The Baby Makes it Simple...

Last Friday night around 115 women ate a beautiful dinner together, we listened to an amazingly talented high school girl play the piano, and I spoke about Christmas.

To be honest it was a very unique experience because it was the first time I had spoken in this way.

I loved it.

I spent a lot of time beforehand praying that God would use my body, use my words, and that He would touch the hearts of the women sitting listening to me... It was interesting preparing for what I was going to talk about because the women ranged from 16-90, most attended our church, but not all of them, and I did not know the majority of them.. Although most of them know who I am.

When I was trying to come up with my topic I talked with my dad, -- My never ending supply of ideas and resources haha -- and we came up with a fantastic illustration using my brothers... another endless supply of funny stories.

My brothers have this pretty funny tradition for Christmas.. They make each others gift the most difficult thing to open ever, and they only using the tools included to open the gift. There are times that the gift takes almost an hour to open! One year (pictures included) there was this paper machete/plumbers glue thing that made the entire house smell disgusting.. Come to find out, once all was said and done and torn open, inside was gross dirty socks... All the while, there was a fake bottom with a beautifully wrapped nice gift. Had my little brother noticed the fake bottom he could have avoided opening the disgusting dirty socks...

When I talked to the ladies on Friday night, I explained this whole tradition, this particular experience, and the correlation it has to Christmas, Christ, and Christianity as a whole.

We take a beautiful gift, and tell others "this is Christ, this is Christmas.. open the gift".. and once they do, they find this gross, disgusting, smelly... 'gift' full of dirty socks.

Who would want that 'gift'?!

Truly, Christmas is about this beautiful baby that was sent to us as a gift.. and, it is as simple as that. This baby, that was small, cute, and smelled like a baby, was sent to us to die because God loves us. Yet, somehow, we turn this gift into dirty socks when presenting it to others. We make Christmas, Christ, and Christianity into this gross thing it was never meant to be.

This beautiful baby came to love us, to die for us, and right away this fact was made clear when Myrrh was given as one of the first gifts to this baby.. You see, Myrrh is used in burials. So, this beautiful baby, who we celebrate on Christmas was born to die from the beginning.

He did not come for who you SHOULD be, but because He loves who you are, and wants to meet you exactly where you are.

He wants to save you because He loves you right now.

It is literally that simple, and yet we make it all into this thing that it is not. We stress ourselves out during Christmas, get impatient standing in line for presents people do not actually need, we spend money we don't need to, and head to parties we feel obligated to go to because we make Christmas this thing it was never meant to be. It was meant to be a celebration of this beautiful baby who loves you...

He. Loves. You. -- As you are, right now; that is the beautiful gift.

This baby; Christ, He makes Christmas and Christianity simple. Let it stay that way.

I love Christmas...

Christmas is my favorite holiday. I know it sounds cliche, but seriously, I love Christmas... Although, I pretty much hate Christmas music. Weird, I know. Thankfully I have ONE song this year I love... Michael Buble's All I Want for Christmas is You, it is more soulful than the rest, so it sounds different, which I love.

Anyway, I love the thought, preparation, love, and care that goes into this holiday. I love that we are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

Seriously, I spend hours wrapping my gifts, I send care packages, but mostly I enjoy doing what I can to make Christmas special.

This is a care package sent to a deployed friend and his platoon.. Everyone should get Christmas.

 

This is my first Christmas tree that I have gotten, put up, and decorated on my own... I feel like a for real adult now!

Vormund is learning to leave it... Although, he may have ingested sparkles this morning before I could fish out the plastic sparkle covered bulb from his mouth..

It will be interesting to see how Vormund does when the presents start getting placed under the tree... haha oh boy.

 Can you pick out the cheeser in this image? haha

Christmas with my family is wonderful.. it is this perfect day that pauses the world. We hang out, laugh, snuggle, watch movies, read books, play games, eat tons of food, and spend much needed time relaxing. Christmas is my favorite day of the year.

Gaining Perspective...

This post is a little different.

These are pictures of various pages from a Christmas gift I got in '09 from one of my best friends. She wrote different things on each page with various styles and patterns throughout the entire little book.

I love this still, and thought I would share a few things...

Christmas 2011...

Christmas at home was wonderful.. I got to snuggle with my three favorite midget people.. I got sooo many hugs, laughed so much, and got to have some really great conversations with so many people I love about topics I am passionate about.

So, here are a few highlights from my Christmas time at home 2011 style...

Three little munchkin faces light up my life unlike anything else in the entire world.

