Christmas Letter 2025

Well, it's not springtime yet, so this is not the latest I've ever posted our Christmas letter:)

If you didn't get our Christmas card, here's a chance to catch up on the last year even though the new one is already full steam ahead with an exciting year on the horizon. Enjoy the update!

Dear Family & Friends,                                                                                                                            December 2025

Engage. When our pastor started 2025 in January, he asked us to seek a word from the Lord for the year ahead, and this was the word I heard in my heart. It’s the word I’ve filtered many decisions through this year, and the Lord has not failed to show up every time I chose to engage.

Engage has many meanings, but for me, it meant to choose to put myself actively in gear rather than auto-pilot, to take a step forward despite the apparent obstacles, to take a risk rather than play it safe. As I look back over the year, I see where the choice to engage meant new growth in many different areas of life for both myself and my family.

Savannah turned 18 in October. This year she fully engaged and continues to engage with the tough decisions that come with adulthood. She chose to play her last season of club volleyball in the spring where she led her team well as both setter and captain. In lieu of volleyball, she chose to invest more time at church, joining the student leadership team. She fully engaged with college applications and was accepted into all her top choices: Samford University, Berry College, and University of North Georgia. She prayerfully awaits financial ai`     `d and scholarship offers before deciding, but I am impressed by her perseverance to do what needs to be done to continue moving the process forward. In the meantime, her senior year course load consists of taking three dual enrollment college courses and working as a team lead for yearbook all while holding down two jobs and saving diligently to pay for her new car. I know she spends time in the Word seeking the Lord and trusting Him for the guidance she needs to make all these new and often difficult decisions. She shines, and it makes my heart soar to watch her begin to spread her wings. She’s ready to launch, and she’s going to do exceptional things.

Weston turned 16 in August, and I’ve seen the shift from boy to young man wash over him this year. In February, he started varsity as a freshman for the high school soccer team, enjoying a season that took them to the region playoffs. During club soccer season last year, he engaged in extra work attending extra practices to make a higher-level team this year where he now leads as the team captain. I’ve watched him learn what it looks like to lead, the highs and lows, and he’s a better young man for it. With Georgia Tech as his goal, he began a higher-level rigor of courses his sophomore year, and I’ve watched him fully engage, taking responsibility, putting the work in, owning his hangups and mistakes, staying determined to excel and perform at a high level academically. Most importantly, I’ve watched him come home and engage with the Lord in his quiet time after school every day, and this might be the most impressive factor to his transition to manhood—taking personal responsibility for his own relationship with the Lord. He is a quiet force to be reckoned with, and the Lord is going to use Him in mighty ways.

 

Joey engaged this year with new work in the international realm of Chick-fil-A all while doing his day job in financial services. His ability to navigate hard conversations never ceases to amaze me, but more impressively is how he’s chosen to engage in the pursuit of our marriage and the pursuit of leading his young adult children. Devotions with Dad, family meeting discussions, marriage counseling just for the sake of getting better—he engages across all areas of our family, leading well, setting a high standard for our children to follow. He sees me and values our relationship above all else other than his relationship with the Lord. We are fully aware of the empty nest years knocking on our door, and we are making plans to open that door with authority in a few years and march right through it, hand in hand, come what may, and embark on the next journey of our marriage, fully engaged together.

But the knocking of those years on that door is not lost on this Mama-heart. When your youngest starts driving themselves to all the things, the Mama-world tilts at an odd angle and begins to spin in a way I’m still not sure I enjoy. I both celebrate the godly growth and maturity of my children and silently cry for the season of childhood innocence that has passed—pretty much on a daily basis. I am deeply grateful for the meaningful part-time work the Lord has provided for me as the Admissions Manager for Amber Grace Community (ambergrace.com). This work challenges me to engage in self-growth instead of self-pity, tackling new concepts and skills instead of wallowing in what ifs, worries, and concerns for the future of my changing family. When I want to shy away from difficult or awkward conversations and fade into the background of my own life, the Lord whispers gently, “Engage,” and in obedience, I stumble awkwardly through hard things only to watch Him come alongside me, fully supporting, fully showing up where I am lacking. Where I am not enough, Jesus always is.

He has not failed to show up once. Prompting me to lead Bible studies for women in my home weekly, I watch the Holy Spirit join us and move mightily and gently every week. When I feel like I’m completely failing at connecting with my kids in their new young adult worlds, the Lord calls me to engage with Him in prayer for them, and somehow, no matter what happens next, I’m at peace knowing the Lord is connecting with my kids when I can’t.

It’s not lost on me why marriages at this stage of life tend to end. If you don’t choose to engage purposefully in continuing to build the relationship with the best friend you married, it’s tempting to believe the lie that going your separate ways after the kids are gone will be easier, especially when most likely you have each developed your own interests and circles of friends at this stage of life. I encourage every couple reading this, choose today to engage with your spouse, preferably on a weekly date night of some format. Exactly like a relationship with the Lord, marriage requires purposeful, intentional connection, and those connections are a choice.

I’m grateful my Jesus chooses to engage in a relationship with me, my husband, my kids, and every one of His children on a moment-by-moment basis. He is always present, always there, waiting like a Gentleman to be included in the moments of your life. Christmas is a celebration of His engagement with His children, His pursuit of relationship with humanity to make a personal relationship with Him possible. To fill the God-shaped hole in each of our souls that sin carved, God sent His only Son to live a human life, fully God and yet also fully man, to become the perfect sacrifice for the atonement of our sin, an atonement imperfect humanity had no hope of ever attaining for themselves. Jesus is Hope. He is the Resurrection and the Life that empowers His children, His true followers, to live a new life in Christ, through Christ, with Christ. With God and God with us. Emmanuel. Never alone. Always connected to Love, Power, Joy, Peace, Truth—all the deepest desires of your heart and soul—Jesus is the answer.

Praying this Christmas season, you choose to engage in a new way with the God of the Universe who humbled Himself to become His creation in the form of a baby only to die in payment for your sins all so you could spend eternity in His presence, in relationship with Love Itself. But the greatest gift of all may be how He chooses to show up today, in the midst of my sin, in the midst of my screwed up thinking and choices—He still shows up. For those who believe in and follow His Son, who confess their sins and claim Jesus as Lord, He forgives and He shows up. How can you engage anew today with the God who is constantly knocking on the door of your heart, asking for engagement in your own life?

May you receive a fresh blessing as you choose to engage with Jesus this Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

	Joey, Jennifer, Savannah, & Weston Durham

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man,

He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” Philippians 2:5-8