A new year.

We had our annual, relaxed, perfectly low-key New Year’s Eve celebration with my best friend, Libby, her husband, Scott, and of course Griffin. We had homemade pizza, salsa & cream cheese dip, and a brownie trifle. We’re so blessed to have great longtime friends who life just 5 minutes away from us. In our NYE group photo last year, Griff was just 18 days away from being born! I love that none of us are wearing real shoes. That’s my kind of celebration. :)

Eugene & I left before midnight in hopes to get the tired pregnant lady to bed early-ish, or at least watch the ball drop laying on the couch. Well, when we walked in the door, we instantly heard what sounded like a waterfall in our house. Eugene ran downstairs, and from the basement I hear, “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.”

Eugene & my dad spent a few hours the day before rerouting a pipe to feed our cold water through our water softener tank. Prior to that, the only water getting softened was the hot water. Well, it turned out that one of the joints wasn’t quite tight enough and proceeded to loosen over the hours and began to spray gallons of water all over our basement. When Eugene opened our washing machine, which was a few feet from the pipe leak, he found the entire drum full of water. Water all over the walls and floor too. Awesome.

So my New Year’s day was spent at church & in Columbus with my mom’s side of the family, missing my husband. While poor Eugene was stuck ripping out more drywall and mopping up the excess water. Here’s to hoping that 2012 is a DRY year for our basement!

On a much better note, our sermon today was a really good one. It was about how distracted our culture is, so distracted with things that we’re living in a state of continual partial attention. We watched this video of Josh Bell, one of the nation's greatest violinists, playing in a D.C. Metro stop during rush hour.

11,000 people walked by – too distracted, too busy, too preoccupied – and only SEVEN stopped to notice. The preacher correlated that with the Mary/Martha story {Luke 10:38.} And without typing out my entire 2 pages of sermon notes, the short & sweet solution to distractedness is spelled out in scripture {underlining is my emphasis}:

Luke 10:41-42: “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Jesus pointed the distracted Martha to notice Mary. And Mary pointed to the one thing that’s needed. She chose what is better – Jesus. We were left with a sample sentence to pray daily as a true resolution, and I love it. So I’ll leave you with my daily {better-than-a-resolution}prayer for 2012:

“Lord Jesus, make thyself to me a living, breathing reality.” 
– Hudson Taylor

Happy New Year, friends.