More Than Just A New Year for Your Blended Family!Photo by Yuganov Konstantin

How does your blended family bring in the New Year?  Do you celebrate by having a family filled day of finger foods and movies? Does everyone do their own thing? 

How can you make this More Than Just A New Year for Your Blended Family?

January is a natural beginning, a new year, a new month. An exciting opportunity to eliminate the gunk that built up on you and your blended family last year.

To have a beginning, one must have an ending.   

My season of raising four kids is ending and the season of just raising our two girls (well, a dog, a cat, two Guinea pigs, and two kittens) and embracing our role as (gulp) grandparent is beginning.

Even in our new promotion to grandparents, we find ourselves in a blender situation – my bonus son’s significant other has two little boys.   As of December 2nd, we now have three beautiful grandchildren.  My bonus daughter and her significant other had a beautiful little girl!

Beginnings are scary!  

It requires letting go of the familiar and reaching towards the unknown.  It also means change, sometimes a little, most of the time a lot.  

We shouldn’t be sad when a season ends, and another starts.  Just imagine if seasons never ended, there would be no beginnings. What would spring be like if winter never stopped (although, I felt this way last winter)?  The flowers would never bloom and the grass would stay brown.  

It would mean no beautiful season filled with new growth.  

For the last few years, I’ve chosen a word to focus on for the year. As I’ve prayed about what 2018 will bring, not just for me, but for my family, God continues to whisper BEGINNINGS.  

Along with the word, I find a verse that represents what the word means to me based on God’s sweet whisperers.  As I’m writing this blog, the verse is still in the works.  I’m going to have the family help with it on New Year’s Day.   

While I haven’t chosen a verse yet, I still cling to the message in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. In these verses, God shows us that as one season ends, another begins at just the right time.  When a farmer plants, he knows the season for growing will end with harvest.  At the end of harvest, a farmer also looks forward to his time of rest before the planting season begins again.   Like the farmer, the seasons of our lives tend to take on a similar cycle – they are not usually as obvious as the farmer’s seasons.  It would be nice if it were though!  

Have you considered what God has for you or your family in this New Year?  

For my family, we will learn to embrace our new season of life as a growing blended family filled with young adults, in-laws, teens, babies, and more family to juggle schedules for holidays and celebrations.  We will enjoy the unknown rather than fear it.  We will dance for joy as we weep at loss.   

We will just be in our seasonal beginning and enjoy the start of a journey that only God knows where it will lead.  

So, as we say goodbye to 2017 and any junk and gunk we acquired, remember January 1, 2018, does not have to just be the beginning of a New Year.  

It can be the beginning of the year your family enters a new season walking in gratitude for all the blessings God has given and has for you.  

It can be the start of a year your family finds that peace that eludes so many of us living in this blended family chaos.  Maybe it will be the first year your family learns to love unconditionally, remembers to forgive seventy times seven, and puts Jesus in the center. Whatever it is I encourage you to embrace it and be intentional!   

From the Weintraub Clan to yours, Happy New Year!

 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

1For everything there is a season,

   a time for every activity under heaven.

2 A time to be born and a time to die.

   A time to plant and a time to harvest.

3 A time to kill and a time to heal.

   A time to tear down and a time to build up.

4 A time to cry and a time to laugh.

   A time to grieve and a time to dance.

5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.

   A time to embrace and a time to turn away.

6 A time to search and a time to quit searching.

   A time to keep and a time to throw away.

7 A time to tear and a time to mend.

   A time to be quiet and a time to speak.

8 A time to love and a time to hate.

   A time for war and a time for peace.

 

 

 

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