Holiday Thoughts...

We've had a fun time preparing for and enjoying the Christmas season this year.  Last year, you might recall, Sean was very sick with typhoid.  Ugh.  But this year, we're all healthy! What we missed out on last year, we are more than making up for this year!  

We've enjoyed making gingerbread and sugar cookies and decorating them.  (Okay, I do not love baking or decorating cookies - what a mess!  We do this once a year, if at all, and only because the girls beg me to!)

Anyway, I'm glad I powered through my sour feelings for cookie messes because the girls had a blast! (And Sean, bless his heart, helped me clean up afterward.)

Paige wound up with food coloring all over her face - she was a mess before we even started actually decorating the cookies!  Love her!

For the past several months, I have been a music teacher - something I never would have imagined myself doing.  My friend and I traded off our kids two days a week.  She taught them art while I taught them how to play recorders.  To my very great surprise, the kids did an awesome job learning how to play the recorders in spite of the fact this was my first time ever teaching such a thing.  In the process, I also got to learn how to play recorder (again, 5th grade was a long time ago).  It was so much fun!  Anyway, I decided the best way to showcase my students' new-found talents would be to have our very own little Christmas Concert for our MAF team.  We went all out with actual programs to hand out to guests and fancy clothes and yummy "refreshments" after the program.  Our kids don't get to participate in this kind of stuff very often, so this was fun to make a big deal of for them.  They all did great, despite their nerves, and we in the audience (all 6 of us) were happy to cheer them on!

Part of the fun of the Concert was getting to dress up.  The girls got new Christmas dresses and jewelry, too!  I fixed their hair in fancy hair-do's and even let them wear just a touch of makeup.  Couldn't get over how beautiful they each looked.  (Sorry for the iPhone pictures, Sean forgot his camera at work.)

As Christmas Day fast approaches, I am utterly in awe of God - of the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, and what that really means to me and to all of us.  Sometimes I get caught up in so much other stuff that I forget the simple truth that it's all about Jesus.  It's pretty simple, really, but we like to make things more complicated.  We like rules.  We like things to at least look good on the outside, even if the reality is slightly less rosy.  We think we have to be a certain way in order for Him to accept us, but He says, "Come as you are."  To think that the Creator of the Universe humbled Himself enough to be born in a barn just because He couldn't stand to be separated from me - a totally selfish, often sinful, messed up individual.  I don't get it.  I can't explain it. We don't deserve Him.  Yet He loves us anyway.  Madly.  And all we have to do is accept that love?!  

Don't forget to pause this Christmas - in the midst of cookie messes and Christmas programs - to really remember the Reason for the Season.  Jesus!  Our Messiah!  The One who loves us even with our dirty faces and the messes we make.  Let's be in awe of the Gift that Trumps All Gifts.  Let's let Him love us.