Kellye's Personal Journal

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7

Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. Philippians 4:6-7 (Msg)

I love Thanksgiving on many levels. For one thing, I love to cook, so it makes me very happy to be in the kitchen rustling up grub for a group. It’s also the beginning of Christmas for our family, and I adore everything about Christmas. Plastic santas on the lawn make me happy. I love the big tree at one of the malls here, which is actually a huge wire structure with totally fake branches kind of glued on willy-nilly. Doesn’t matter to me, because I love Christmas. But back to Thanksgiving. Most of all, I love the chance to get together with family and think on all of the things we have to be thankful for. So I was totally prepared for today to be hard in many ways. Worried about homesickness for the family we left behind, I secretly began to dread the holiday I’ve always loved. So for once, I followed the advice of my own life verse, and I gave that particular concern to God, thanking Him for the ways in which this Thanksgiving would be different for our family. And you know what happened? The kind of peace that defies logic (or transcends all understanding) just rained down all over me. And it turns out that it’s okay to miss my family and friends in the States and still enjoy what I have here. Because in many ways, what I have here is pretty great.

We spent the day with our IMB family here in Moscow. Gathering at the local Christian school, we numbered between 70 and 80. (Lots of families in Moscow, and many have four or five children, so when we get together…it’s a mess of us.) It was so fun. We ate great food and we spent time singing songs about being thankful for what we have. We played games, ate more, and then played more games. At the end of the day, Hannah went home with one family, Sarah Beth went off with the teenagers to someone’s house, and John-John was the only one who came home with us. (He’s sitting on the couch right now, pretty zonked, because he discovered sledding today…our lives may never be the same.) It was different, certainly, than what we’re used to—for one thing, it took us an hour, a bus, and two metro stops and a one mile hike on the ice to get there, rather than staying in the comfort of our home. And we definitely didn’t wear shorts like we have in years past! (20 degrees is a little too chilly for that.) But if what we longed for what for everything to stay exactly the same, we came to the wrong place. I don’t know anywhere in the world where Thanksgiving is exactly the same there as it is in the States. Every place has its hardships. My friend is in Brazil, and she’s burning up and dealing with bugs. Other friends are in Africa and enduring a hard life in the bush. We’re in Europe’s largest city, and we’re getting used to what that means for us. But I’m thankful today for the differences. I’m thankful that God called us here. I am learning to love this city God has called me to love. I am learning to be content in all things…even the hard ones. I’m learning to love the outdoor markets which are totally different from anything in the states. I’m even learning to love the metro and the bus, because it gives me a chance to be up close and personal with Russians, especially now that I can carry on some kind of conversation. I’m thankful that God did not call us and leave us alone here. I’m glad He isn’t the “great clockmaker” the Deists believed Him to be—uninterested in the world He created. I daily sense His presence in our every day life. And I’m thankful for that gift.

The list of things to be thankful for is long. I know, because the other day I just started writing down all the things we are blessed with in our lives here. A tremendous mission family—who have loved us beyond what is reasonable or explicable. A wonderful biological family—who call and email and keep us in their thoughts and prayers and who have fully embraced God’s call upon our lives as the call upon the whole family. Friends in the States who love us and email us. Our mission friends around the world. Not a single day we have been here has been without an email or a skype message or a call from someone somewhere in the world—just to commiserate with us about how hard this is and to love us, love us, love us. I just started writing the list on a whim—I had prayed during my quiet time some kind of general thing, like “I have so much to be thankful for,” and it occurred to me (divine inspiration?) that it wouldn’t hurt me to make a list. Oh, my goodness…it was long, and it gets longer each day. It is a good exercise to count your blessings literally. Put together on a page, they go on and on and on and on. His mercies are new each morning, and so are His immense blessings.

So this Thanksgiving day, rather than just going around the table and naming one thing for which you are thankful, I challenge you to start a list of your own. Really count the blessings of this life. But be warned, my friends—you’re going to need a whole book in which to write. I love each of you, and I hope your day is wonderful and warm! Blessings to you and yours!

His,
Kellye