Keeping Christmas: Parties

 

Blessed by the gathering of my heathy family and friends

Mocking my brother's ugly sweater festive attire

Requiring dinner guests to "sing for your supper" and enjoying the sound of united voices singing grace

Bolstered by the loving support of my Soul Sisters

Old friends

New friends

Rocking a friend's hand-me-down footie pajamas

We went to see Star Wars for the kids' birthdays.

It was more of a trip down memory lane for us than them, I think.

One of our young guests declared that going to hang out with us was one of her holidays traditions. This made me smile. A girl after my memory capturing heart.

Playing a board game around the kitchen table on New Year's is all the nightlife we need.

 

 

 

Keeping Christmas December 8-14

 

A home full of family and friends. Happiness that it's warm enough for my summer gardenias to serve as Christmas color. (They didn't look so good in August.)

December 8: Hosting a Christmas tea for Biblestudy ladies. Enjoying their company and sharing opinions.

Favorite eggnog, rationed in tiny portions

Mom taught the girls how to sew an apron on a sleepover. They put them to good use baking and sharing.

Enjoying watching my junior chefs make their own Christmas goodies to take to the many holiday gatherings

Reminding myself again to pull my expectations way down when my advent station isn't received as I intended. The kids just eat all the chocolates ahead of time and don't read the devotionals on their rush out the door to school.

Shaking my head when one hides and hoards her calendar with my quiet time things behind a chair so her siblings won't pillage hers too.

A moment of deep gratitude and joy when people unexpectedly give me a gift, such as members of my Pilates class.

Mystery objects under the tree. Can you guess what this is?

Making ornaments together. Mom and I made these pasta angels when I was a kid, and I wanted to make a batch with our kids too. Having a creative moment is one of my favorite things about the holidays. Decorating our home or for a party. Making something together. Making memories.

 

(Answer: It was a music stand to go along with Mary Jayne's Christmas guitar.)

 

 

Keeping Christmas 2015: December 1-7

For Ally and Ashley and the other two family members who read this blog:

Now that the dust has settled, an update or two.

 

Creating a little Advent-station for the kids to join me in preparing my mind and soul for Christmas. Devotional, Jesse tree, and chocolate calendars.

December 1: Taking a quiet moment early in the morning for the simple pleasure of worship. Reading the words to Christmas carols by our tree, coffee, journal, "Leaves"-scented candles, Pandora soundtracks, fluffy bathrobe before the flurry of December activities begin. Enjoying contemplative Advent devotionals and moments of reflection.

December 2: The family's excitement about getting a puppy. Andy draws up a contract for all the kids to sign concerning her care. We place bets for how long before they start arguing over whose turn it is to take her out on cold winter mornings!

 

December 3: Introducing Della, our Christmas puppy, named for the little triangle (delta) on her head. Andy drove to Tennessee to bring her home to us. Watching The Wiz while we waited for their late-night arrival. Wagging tails (and in her case, entire back sides) of happiness.

December 4: She adores company and gives this plaintive face when I need to wrap presents, cook, or do anything else but play when the kids are in school. I feel puppy guilt.

Puppy bling

December 5: The kids took turns camping out in the garage with her when she began crate training so that she wouldn't be lonely.

 

December 6: Our neighbors and relatives have brought her sweaters, stockings, and gifts...a new concept to us as new pet owners. Frogs and hamsters didn't create quite the stir. The girl across the street acknowledges us now that we are dog people.

 

 

December 7: A moment of "count it all joy anyway" when the real Christmas tree topples and pine sap oozes all over the hardwoods. The sweetness of God that our ornaments didn't get broken in the mess.

 

 

 

 

November

Football games and dates with Dad

Cracker Barrel pancake night

Veteran's Day Tributes

Epic battles fought in the front yard

Teenagers

Girls' retreats

Doctors' visits

SCT rehearsals

 

Magnum Opus

Sometimes in autumn I wake my children early to look at the stars. We stand huddled together admiring the handiwork of the universe, and feeling comfortably small in the greatness around us.

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I have no great work to point to, myself - no book written, no stellar career, no large paycheck to my credit or marqueed accomplishments.

