No Resolutions, Just Christ

In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes that "All our vows and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to carry them out." This really spoke to me as I'm beginning a new year. I've never been a fan of New Year's resolutions, simply because they seem designed to be broken. This year, I decided to set a few "goals" for myself, but now, after reading Chambers, I've realized I've only set myself up to fail, since my goals were based on me, and what I can accomplish. Well, I can accomplish nothing.

One of the goals I made for myself was to lose some weight and get in better shape. My weight is something I have really struggled with for the past few years. I have a very hard time forming a true perspective of what my body should look like, especially now, after having had a baby. I have come to realize that in college I was too thin and not healthy, but I am still struggling to determine and accept what might be a good weight for me. I also struggle because it seems like no matter how much I work out, or how hard I try, I just can't seem to shed any pounds. This is especially hard when I witness others around me who seem to stay thin effortlessly. I have to fight for every ounce.

Anyway, all of that just to say that I've been missing the point with my goals. Even the weight one. As long as I am eating healthy, getting plenty of exercise, and taking care of my body, then I shouldn't worry about anything else. Focusing so much on my weight is focusing far too much on me. Also, I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and God has created me to be the body type that I am. And when I am focusing so much on one mere aspect of myself, I am obviously not focusing my attention on Christ.

In the same entry, Chambers also writes: "No matter what changes God has wrought in you, never rely upon them, build only on a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Spirit He gives." Even if I were to lose a bunch of weight, and have a perfect body, would I really be in a better place? I would be priding myself on what I'd accomplished, and definitely placing far too much emphasis on myself.

No, my focus needs to be not on what I can do to improve myself, but what Christ can do through me, if only I'll quit being so self-centered and let Him. So I'll keep my 2011 "goals" in the back of my mind, because they will help keep me structured and can only help me to improve, but I don't want them to be my main focus this year. Instead, I want to build this year on the Person of Christ, and on His Spirit. And if I happen to slim down, great - it will be an added bonus. But my true source of joy should not come from seeing a self-centered goal completed, like a finished manuscript of the novel I've been working on for the past 3-4 years, or the numbers on the scale dropping. No, my true source of joy should be in Christ. So that is my resolution for this year: To Build on the Person of Christ. And if I acknowledge up-front that I have no power to carry this out, and will have to rely on Christ to work in and through me, paradoxically, the goal can be achieved.

Gemma's First Christmas, Part 3: Christmas with the Browns

My family had been planning to come down on Dec. 26 after church, but then, over the weekend, we learned that they were expecting up to 8 inches of snow! Sure enough, they woke up Sunday morning and were snowed in with about 5 inches. It was still snowing, and not expected to get above freezing all day. They had to cancel church, but were still just stuck in Ellerbe because of the roads. They called and said they would be down on Monday, as soon as the roads were clear enough.

Then...it started snowing here! It wasn't cold enough to stick, but it snowed pretty heavily all day long. I took Gemma out to look at the snow, but she just stared at it. She wasn't sure what to think.And then, around 1 pm, I got a call from my mom telling me to put the soup on, because they were on the way. They ended up taking a slightly longer route that used more mainstream roads, but they made it here safely. And then it was like Christmas all over again! There were tons of presents for Gemma of course. Her favorite was the Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Kitchen, something that wasn't on her list that my mom had decided last-minute to get.

And of course, as usual with the Brown family, there were about as many gag gifts as there were real presents. Such as the oh-so-attractive 3D glasses and Rachel and I with our twin bump-its! We had so much fun!

Gemma's First Christmas, Part 2: Christmas Day

So of course, Gemma decided that Christmas morning would be the perfect day to sleep in. I thought that once you had a kid, you didn't have to come up with an excuse for being up early on Christmas morning anymore, that the kiddo was supposed to be up first, waking everyone up? Not the case. We were both awake and Gemma just kept snoozing away. Finally she woke up and we got to open presents!!!

The present-opening went better than expected. Gemma was actually way more aware of what was going on and way more into it than we thought she would be. Each time something new appeared from the wrapping paper, she would reach for it and play with it until something new came along. Her favorite present by far that morning was the toy laptop she received from her friend Lucy.Cy and I got lots of great presents as well. In fact, we ended up getting each other the same present - a universal remote for the XBox 360. We both thought we were very clever surprising the other with the remote, since it was on neither of our Christmas lists.

