christmas is overrated

Okay, hear me out: "Christ"mas is not overrated - christmas is overrated. I have decided that as a relational follower of Jesus Christ (as opposed to a religious follower) I get jipped at Christmas. The whole idea behind Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Christ. I do that most of the year through. I will not be so vain as to say I am thankful for His birth daily; however, I do verbally recognize and offer my thanksgiving for the birth of Christ often. As I have grown older in my role of motherhood, Mary's position and predicament burden my mind often. I love Christmas. I love that "ordinary" radio stations play music written about the birth of Christ. I love the silly ones and the meaniningful ones. I heard John 3:16 being quoted on 101.5! I love the lights and decorations. I love buying and giving gifts. I love trying to study a person and listen to find out little things that would show them I care. I love adopting a family - getting my children excited about giving something they often take for granted. I love sending and receiving Christmas cards to hang on my wall. I love Christmas. However, here is the part where I feel jipped; it takes me a LONG time to get all of these things done so that I can just sit and ponder, sit and marvel, sit and wonder. In fact, it takes me so long that by the time I am ready - all the world has stopped. The music is gone, the lights are out, trees down, gifts returned - no one cares about the good-will of others. The warm - fuzzy feeling is gone. Why? - is what I want to scream! Okay, I understand the music - (although I have to confess every now and again I slip that Christmas CD in just for a pick-me-up), I also understand the decorations and lights. As for gifts - people all around us still love gifts - I am not talking Xbox type gifts - a call to see how they are doing, taking an unused cart, speaking kindly to the wal-mart cashier, etc. And the cards - how long has it been since just sending a real card to someone you care about - a card you have to think about purchasing (or hand designing) and you have to actually go to a post office to mail it. And that adoptive family - they don't just have needs at Christmas. The family we helped out this year is a single mother of three young children. She has a full-time job, manages her money carefully, takes all of her responsibilities seriously yet she cannot pay her bills each month. Yes, this girl needs more financial income but she also needs prayer, an occasional free babysitter, a mentor. But I can't do those things - Christmas is over. According to the world, it abruptly stopped December 25 at midnight. The Cinderella world officially turned back into a pumpkin. I sure am glad I celebrate "Christ"mas and not christmas or I would officially be depressed.

Divorce

Divorce is a topic that has been bugging me lately. Recently, through facebook, I discovered an old friend who married his childhood sweetheart. I had even seen them and their two cute little boys in my hometown a few years ago. Well, imagine my surprise when I looked through this "friend's" pictures that the caption that read my heart, my life, my best friend, my wife was not the same girl I knew. I was terribly sad and heartbroken for them. Now, they are not really my "friends" and I know nothing about their life, their circumstances, nothing. However, I could not imagine watching my husband be married to another woman. I could not imagine passing him in the grocery store knowing he once knew every intimate detail about me.
This past Sunday, our lesson was on the Proverbs 31 woman. I teach 6th grade girls. We were discussing choices; choices in choosing our friends, choices in choosing our romantic interests; choices in who/what we want to be. We were discussing how in the passage King Lemuel's father had to have seen some of these qualities in his "girlfriend" before she became his wife and the mother of his children. Many of them started telling me the courtship of their mother and father. There was one girl who told of her parents courtship like she was watching a fairytale movie. Then she added, they were married 12 years. My mom got engaged to someone else last weekend. Poof, Cinderella gone Nightmare.
I know divorce happens. My parent's got divorced when I was 2. Ryan's parents divorced after 26 years. But why? Why is happily ever after so difficult? I was discussing this with my children, who have friends that are currently being torn through a terrible he said/she said battle of their parents. After a few moments Owen replied, "it's all Eve's fault." He hit the nail on the head. It is all about sin. Satan would love nothing more than to rip our families to shreds, to shatter our trust in other people, to destroy our faith. Satan can make "the grass on the other side" look so tempting. Marriage takes selflessness, sacrifice, determination, and hard work. Everyone wants to live "happily ever after." I guess the truth is in how you define "happier." If it's okay, I prefer to stay "happy, happier, happiest" with the one I've got! :)

Little gifts

I was going to show pictures of the kids at their Black belt graduation; but I am not. I was going to show you pictures of my beautiful Thanksgiving table; but I am not. I was going to tell you how overwhelmed I feel by my schedule, my calendar, my family, my Christmas-to-do lists; but I am not. Instead, I am going to tell you of a wonderful gift I received. Due to all the things above, I have not been sleeping well and for some reason, my filing cabinet has been bugging me. It is way too full of stuff I no longer need. So, I have been going through folder by folder getting rid of stuff I no longer need or duplicate pages. Every year when each of my children were in Kindergarten, we put up a huge turkey, cut out a million feathers and mailed them to friends and family of that child's choice with directions for them to write what they are thankful for and for them to mail it back to us. We get those feathers in the mail and tape them to our turkey. Since last year was my last Kindergarten turkey, I decided it would be fun to take the picture of every one's turkey and those feathers and put them in a scrap book. It is very cool to see how people's blessings changed from Emily to Ian. Well, I couldn't find Owen's feathers. I had a very distinct flash-back to sitting on the garage floor at my old house with the file folder of feathers in my hand. I put them in the trash, I took them out of the trash. When I couldn't find them, I assumed I must have left them in the trash. You see, I do not like junk. I am a junk a phobic. However, I am a sap for nostalgia. I was crushed that I let my state of overwhelmed with junk and a small house, persuade me throw out these precious feathers. I am sure the conversation went something like this: "I might want to do something with these one of these days" Only to which I would answer myself "Yeah, right, you are never going to do anything but let this pile up into more and more junk. Besides, you probably threw Emily's away too." Well, a few nights ago, I was going through my December folder and purging the things I no longer wanted. And there, in the December folder in a smaller folder labeled "foil names" were Owen's feathers. I was so glad to see them. You would have thought it would have been some long lost relative. I know this sounds crazy but I could have cried. I felt pure joy and relief at having these feathers in my hands. I didn't ponder (too long) or beat myself up as to why they were in the wrong folder under the wrong name and I didn't have anyone to tell (because they were all asleep) and even if they were up they would not have the same appreciation for these feathers that I have mourned over for the past 5 years. I would like to say I immediately made my scrapbook - I didn't. However, I did get out all 4 of our feather folders and read them and prayed over them and put them all together in ONE folder with each folder labeled correctly. I hope and pray that I never stop rejoicing and praising Him for the small, simple, pleasures of life He bestows upon me; and that I never come to the point where I don't recognize that they are from Him.