Thanksgiving!

This week is my very favorite holiday... Thanksgiving! And we get to celebrate a birthday too! Miss Delilah is turning 4! It was never hard for me to see Sarah getting big, and it hasn't been difficult for me to watch Simon and Stephen grow, but that little Delilah makes me cry every time she makes a mile stone! We have some fun things planned for her birthday. A tradition we have for birthdays is that the special person gets to pick any restaurant they want. Lilah picked CiCi's, an all you can eat pizza buffet. We are glad she picked that... its SUPER cheap. (We can all eat there for less than $20.00) and of course SUPER yummy! And of course I will make cupcakes. Delilah is totally into Care Bears... so I am going to make her some colorful Care Bear Cupcakes!

Thanksgiving this year has proven to be a little bit of a disappointment. I love cooking, and the more people I can feed the better! But since we are new here, it will just be the McClure crew. We really prayed and prayed for something to come out of the woodwork, since our own efforts seemed to be fruitless, but the answer God gave us was "Nope. Its just you guys this year." So, we have a little tiny feast planned, and this year all the girls of the house are going to be cooking. Sarah created her own type of coffee cake, and she will be making that this year. Delilah is going to make our traditional "Cranberry Fluff." Instead of a turkey we are going to make Rosemary Chicken... it will be quiet and fun. For school, instead of turkey crafts, we are doing porcupine crafts! We are learning about Gratefulness... and part of the lessons are "Gratefulness in Nature." We learned all about the humble porcupine, and how, even though it doesn't have much going for it, it still stands up and sings... "YUM-O-EE-UM!!" So we are practicing being thankful like the porcupine (Choosing to be happy with the things that we have.) and I have four little porcupines running around my house singing at the top of their lungs!

I suppose a natural segue would be to move on to the things that I am thankful for... but I'm not going to lie to you. I have to think really hard about what I have to be happy about. (I count my children and sweet, selfless husband every day... what I am referring to is my life circumstances.) Its been just about a year since we made the choice to pack up and leave our Comfortable California. In mid February we will have been in Beautiful Colorado for a year! It started out as an adventure, and we were all so optimistic about the future. We were going to conquer this place in Jesus' name and the powers of evil would cower in fear! Ha! Here is what I learned.

"In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps." (Proverbs 16:9) And I am so glad that even though we came here with a plan, the Lord's hand has been directing our lives, without fail. Even now, despite the fact that we have come through incredible difficulty, and experienced some very deep, very private, indescribable pain, I know that we have taken the exact steps that the Sovereign has called us to. Even having that knowledge, it is hard to be thankful when it seems that you have been broken down to nothing. There is so much that we have been through I think it would take too much time to share... but the short story is that we gave ourselves to Jesus, we committed our family and ourselves to the work of the Lord, and nothing he could ask would ever be too much for us to give. There is no other reason at all why we would continue on this journey except for the sake of the call. And in order to fulfill Savior's plan for our lives here is Colorado, it was necessary for him to burn away all the filth, and strip us down to nothing. Why? Because now we can SHINE!

We were here all this time, ready to do everything he asked of us, and all this time we have been waiting! And all this time, while I was feeling like a failure for not acting, He was working in the hearts of these wonderful people that live around us. One day, some very, very polite little boys knocked on our door and said "Umm... our friend's mom lives upstairs and she said you might have a bike pump we can use?" and the next week those same little boys came, and brought a friend... and then the next time it was some more sweeties... And then do you know what happened? We were called. The Lord spoke. (But I'm not sharing yet! :-b) We could really use your prayers as the next chapter in our life here begins.

So, to end my little post, another Proverb, from 14:26: "He who fears the Lord has a secure fortress, and for his children it will be a refuge." This thanksgiving we will definitely not be naming such things as toys and financial gain on our thanksgiving tree... we have learned a valuable lesson, and we are thankful for gaining a fortress, a refuge... and we can now consider it PURE JOY when we face trials of every kind! Our faith has been tested, we have persevered, and one day we will be mature and complete, not lacking ANYTHING! (James 1:2)

YUM-O-EE-UM!