Well! So much has happened this last year that I don�t know if I can pack it all into one newsletter. I guess I�ll just have to jump right into the bald facts, not adorning our missive with the usual blatherings about lack of autumn, big sneezes, and where we live. (Well, actually, I do have to go into that a bit.) Uh oh, this is not an auspicious beginning.

Ok, so, there we were, frittering away our lives in Lubbock when up came this opportunity to fling away all binds and move to Georgia. (All binds? What binds are these? I can now admit I pretty much hated Lubbock. Although I am still kind of fond of it in a twisted sort of way.) We prayed about it (seemed too good to be true), grabbed it, and wended our way across The South in a ludicrously faulty U-Haul van (story elsewhere on this site).

�Georrrrrrrrrrgia?� some screamed. Texas was bad enough. But Georgia? We expected someone to say, �Georgia! Can anything good come from there?� John 1:46 (paraphrase mine).

Well, yes. Not only did Mark get a job that allows him to hop about to England (sorry, folks, Jamaica got cancelled), Indiana and Atlanta, etc., but I got an absolute dream job dropped in my lap. Out of the blue. One I never even had the audacity to dream of having.

Mark first. (Oh, dear, I can't find this part; will update when I do.)

And mine? I get paid to read (and write). My favorite hobbies in the world, and I get paid for them! I read unsolicited manuscripts submitted to Authentic Media, the publishing division (hence the opportunity), write up a page or two assessment, and present it to my boss with a yea or nay. My word isn�t the final, naturally, only the beginning. And all of this stuff isn�t a dream to read (I�d say the rejects/accepts are about 50/50). But working at home, adapting my hours to Mark�s and the kids�, and getting paid a nice little amount for it - what could be better?

Well, lots could, actually; my health, for one. First came that diagnosis in 2000 with insulin resistance, or pre-diabetes, then came the B-12 fiasco last year, and this year another domino went down - my thyroid. Naturally, I can�t have the OVER-active thyroid, which makes you lose weight; oh, noooooooo, it has to be the under-active which makes you a blimp (along with a host of other unpleasant symptoms). Every component in my endocrine system seems to be getting knocked down one by one. But fortunately I have again a very sympathetic doctor who�s quite competent and who doesn�t mind giving me lots of drugs.

I wrote the above on my first day of medication and was experiencing an apparent side-effect (one I�d only dreamed about in previous newsletters....a good one); a sort of high, almost. A brain rush, anyway. (That much appears obvious upon re-reading it.) That only happened the first two days and now I�m back to the debilitating symptoms, waiting for the meds to start working (takes a month or so) and I�d better get this off before I go under. Now we really are gonna deal just the bald facts...it seems like a billion things happened after July:

1. We moved to Georgia. (Oh, yeah, I said that.)
2. Daniel is in high school and his band has been invited to London to perform on New Year�s Day there, wow wow wow. (The invite did not include a costs-covered deal. Boo hoo boo hoo.)
3. Daniel has already made a name for himself at aforementioned high school with his musical talent.
4. David moved with us to Georgia, but is working now to save enough to move back to Texas in Feb., where he�ll work and go back to UNT. He turned 20 this year, so we are now back to one teen in the family.
5. Megan is doing excellently in her new school and is in chorus singing solos, and selling her artwork around the community we currently live in.
6. I broke my toe.
7. I didn�t have to, for the first time in years and years, make Thanksgiving dinner!! We were invited to someone�s house!
8. And now on to the thing which was the biggest turning point of the year (which I fortunately wrote about back then when it happened).......

This was not the sweet, beckoning joy that most people think of when they think of love. This was a tremendous presence, something almost solid, landing in the room with the impact of a meteor.

That's what stunned me. Not the violence, the violence was barely endurable (but probably underdone in the case of the scourging); rather, the overwhelming love of someone willing to go through the horror for. . . . .us. That's someone worth following to the ends of the earth.

And that�s what I wanted to do when I got home. Just get up and walk out of the door, the house, and keep walking until I could walk up to Jesus.

"The Passion of The Christ" ripped me in half, like the veil in the temple. I had expected to be ripped, because I am an intensely empathetic person. What I hadn't expected was how it also rocked my soul, rocked it in a way it hadn't been rocked since the conference that led us overseas. No sermon I've heard since coming home has had that much power.

It�s why we moved to Georgia. It�s why we�re willing to drop everything, to look imprudent, thoughtless, to everybody else. Because of that almost physical Presence we still find today, of real Love, that sent His Son - sent Himself - to us in our grubby little world that one Christmas 2000 years ago.