Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Man! What a great Christmas season preceded by a wonderful fall wrapping up 2022! Here’s to 2023!

It has been a wonderful start to 2023! It is so hard to believe that it is 2023.

Time just flies and does so more and more as the years go by.

I recently added a post with some fall pictures because I was delayed in getting out fall reflections (linked here), and then Christmas hits! So with that my Christmas recap and reflections:

I have always LOVED the Christmas season, and though Easter has always seemed to have more impact for a Christian, there is just something special about the way Christmas brings the world together.

It is a message of hope among a weary world. It is a reassurance that even if there is no room in the inn and even if nothing good seems to be happening, we still rejoice because the Savior of the world is here. The beginning of the fulfillment of God’s promises is here.

This season brings me to so many reflections, and I have many previous reflective posts found HERE.

For this year, my reflections were much of what I have previously reflected on with the goodness of God being as unfathomable as a virgin birth, but it doesn’t make either one any less true.

Though a recent realization, which actually happened after the holiday, is how much the nature of the Christmas story reiterates the difficulties of surrendering to God. It reiterates how mandatory faith, rather than proof, is for a Christian.

A virgin birth, a Savior being rejected to be born in a manger rather than getting the finest room in the inn, the symbol of hope being a helpless baby, etc. are aspects of the story a person clinging only to proof, reason, and logic will never be able to fathom.

The story gives a skeptic who relies only on her/his intellect every excuse to justify not being able to trust a God and a Savior who entered the world in such a way. In the same way, certain events in the world may give that same skeptic reason to justify God’s absence and thereby refuse to relinquish control.

That is why it is called faith. It takes faith to surrender to a God who we have never seen but for whom we must discern His revelation – in creation and in His Son. God has already revealed Himself and fulfilled His promises, but it takes faith to discern these grand weavings in our own story.

God’s unique, grand weaving of the Christmas story is what makes it even more beautiful. It is what allows a world to be bonded together over something that transcends what we see in the everyday. It is extraordinary.

Taking hold of this faith is when one sees this ordinary, unlikely series of events as extraordinary.

This is just as He can do with your life– if you choose to see the extraordinary.

So my question and challenge is — Are you working to reveal God’s goodness or disprove His existence? Are you expecting to see the extraordinary?

Your answer will determine whether you can surrender. A part of you has to want to believe and want to have faith.

Often even as I cling hard to the faith, it is hard to surrender as it goes against every human tendency.

I think it is no coincidence that Christmas falls at the end of the year. Whatever the year held –whether chaos, goodness, sadness, suffering, etc., a hope enters and promises for better to come. This welcomes a new year with new intentions and new chapters.

May we welcome hope, peace, joy, and love in the year 2023. May you set intentions to look for the goodness of God in everything. Each moment whether ordinary, mundane, or the greatest moment of your life holds the Lord God among it weaving together your story of success for His Glory.

I hope everyone had the greatest Christmas and has a happy New Year!

Here’s to 2023 friends!

Here are some pictures from my Christmas which held a magical trip to New York!

My first Christmas cup from Buckies (Starbucks ;))

First church service post Thanksgiving with all the Christmas decor 🙂

Wrapping up our KLife semester with my 10th grade bible study girls!

This place in 12 south is the coolest — a cereal bar! Its called Wanna Spoon. Check it out if in Nashville.

Wrapped up the school semester with On-Campus days, and of course took advantage of Christmas-y things in Memphis while there. Also could not have done school without these special friends!

Our Christmas card attempts in the new condo! 🙂

ENCHANT NASHVILLE — truly was enchanting!

Every Christmas, we go to a church service in the church my grandfather, my mom, and her siblings grew up going to. It is a special church dear to our hearts, and it is special to go back. It is a beautiful church and even more so at Christmas time!

Took my sweet sweet (aka Brooke aka the best bible study co) to the airport to go home for the holidays!

Family at Pins! The family on my mom’s side has made Pins Mechanical a new Christmas tradition!

Then the girls of the immediate family took on NYC at Christmas!

I have always wanted to see NYC at Christmas time, and to be a family girls’ trip was even better. It was my mom, my two sister in laws, and myself, as well as a baby girl in one of my sister in laws bellies! Her first girls trip!

WE MADE IT!

We packed in allllll the things!

Our Central park tour guides!

Buckies in hand always 🙂

The Friends fountain — honestly, my dream come true!

Our fancy night for the Rockettes!

Nashville, can we have a place decorated as well as Rolf’s in NYC?!

 

It was a trip of a lifetime!

Then we arrived back right before the snow hit Nashville!

And it was Christmas!

We take Christmas traditions very seriously, and one of them is all spending the night at my parents house on Christmas eve into Christmas day! We always watch the Grinch that evening and the Polar Express in the morning 🙂

Christmas on a Sunday was so special this year! In the house of the Lord with your church family worshiping the reason for the season!

Of course, I had to do one last photo session at 806 and for some Christmas pictures 🙂

Being HOME on Christmas just hits different 🙂

As the 806 chapter wraps up, my cousins and I also remade a picture from when we were kiddos at the 806 house. It was really special as this house has a whole new meaning for me, and having some of my favorite people in my favorite house the day after Christmas was special.

The previous picture we were remaking:

And of course we popped champagne and “cheers”-ed to quite a house and the family roots that brought us to now.

And yes, I am keeping this cork and champagne bottles!

Like I said, it was a joyous Christmas! The New Year came with having to work New Year’s Day, so not many pictures from it. However, I rejoiced for a new year and new opportunities to have divine appointments with patients who also don’t want to be in the hospital just as much as I may not want to be at work.

Thank you for reading friends! Prayers for you in this new year! May we strive to live life to the full for the sake of His Glory! Your story is as special as the storyteller. You are designed for more. Chase after it.

Love always,

Katie Girl

P.S. 2023 not holding this house is HARD! So yes more 806 pictures! 🙂