Around lunchtime, we headed over to Frank and Andrea's for some roast and more presents. Gemma got some more super fun toys, and modeled a Christmas bow for us.

Cy and I both scored some Legos and a few other nice things. When I opened my Lego Imperial Flagship, Noah exclaimed: "Wow! I want that for Christmas!" But he seemed pretty content with his fun new set of interactive talking dinosaurs and his new digital camera. By the time we finished opening presents, poor little Gemma was absolutely exhausted, so we drove back home so she could get a nice long nap. It was a really great day - Gemma seemed to enjoy her very first Christmas.

Gemma's First Christmas, Part 1: Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve this year was hosted at our house. The rest of the Shealys plus Kelly's mom and sister all came over for the festivities. Andrea made chili and I made corn spoonbread and wassail. For dessert, we had peanut butter pie plus an assortment of Christmas cookies. We tried to take some pictures of the three cousins together, but Gemma and Liam didn't want to cooperate. Gemma picked a fight with Liam by grabbing his face. When she wouldn't stop, we had to separate them. But then Liam decided it was time to retaliate and pretty much tried to tackle Gemma. After that, we really had to separate them.

After dinner, Cy read the story of Christ's birth from Matthew and Luke. Then we gathered around the piano and sang some Christmas tunes. Noah in particular enjoyed the singing.

Then it was time to open stockings. We each got a ton of great stuff. Gemma scored some socks, a bib, and her favorite: a bottle of formula. After everyone left, it was a toss-up whether Gemma or Daddy would be the first one to fall asleep so Santa could come.

Best Reads of 2010

I have been sick with the plague for the past week, which is why there has not yet been a blog post about Gemma's first Christmas. I am working up to it. In the meantime, here is a quick and fun (at least, fun for me) post: my annual list of the best books I read in the previous year. So here they are, in no particular order:

1. The Flavia de Luce mysteries by Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie; The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag)

2. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Infinitely better than the Twilight books. I was not a fan of the sequel, however.

3. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. It's been years since she published The Historian (which was fantastic), but The Swan Thieves was worth the wait.

4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. There was so much hype about this book that I put off reading it because I thought I would only be disappointed. I was not.

5. The Hunger Games & Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (read these twice actually). I was wary of this one too since people were comparing it to Lord of the Flies. It is nothing like Lord of the Flies. Mostly because it is fantastic and Lord of the Flies is terrible. Mockingjay (the third volume of the trilogy) was horrible.

6. Graceling by Kristin Cashore.

7. Nefertiti, The Heretic Queen, and Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran.

8. Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. Another book that was seriously hyped, yet managed to live up to its reputation.

9. The City and the City by China Mieville. I was really not into this book when I first started reading it. It took me a while to get interested, but then I couldn't put it down. After I was finished, I thought about it a lot and developed a growing appreciation for its subtle brilliance. Then I *attempted* to read his new book, Kraken (because I loved The City and the City, and being a little bit obsessed with Pirates of the Caribbean, I was pretty pumped about a kraken, but it was so bad I couldn't even get through 75 pages! It was totally bizarre and I had no idea what was going on!)

10. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. This is a really odd book, and had some inappropriate scenes that I wasn't crazy about, yet it was very well-written and weirdly fascinating.

11. River God by Wilbur Smith - Historical fiction set in ancient Egypt = good times.

12. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson - I wasn't a huge fan of book 2 of the trilogy, but I liked the way the trilogy ended with this one.

13. Faithful Place by Tana French - not as good as her previous two, but still thoroughly enjoyable.

14. The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follett - Wow is really all I can say about this. The word epic is so overused these days, but if anything deserves to be described as epic, this is it. Also enjoyed watching the mini-series this year as well.

15. Juliet by Anne Fortier - an interesting new spin on the well-known (and overdone) Shakespeare tale.

16. Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs - I randomly started watching Bones on Netflix earlier this year and then decided to try Deja Dead since I had never read anything by Kathy Reichs. I was hooked. I ended up reading everything she's written.

17. Cold Magic by Kate Elliott - An obscure but enjoyable book. Probably only interesting to serious fantasy/sci-fi fans.

18. The Host by Stephenie Meyer - I finally got around to reading this. It was nothing like what I expected, but I enjoyed it very much. I thought it was much better than Twilight, actually.