My sister and I had a FANTASTIC talk about God, Africa, our worldviews, what does it look like or mean to judge others, and how loving others as a way of life affects everything and is really challenging.. It was a fantastic conversation :)

I got to talk with my mom and sister about life.. just things going on, what I am thinking, things that I working through or struggling with.. Loved it.

I got to see a dear beautiful friend and my cousin and we had the chance to talk for hours over coffee (or hot chocolate) about relationships, the good, the bad, the ugly... and the confusing...

We played a hysterical game of pictionary/telephone (Scribblish) and we all just laughed at each other and the ridiculousness that people would interpret or draw... It was a lot of fun.

I loved getting the chance to talk with my mom, brother, sister in law, and sister about things that our family has been through and hearing each of our perspectives on any given situation. It was really neat to hear about the different things.. Especially since I spent most of that conversation with my niece cuddled in my lap.

We watched several moves (all of which I have seen before) but I got to cuddle with my sister and make comments throughout the movies... While my youngest nephew would come, bring his dart gun, and "fix it" so he could go shoot someone over.. and over.. and over..

At the Christmas Eve get together I got to talk and give special undivided (ok mostly undivided) attention to each family member that I really do not get to see much.

I got to spend most of one of the days with my absolute longest friend in the entire world to celebrate her birthday, and we just had fun talking and catching up.

And then, of course, there is the epic family Christmas present opening marathon that my family loves so much.

It was a great break, it was so nice to be home and see everyone. Love. My. Family.

Personal Christmas Traditions...

I have a method to the way I Christmas shop, it tends to be one of the last weekends before Christmas, I have a list for all 11 family members to help guide me and keep me from getting distracted or forgetting anyone (terrible.. but there's a lot of them!). I prefer to be shopping exclusively for Christmas, I do not like having other things on my list because it just ends up distracting me.. And finally, I always would rather go by myself, this allows me to get in and out or mosey as long as I want to at each store. I love it because I end up spending the entire day thinking about my family, what Christmas will be like, the possible reactions they will have, the gifts they will love or react to the most, the laughter that will go with the explinations as to why I bought something or the story behind the wrapping... Then, I get really excited to wrap all the gifts and make them look perfect.

I also prefer to go by myself because I get less impatient by all the people rushing to get in lines and the last of whatevers to get the best deals... I find my blood pressure is always lower when I am by myself, and I have the chance to smile and say excuse me over and over... It is Christmas after all, why be a jerk about anything?

Once I have everything bought, I love to take an evening to wrap everything at once.. It usually takes me several hours because I decorate each gift making it its own special brand of perfect. I tend to have themes, sometimes they are clearly Christmas, other times they are just festive, and still other times they resemble modern decoration more than anything else. Everything tends to match, and, while I am sure my family appreciates my effort, the reality is I enjoy spending the couple hours to do this more than I think any of them like getting perfectly wrapped gifts. For me the presentation and the "wow, that looks perfect" is part of the excitement of opening all the gifts..

Not to mention, with the size our family is quickly growing to it tends to look like our Christmas tree had a volcanic eruption of gifts and they have flowed beyond the base of the tree like lava... haha The gifts to and from everyone literally take up half the living room.

Merry Christmas! May you find the reason for the joy of this season, and the truth about the birth of a precious baby that we celebrate.

My Joy in Christmas

I seriously have never been able to figure out how people don't like Christmas.. I mean what's not to like?!

I mean think about it.. This is when God SHOWED us that not only did He love us enough to create us, give us this amazingly beautiful world, and each other.. and not only does He desire for us to truly LOVE Him in return.. So, He has all that... and then He gives us the most important thing to Him!!... In the form of an adorable little baby boy :)

Then, on top of that amazing wonderful reason to be happy and excited.. we have the celebration of all of that! I mean don't get me wrong, sometimes family get togethers with extended family can be much close to world war III.. but I love them still. One of my favorite things is to just sit and watch them, laugh at their antics.. to truly take a minute to cherish and BE in the moment. I know it won't last forever and I love when my family is simply being my family :)

And, I have gone to probably 12 Christmas parties this year between work related ones and ones my friends have put together.. and I've loved every single one of them. :)

AND THEN.. as if all that wasn't enough to love Christmas.. Christmas day is just wonderful!... My family has such a great time just interacting and laughing and giving each other gifts. It's so much fun :) We laugh and exchange hugs, open serious gifts, joke around, we get each other things we've been needing or wanting for a long time.. Then, we eat good food and just hang out ALL day playing :)

It's great. It's why I drove 15 hours in terrible weather through the night.