But, I can still be an agent of change in all the small places. I can find contentment in smallness, knowing that little acts of goodness also contribute to a life well-spent in this big universe of ours.

I can still offer the world gestures of attention and affection and be of service.

I can support a child in Ethiopia and write her letters dreaming along with her of her hopes of one day going to university.

I can visit my mom for coffee, and take a friend to lunch for her birthday, and listen to another whose loved one is recently diagnosed with cancer.

I can open my home for a Christmas party and lead a Biblestudy on Wednesdays.

I can invite family over to celebrate my mother-in-law's seventy wonderful years with a simple tea party.

 

 

 

 

I can concede to having my backyard overrun with whooping and hollering children who want nothing more than a raging Nerf battle.

I can drive the carpools and bring the snacks and oversee the management of our household and the five educations in progress.

I can get the groceries and ponder what to do with them and humbly ask advice from better moms who don't feed their kids chili dogs, spaghetti, and tacos.

I can be a soul open to wonder.

I can gaze at a sunrise and relish the cooler autumn temperatures and the way my bare feet feel on the cool pavement.

I can bask in the night sounds of crickets and marvel at the patterns found in flowers.

I can listen to the rain fall.

I can collect words in a journal and wonder if they will ever amount to anything, or if the joy is to be found in the simple act of noticing and savoring.

Sometimes when a magazine from my university shows up in the mail, I have a moment of smallness- not the good, content, all-is-right-with-the-world Anne of Green Gables kind, but the jealous kind. When I scan the list of awards and careers and causes I have a moment when I wonder if I am doing enough, or if the things I am doing count in the black hole of need in the universe. I have this same feeling as presidential debates blare and world concerns are argued. What on earth am I doing?

But when I am quiet and still and sit with this question, I am reassured that my magnum opus is to know God and follow Him however He leads, be it on a platform with a microphone, or hidden in thousands of small ways, and trust that if the assignments seem right to Him, then they are the best ones for me. He is the best judge of what a life well-lived should be. Of what my life should be.

I've recently finished a book by Lysa Terkeurst entitled The Best Yes. In the final chapter she talks about a legacy being built one choice at a time. This has given me perspective. I am not looking for one thing to give me identity, but a life filled with faithful and good choices, one moment at a time. He is my identity. My life will be well-spent for Him.

 

Flooded

We watched in a mixture of awe and horror as the flood waters following hurricane Joaquin approached our house for hours

 

Then we were amazed as the neighborhood dam was breached and the waters eventually flowed away.

The weeks that followed included bottled water, school delays, full responsibility for carpool, frantic searches for travel routes due to washed out roads, traffic jams, and asking The Lord how we could respond.

I found myself introspective and withdrawn in my house, safe and warm, and strangely guilty. I shut off the constant news reports which were making me anxious. I felt flooded with external stimulus and noise and my brain felt numb. I read a book upstairs for six hours during the rains while others in my city were escaping with their lives and children from rooftops. If I had a hole to hide my head in, I probably would have, baffled at my slow-motion reaction to stress.

In contrast, my "command man" was born for such a time as this and plunged into action for days helping his parents carry years of river-ruined possessions to the curb. The company was used as a site to receive cardboard boxes, and loading docks were utilized by the Red Cross.

 

 

Inside, at home, I had the girls bake pumpkin bread muffins for the Samaritan's Purse relief workers that poured into our church in response to the disaster. I bought diapers for the churchwide drive and cleaned out closets to donate sheets and clothes to the school drive. We sent in oatmeal when called for for emergency food packs. I arranged for the older kids to volunteer at their middle school sorting donations. I wrote checks and checked on people, and made calls to get someone help for a tarp on their roof, but it never seemed enough in the black hole of need and devastation around our city. I needed someone to tell me what to do. I needed to get my hands dirty and not just watch from afar.

Thankfully, organizations such as Samaritan's Purse and the Red Cross have organizing willing, yet unskilled volunteers down to a science. They are a well-oiled machine. They can direct people like me who care, but have no idea how to be of useful assistance. When I cry, "Here I am, send me", they can put unskilled labor to use.