19. The Distant Hours by Kate Morton - LOVE, LOVE, LOVE KATE MORTON! And her books just keep getting better!!!

20. The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. I had downloaded the first book in this series onto my Kindle ages ago and for some reason, had never bothered to read it. I kept hearing about his new series (Leviathan, Behemoth), and checked Leviathan out from the library. It was decent, and while waiting for the library to get a copy of Behemoth for me, I decided to read Uglies. I was instantly hooked. I plowed through Uglies and downloaded Pretties. Then I plowed through Pretties and downloaded Specials. I wasn't so sure about Extras, since it featured a different character than the original trilogy. But I went ahead and read it too...and it ended up being my favorite of all of them!

21. A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels by Libba Bray - I promise my interest in these books has nothing to do with the fact that the main character's name is Gemma! (Although that might make me a bit impartial to said character.) I downloaded the first of this trilogy ages ago at the same time I downloaded Uglies. After Uglies turned out to be so good, I decided to give the Gemma Doyle Trilogy a try also. Not as good as Uglies, but still really good. YA fantasy set in Victorian England, told from the point of view of a girl named Gemma. Um, this book was clearly just screaming my name! I haven't read the third installment yet, but it is next up on my reading list.

And, just for fun, some books that were so awful I couldn't even finish reading them:

1. The aforementioned Kraken by China Mieville

2. The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Shadow Souls by L. J. Smith - love the show, love the original books. No idea what she was thinking when she wrote this.

3. The Naming by Alison Croggon. I was pretty excited about this - it's a fantasy, quest-type YA read. But it was soooooo boring I literally kept falling asleep while reading it and couldn't even make myself finish it.

4. The Passage by Justin Cronin. Okay, I actually did finish this one, but only because I made myself. This book had a ton of hype, and when I started reading it, I was actually very interested. The first couple hundred pages are really good, and it's a unique vampire story (which is hard to do with the vampire craze going on). But the book really should have ended there, and not 500+ pages later after which point I was thoroughly confused and no longer interested at all.

5. Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. After reading his two medieval epics, I was pretty excited about his new Century trilogy. Oh my gosh. I was so bored. I read a little over half, then skimmed to the end. I will not be reading book two. I was glad I got this from the library and didn't waste my money.

6. Three Seconds by Roslund & Hellstrom - I got an ARC and was pretty excited, since it was being compared to Stieg Larsson. It was nothing like Larsson. It seemed like the English translation was done very poorly, so that may have been part of the problem. Either way, very confusing and not worth my time.

And a P. S. - I am already reading a fantastic new book by Julie Klassen (LOVE HER!), The Girl in the Gatehouse, that just came out on January 1. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through, but I can already tell it will be making my 2011 list!

Smells...Er, Looks...Like Christmas Spirit

Once again this year, we have gone all-out decorating our house for Christmas. We have multiple Christmas trees inside, and we have the columns and the overhang of our front porch decorated, along with the Christmas yard flamingo. This year was especially nice, as we held the annual Shealy family shindig at our house, so we actually got to share all of our decorations.

Inside the house we have:

The "family" Christmas tree:

Blue/white/silver Christmas tree:

Small M&M Christmas tree:

And, just for me, a tree with pink lights decorated solely with flamingo ornaments:

A Lego Christmas village:


And of course, our stockings are hung by the chimney with care:

7 Months Old

So Gemma was officially 7 months old yesterday...which I realized last night as I was lying in bed not falling asleep. Pretty much, I rarely even know what the date is these days, so I missed it. :( But I tried to make up for it by taking an official "7 month photo" with Gemma and her giraffe this morning.

She is getting so big! (For her, that is. She is still pretty tiny. She has moved on to wearing some 6-9 month clothes now, but they are all still too long and kind of baggy.) She has 2 teeth now and it seems like she might be working on a top tooth. She is learning new stuff all the time and is just getting more and more fun every day. She has recently started waving (sort of), can sit up really well, and is pushing up really high when on her tummy and trying so hard to get moving! She loves to sit and read (and eat) books. She is doing great with solid foods - I made a big batch of pureed fruits and vegetables a few weeks ago and she consistently eats apples, pears, peaches, sweet potatoes, carrots, and green beans. Right now, she is constantly in awe of the many Christmas trees and decorations that have recently appeared in our house. This morning, she was mesmerized as she got to observe her first fire in the fireplace. She is fascinated by anything new, and extremely observant.

She is so funny, and so sweet. She is more amazing than we had dreamed possible, and as usual, we are looking forward to what the next month will bring!