This is a special time of year as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. I took a Scripture writing challenge this month with some friends using different passages about the coming of Christ at His birth. I find the prophecies of the Old Testament about Christ’s birth so fascinating. Isaiah and Micah, along with other prophets, prophesied exact details about Christ’s first coming which Jesus fulfilled to the letter.

These prophecies prove the inspired Word of God in ways that no man could have planned on his own. It always excites me to think that if God planned and fulfilled those prophecies so precisely, how much more precise His Second Coming will be!

In this Scripture writing challenge, I have been looking at some of the prophecies the Holy Spirit led Isaiah to share with us.

It was an early morning in November 2011 when my sisters and I sat with our dad in a surgical waiting room. Just a few short weeks before, our mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer found during a routine yearly mammogram.

I sat there that morning recalling the events of the weeks since the day we heard the dreaded “C” word. There had been a whirlwind of doctor’s appointments, scans, blood tests, and consultations.

I remember when the breast cancer specialist told us in a family consultation that the best course of action for the type of cancer my mom had was a mastectomy—a radical amputation of my mom’s breast. It was a shock, but none of us argued that day in the doctor’s office because we trusted she knew the best course of action to eradicate the cancer in my mother’s body. 

What does “normal life” look like for an almost 37-year-old woman in today’s Christian culture? If the first thoughts in your mind deal with being married and rearing a family, you are probably thinking as most folks do in our churches and in our world today. What goes through your mind when you meet someone like me—37 years old, “unattached,” and never been married? I have had all kinds of comments from people within the church ranging from “Don’t worry…you’ll find someone someday,” to “So, do you even want to get married?” and everything in between.

The world kind of leaves people like me to our own individuality on most fronts. Some unbelievers make invalid assumptions about people like me, but I can get past those assumptions quickly because they are unbelievers and don’t understand my heart and desire to honor God in EVERY aspect of my life. ​

Have you ever had someone ask you, “How are you?” knowing full well that the person really doesn’t want to know how you are. It is just a polite thing to say, right?

It seems that in the midst of the events of recent months with “stay-at-home” orders and canceled church services that I have easily felt very disconnected and even isolated at times. I live by myself in a little house on a normal little street in England. I know that some of you American readers may think that it is quite the adventure, but really it is just real life for me.

​Over the past several months, I have had to ask the Lord to help me to purposefully stay connected with my neighbors, friends from church, and friends and family in America. It is easy in times like these to slip into a mindset of forlornness and host a massive “Pity Party for One!”

I grew up in the Midwest of the United States, and was often startled awake in the night by a flash of lightning and a crack of loud thunder. I grew to love those storms and even miss them when a summer goes by now without a proper thunderstorm.

The part of England where I live now is not known to have thunderstorms very often. It is quite an event—worthy of news articles when it happens! Recently we had one of those storms accompanied by major flash flooding. There were roads completely flooded within minutes of the start of the storm. People were shocked at how fast the water rose and some even reported that this was the first time they saw such an event as this in Peterborough. The news article I read about the storm said we received half a month’s worth of rain in just a couple of hours. The rain and floods caused massive delays on the parkways and sent people into a right fit about it all. There was not any CALM in this storm.

I don’t know about you, but I am a planner.
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• I like to get a fresh calendar at the start of the year and plan out how I think things should go.
• I like lists to keep my tasks for the week ahead properly organized.
• Even each day, I like to plan when I will do certain things based on the weather.

Some of you might be thinking I need an intervention due to my excessive planning!