love to see the faces of those opening the gifts; I spend a lot time trying to find “the gift” that seems to be just right for them. The expression of excitement and sheer joy is so much more valuable to me than the gift itself. Giving is a gift that God has blessed me with, not through wealth, I definitely live within a budget but I make it work if it’s important to me. I have many footprints on my heart from people I have met in my life that are so dear to me. Some have moved on and we don’t see or talk with one another anymore, but my memories of them are fully intact and it’s true what they say, “you may not remember what people say, but you will always remember how they made you feel.” Quote attributed to Carol Buchner, Maya Angelou and others.

What Are Your 2022 Hopes?

Things that I hope to accomplish in the new year are to ___________________. I have many ideas and plans not yet formulated or penned to paper. I know, I sense the Holy Spirit leading me to something… I am ready to heed this nudging and tugging upon my heart. I am tired of the circling pattern I have had my life going in. The pandemic has not helped with everything shutdown; life waits for no one. I trust God’s timing and this just might be the year for me to discover new people, new places and my place in the midst of it all.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” —Proverbs 3:5-6 (NRSV)

A huge miscalculation on my part in living my life to its fullest potential is this…I am still trying to balance the past while trying to move forward; an impossible feat. It’s like trying to push 2 same pole magnets together…

“Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14 (ESV)

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

— Søren Kierkegaard

“But I will hope continually, and will praise you yet more and more.”
—Psalm 71:14 (NRSV) —

Everyone has a past, but that’s just it–it’s in the past. You can learn from it, but you can’t change it.

—Nicholas Sparks

“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.”
— Hebrews 10:23 -(NRSV) —

~Charlotte, Seeker of unexpected Comfort, Happiness, Joy and Patience.

References:

https://www.biblegateway.com/