Good news on the job front.  Debbie was offered a job yesterday that will start Jan 3.  We have a packet of information coming that will spell out all of the details.  It seems to be a better fit than where she was and it seems a better insurance plan.  That has become all important right now as we move off of COBRA in January.  We had great insurance with my old company. 

The final papers are slowly getting done.  My final for Theology seems to keep working it's way down the list almost like I was putting off doing the paper.  I won't be able to do that for too much longer.  It is due on Tuesday next week.  I have about 35% of my Hebrew final done.  Luckily for us it is a take home this year.  It wasn't last year.  I have two classes completely done out of six.  One more is mostly done.  The other two still have a decent amount of work.

We have our Advent Event tonight.  Dinner and drinks and music.  It should be a fun time for all and a great chance to take our mind off of school and release a little bit of stress that has built up in everyone this last week or two.  It turns out from Thanksgiving until the end of school is pretty much non-stop school work.  Twelve to fourteen hours of it a day, six to seven days a week gets old after a while.  My brain starts to feel like mush and doesn't want to operate like normal.  I know, what is normal? 

Thankfully Debbie has handled all of the Christmas buying.  Not that there is much of that right now, but she has handled it so I don't have to worry about it.  She is really good about doing that during Christmas and always has been.  What a help for me who doesn't like shopping anyway and doesn't like spending money in an even worse way.  Christmas has become too commercialized.  I would love to have a Christmas of no presents for anyone so we could bring our focus back to Advent and the celebration of the birth of Jesus.  I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.  Maybe a trend can be started to bring the focus back.  But what power is the church against the marketing billions of dollars spent to tell us what we have to have to measure up?  Only as an act of God for sure!  Come Lord Jesus!

Starting Theology soon, got to go.  God bless each of you.  May your hearts be open to the Holy Spirit this Advent season. 

It was 22 this morning with a wind chill of 17.  I wore the scarf that Issy knitted for me this morning.  It is cold.  The forecast is 40 degrees today.  Luckily not bone chilling cold,  but for the Southeast it is cold. 

It is the time of year where the amount of work left to do and the amount of time left to do it are not in proper relation.  Much as everyone this time of year, I guess.  The good thing about this semester is not having any final exams.  All of my finals are papers.  This is good, as I am not crazy about cramming for exams.  At least with papers I have resources I can reference to help me.  The last several days have been almost non-stop class, field work, paper writing.  It will be over by the end of next week one way or the other.  Pedal to the metal until then. 

I wonder what it would take to reduce the stress level of this time of year for everyone so that we could contemplate the celebration of the birth of Christ?  With everything going on and the commitments everyone has  I understand why it is difficult to turn our attention to this.  I hope each of you, (OK, both of you) are able to spend sometime in contemplation about the coming of Christ as a child into our world and what that means.  We are living this reality whether we can understand it or appreciate it or not.  We are so blessed during this time that God remains faithful even when we are not able. 

I just remembered something that happened since my last post.  The workload where Deb worked was very slow so they let her go.  She is actively working to find another job.  The bigger issue with this is the insurance as our COBRA is running out.  The insurance offered from the school is not good if you are not in your early twenties so we remain trusting in the Lord to provide.

We are working through the process of Internship and assignments.  We find out our assignment in March.  We are trying to stay here in Columbia given all of the health issues that have come up.  We will see how the Holy Spirit works in this process and trust the path illuminated for us. 

God bless all of you.  Keep your mind on the real reason for Christmas as we stress over trying to keep up with expectations and commitments.  Until we talk again...