In a nutshell, probably like you, we’ve had Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, a little family vacation time in town, and are now back to school and work. Maybe unlike you, we’ve also had our 23rd wedding anniversary, a college visit, then a college decision, and track season start.

By way of a more personal update, I’m going to post here (with minor edits if any) my letter to my family for Christmas. I normally write a poem (or poems) to them, but this time I chose to write a letter with a short poem in it.

May the Lord enable each of us to overcome for his sake and pleasure!

My Dearest Family,

I love you! I’m thankful to our Lord for each one of you!

There is no way possible for me to put completely into words how thankful to God I am for you and how much I love you! Really! No way possible. Still, if ever there was a worthy effort, this is it – to give my thanks to God for you and in some measure encourage you to seek him by my words here when you read them, think of them, and reread and remember them.

For the first time in our lives, we got a storm that brought SNOW to our home! I’m sure you remember that. What a start to 2011! Little did we know what the remainder of the year would bring after that day! Then it happened again several days later! Be it struggling to work and manage the home, legs tired from work and/or running, anemia, sorting out college possibilities, pain or injury, working hard at lessons, or just plain old battling temptation (and sometimes losing!), 2011 was full of stormy and beautiful days! The snow was great, but the best was yet to come! Without the rain, there is no rainbow, right?

In my mind, thanks in large part to your lives the last 12 months, the year of 2011 has been The Year of the Overcomer. As we’ve discussed, “to overcome” is to conquer, have victory over, overwhelm, get the better of, or surmount. And in 2011, our Lord has enabled you to conquer so much, not the least of which is your own selves! Praise the Lord for that!

I have seen God’s hand in this time and again this year in your lives – surmounting health problems, pain, illness, grief over sin of yours or others, and the fallenness of your own lives. Over and over you got knocked down but still got up. You got trampled and, when you could have easily given up or quit, you instead recommitted to the race of life and to give it your all! THAT is what an overcomer does! Thank God for building that into you all more and more! Without being challenged, we’ll never know what the depth of the Lord’s work in and though us can be.

There is much more I long to express to you! I want to hug you, pray with you, learn from you, laugh with and walk with you as we seek the will of our Heavenly Father. For his sake, I trust God will provide us with the opportunities he wants us to have to do these things.

But here and now, I just want to say I love you and am so thankful for the gifts from God that you are to me! I want to encourage you – to “in courage” you – to put courage in you that you may live out your love for Jesus! We know not one of us has arrived at the place where we should be happy to stay for the remainder of our days.

I trust the Lord will be faithful to keep working in us. He has overcome death that we might have true life and will some day make ALL things new (Rev. 21:5)! By his grace, as Romans 12:21 says, we can now battle and overwhelm sin and all evil with true goodness! Overcome! For the best is yet to come!

Revelation 21:6-7 says, “And he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.’”

So in the battle, may we focus on Jesus and by his love and grace be made more like him! Here’s my Christmas poem for you this year -

Overcome!

In the battle, more like My Hero I become!
For by His love, all evil I can overcome!

May the Lord be your Hero more and more, and may he show you how he wants to use you to overcome evil! May the Lord bless you with the heritage he has for overcomers!

All my love and prayers,

Dad