Christmas Letter: 2000

Christmas, 2000

Dear Friends:
This year, I made New Year’s resolutions…in June. Okay, okay…you and I both know I can take FOREVER making important decisions. But right around the First Day of Summer (ironic, isn’t it?), I made some promises to myself and God. My life is richer now because I have kept them and God is ecstatic because He’s getting more of me than before.

I promised to make my living turning light bulbs on.

I stopped teaching math and got back to teaching English. That plain and simple choice has made such a difference because what I teach is one of the things I love. I’m still at Traders Point Christian Academy on Indy’s northwest side, only this time I’m working part time—with learning disabled kids one on one. I’m seeing light bulbs go on over their heads all day as they realize that what they struggled to read is a word with a meaning that they now understand. It’s like that scene in the Helen Keller film when she realized W-A-T-E-R means water—I’m like Anne Sullivan, running to catch up with kids who want to know how to spell everything, how to communicate, now that they can read and write better. Celebrating the smallest of victories makes this job the sweetest of joys.

I promised to completely pursue counseling as a life work—and I’ve received my “passionfruits.”

When I started trusting God more, my passions and my fruits of labor started to be more and more connected—I affectionately call them my “passionfruits.” I love counseling kids, so I made more time for that kind of labor—and the fruit just keeps on coming…
I cut my work schedule down to 3 days a week so I could spend the other 2 focused on my Master’s in School Counseling at Butler University. I volunteered at Indy’s Northview Middle School this semester and will move to Carmel’s Clay Jr. High in January. I’m following the counselors everywhere, trying to learn all I can about counseling kids all day. I’m also becoming a volunteer counselor for the local Crisis Pregnancy Center, a Christian organization that provides counseling about abortion alternatives and praying that a position would open up for me to be a Director of a CPC Counseling Center by May, 2002—right when I get my degree! Would you join me in that prayer? It’s a long way off—but God can make it happen. I know that this type of counseling will be emotionally very difficult for me, particularly when young teens choose abortion despite Scriptural evidence about God’s ability to make all things new. But I know that God is leading me to this ministry because I am drawn to the women involved in a way that is difficult to explain apart from God’s mercy.

I promised to permanently move into a church and make my home there.

God has provided Grace Community Church for me (and about 4000 other people) in Noblesville. I cannot tell you in words how much this church has helped me, just since I started attending in August. I went through some very hard times last year when I felt the weight of loneliness and the loneliness of waiting. Grace Church is part of God’s answer to me, as I prayed through tears, as all of us do when we cannot see what is ahead. But, as always, God gives us more than we ask for and we are continually surprised by how good His goodness really is. Grace has multiplied my desire to serve God and added many people to my wishlist for fellowship in Indy.

This Christmas, remember the words of Martin Luther in the great hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God.”

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.
Were not the right man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be? CHRIST JESUS it is he!
Lord Sabboath his name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.

Whether it’s battles you are facing or strength that you are needing—it is God who is calling, “I am the promise!” Claim that promise today and make some of your own to God. Christ lives to save us. Sometimes I have to keep reminding myself over and over…then, there are days I, like Helen Keller, run around, hungry to learn more—because I get it; I understand! Because of God’s mercy on us, heaven is a real place where worship happens without breaks, except to take a breath and praise some more.

I love you all,
Summer