Good morning…
During last night’s Fall Festival at Northside Church, I sensed our shared experience tipping toward the holidays. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas. It is hard to imagine. Just two short month from today, we will wake up on the morning after Christmas 2023.
An important question lifts her head and opens her big brown eyes: “How might I savor, really savor, this holiday season at hand?”
One tangible thing we can do is to mark our calendars and sign up for a special gathering on Thursday, November 16th, three weeks from tonight. Cultivate Counseling is a thriving source of support for many in our Atlanta community. Annually they host a Holiday Gathering for women to retreat from the rush, to enjoy an artists’ market, and to savor a nurturing environment with friendly people, soulful music, and a grounding talk before the holiday hustle asks us to dance. This year, I feel honored to have been asked to be our speaker for the evening.
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“Could my life have been a rare unblemished shell in the sand, that any beach walker would have picked up to keep? A perfect specimen sold under glass in a tourist shop? Perhaps. But nothing of adventure or significance could have happened to me. No cuts allowing deep introspection, no beautiful growth from brokenness.” ~ Anonymous
Do you have mixed feelings headed into this holiday season?
Do you have some traditions or upcoming events that feel bittersweet given your present circumstances?
Or perhaps you have some upcoming plans that are causing downright anxiety?
Does your life and family not look like the “picture perfect” Christmas card right now and it is causing palpable heartache?
Join us for this special Cultivate Gathering as Sue Allen pours into our spirits and discusses the pressure to have the “perfect” holidays with the “perfect” families and how to find hope, comfort, and see the beauty when our lives and relationships are anything but perfect.
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At the artists’ market, we will be sharing items created by the kids during our arts and crafts times at PAWkids each Monday afternoon as well as selling handcrafted gifts which LaTonya Gates (founder and director of PAWkids) brought back from her recent trip to Uganda, supporting single mothers and widows through the Heal And Thrive ministry.
To learn more about this special evening, which is abundantly free to all, and to let us know you are coming, please touch on this link.
The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board. This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details (Ephesians 3:6-7, MSG).
…Sue…
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