a new year and a new house

It's been a few months since my last post and my life has dramatically changed since then. For about 4 months I had been feeling God's call to leave Pittsburgh. The question then was, "Well, then where the heck do you want me to go?" So I mapped out my goals and I what I truly felt that God was leading me to do with my life. Music ministry. I've tried very hard to run from that and change my perspective and allow my pride to step in to do something "bigger" and "better". But what is a higher calling than leading people to the Cross of Christ during worship? To provide God-centered introspective worship to help the children of God feel His presence and see His face? Not that I couldn't show the love of Christ on an opera stage, but music ministry is where I am being called.
So, I moved home. Think I'm crazy? Yeah, me too. Trust me, it's not going to be easy. But in order to finish my Master's in a year (I've been working on it for about a year and a half at Liberty Theological Seminary online- it's a Master's in Religion and Worship Studies) and get more experience within ministry, moving home was where I've been led. I'm now a full time student and an intern at Emmanuel Christian Church helping within the worship and youth ministries.
If you think about this, please pray for me. Over the last few days I have been quite overwhelmed leaving all of my friends in Pittsburgh, still being so far away from the Columbus crew and Evan, and not quite feeling 'settled' here in supposedly the safest place in my life. I haven't lived here in 6 years... I'm a different person than I was 6 years ago and God, I am confident, will continue healing and refining me through the coming year as well.
I have been redoing the bedroom upstairs that belongs to Abbey and I! It's kind of fun to have a project (and yes Bethy, your socks are on their way! One of them is completely done... impressive, eh?) and good for me to make that space different than it was when it was first done in '92. I took down all the wall paper and will finish up the painting today, hopefully.

As far as Christams goes- it was pretty sobering as Marina was in an auto accident (no one was hurt, but the car was totalled) and that brought an obvious attitude of thankfulness to the family. It was great to be with everyone and have the baby around! The New Year was great as Evan was in town for two whole weeks!!! It was amazing to see him. We realized that we had only seen each other 3 days in 18 weeks. It'll be another 10 weeks until I see him again. But God is good and is strengthening us each day. We know that He is the One getting us through this time of being apart.
Here are a few pictures from Christmastime.

The whole fam!

My Evan and me!