Blog
My husband, Ben, and I scaled back our usual Christmas preparations significantly this year. We both love everything about the Christmas season, and in the past have gone all out in gift planning and get-togethers.
What can you learn from your younger self? Have you ever asked yourself questions like how you did something, or why? Maybe you ask yourself how you survived that surprise pregnancy, or that messy breakup, or why you made that one decision that changed your life.
“But I don’t wanna change schools! I love my school!” my son Asher objected as we brought up the idea for the first time. “Why do I need to? I’ll never see my friends again!”
One night recently, I went to sleep with pink eye. The next morning, I woke up grumpy. I couldn’t wear my contacts and had to pull out my ugly fifteen-year-old glasses. Yuck. Then I had to squeeze antibiotic drops in my eyes every four hours. Yuck again.
When I was an unbeliever, I was familiar with some of the more famous Bible stories, such as Noah and the Flood, Moses leading the Israelites in the Exodus, or Abraham and Sarah receiving God’s promise of a son.
The holiday season, in many ways, has been hijacked. Instead of Earth receiving her King, she seems to get stressed out and bent on consumerism. We look forward to this time with nostalgia, and then somewhere in the midst of it all, we realize that we’re worn-out, overcommitted, frantic, and not at all the people we want to be during a meaningful season.
The afternoon sunshine streamed through the family room window while my daughters—then just two and four years old—were playing independently, sitting amidst the many small toys strewn on the carpet all around them. They were each enraptured in their own play, virtually silent; I lounged alongside them, reading quietly.
A line from one of my favorite hymns, “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” has been running through my mind lately: “Morning by morning new mercies I see/All I have needed Thy hand hath provided. . .” I affirm to myself that God provides all that I need, with new mercies every morning.
My only child is about to graduate from high school.These final months have flown by in a flurry of last this-or-that celebrations, college applications, campus visits, and the standard end-of-an-era fanfare.