december 4th

In the Advent Calendar today:

"Read today's Advent Devotion online and then make packages of the dog treats to deliver to our neighbor-pups."

The kids spent the night with their grandparents last night, so they did not open the calendar until they got home this evening. It was a good thing, too, because I had to change it.

We have been having car problems. Not just with one car, but both. This meant I was at home all day and would not be able to take them on the errand required for the activity I originally planned behind door #4. We were only able to make the dog treats yesterday, not deliver them (they were supposed to sit out overnight), so I decided to make delivery today's advent mission.

It is amazing how much you can do when you are stuck at home. At first, I was only frustrated with what I would not be able to do, including run by the store. It ended up to be such a gift, to sit at home and see all I already have. I found dinner ingredients behind some ice cream in the freezer. The gift tags to finish wrapping presents were made from index cards and old ribbon instead of the cute ones I planned on getting from target. And the mission today was simply to walk outside our front door share the gifts we had already finished that were setting on our kitchen counter .

The scripture in the devotion today begins,

"Comfort, O Comfort my people, says your God..." (Isaiah 40:1)

Comfort.

How can we experience it deeply?

How can we offer it genuinely and generously?

Sit. Still. Breathe. Look around at what you have. From the precise spot you are in this very moment. You don't have to drive anywhere to find it. You don't have to accomplish anything to get it. Right here is the only place Comfort ever promises to be.

Comfort, O Comfort.

I felt it today...

as I scrounged around for dinner ingredients,

as I hung the last ornament,

as I yelled at my kids to stop fighting over the computer,

as we tried to figure out our car situation,

as I listened to my daughter read the devotion to our family,

as I bickered with my husband,

as I sit here now, with everyone else in bed

and only the christmas lights to keep me company.

Comfort, O Comfort...to you my friends, right where you are.

december 3rd

In the Advent Calendar today:

"Today, after reading the Advent Meditation

Let's show some love to our neighbor dogs!

We will make homemade dog treats-apple cinnamon."

Both kids loved today's mission. They were so excited to dig in and cook up these treats. We used the last apple in our fruit bowl in this recipe. While my daughter was chopping it up, I asked the kids about the devotion today. My son re-read it to us. The advent devotion today talks about loving the church the way God loves us.

I asked them if they knew what a church is?

My daughter said, "It is a place where people gather to worship."

Then I said, "Who is the church?"

She said, "All the people who gather to worship."

I said, "So when we love others, we are actually worshiping God. Actually, when we honor anything in creation we worshiping God, even the dogs in our neighborhood."

She took in a deep breath and said, "O my gosh, Mom! Do you know what I just realized? I am worshipping God all of the time."

I said, "I can't believe we are putting a juicy Honey Crisp Apple in these dog treats."

Avery said, "Mom, we are worshipping GOD. Don't you think He deserves a delicious apple?"

Watch and wait. When I am looking, I can see that the real gifts of Christmas always come at the perfect time.

december 2nd

In the Advent Calendar today:

"Read today's Advent Devotion online and then look up Acts 20:35 in the Bible.

~Why do you think the Bible says it is better to give then receive?

~Do you really believe that is true?"

The devotion today read that because of God's grace,

we are not lacking anything while we wait (1 Cor. 1:3-7).

We partially decorated our Christmas tree. And then it was time to go to bed. I looked at the tree this morning and thought, there's another thing I need to finish before I can set back and enjoy the holidays. I think it is my favorite Christmas tree we have ever had. It is tall and proud, well-lit and quite unaffected by it's spaces without ornaments. The devotion today reminds me that just because something is unfinished, it doesn't mean that it is incomplete.

So far, the theme of this time in Advent is waiting and giving. When we make a choice to give while we sit in the space between wanting and getting, we realize what we have. We notice the completeness of God's grace. We notice the spaces in other people's lives. We notice that we are not alone on this journey of waiting. There is comfort and companionship here.

My 12 year old had school this morning, my 10 year old did not. My son woke up my daughter 3 hours before her preferred waking time so that they could open the advent calendar together. I don't yet know what she thought of today (other than she is still a little ticked for not getting tiny treats in there) because she quickly returned to her snug bed. But when I asked him about the message today, he said it was about giving being better than getting.

He said, "It really is better because it just feels so good when someone likes what you got for them. But, I am a kid so it is hard for me to really BELIEVE that."

It's not just a kid thing thing, though. Over the years I have waited for many things, believing that only when I had them, I could be complete: the new house, the healthy baby, the parent to make it through surgery okay, the bank to not overdraft, the house to be clean, the book to be published, the debt to be paid off...

What better lesson to teach my children then that life is about waiting, about not always having all of our expectations fulfilled? That in the space of expectation, the lack of everything we want, grace is found.

You have no idea how much I am dying to go buy a bunch of tiny things for my daughter today. I am questioning my own plan. But I will wait in the discomfort of the incompletion (as I sip my coffee and relish the incompleteness of my Christmas tree) and trust that the gift of grace will find it's way in my home.

december 1st

Inside the Advent Calendar today:

"Have you ever wondered why this is called an advent calendar?

(Your latin class will help you figure it out and so will Wikipedia :)

Light a candle and read today's advent message

using the Devotional Link in our bookmark bar."

The scripture was Mark 13:35-37.

It was about keeping awake.

I asked the kids what they thought that meant. Did it mean Jesus doesn't want us to sleep? They thought He was saying to stay awake so you don't miss Him.

I like that. Not missing out on sleep, of course. But staying aware, above the stress and shopping lists, the decorating and the cooking, so that I don't miss the presence of God working in and through my world.

When my son was telling my husband about what we read, he said, "We read about staying awake to God and not letting ourselves be distracted by commercialism." (huh.)

My daughter said, "So are we going to get any candy today? Any presents?"

I said, "You did get a present."

And I mean it. It is always hard to do to the thing for my kids that may not be the next dream come true moment for them. But their lives are pretty dreamy. An opportunity to teach my children about the things nearest and dearest to my heart is a gift of christmas that I can easily forget to share with them when I am busy trying to make all their Christmas morning wishes come true.

a sacred December

It's hard to find tiny things to fit in our Advent Calendar. And, although I love the idea of little treasures to count down until Christmas, along with Happy the Elf hiding cleverly each day, and the chocolate calendar count down, and the lego calendar, and the 3 adorable Playmobil calendars, well...it just becomes too much.

In years past, we have had candy, christmas book titles, little stamps, little ornaments, notes that led them to different pre-christmas presents like luggage for a trip or pajamas.

This Christmas my kids are 10 and 12 years old. I decided this was a good year to use the Advent Calendar to help us as a family find the sacred in this holiday. As I last posted, it is a struggle for me to not lose myself, my patience, my joy in this season of expectation.

One thing we will be doing is visiting this website each morning: followingthestar.

I will post each day what the kid's find in the advent calendar and how it all works out.

Great Expectations

The word of the day:

expectation, noun.

1. the act of expecting or state of being expected; anticipation.

Ex. the expectation of a good harvest.

(SYN) hope.

2. something expected or looked forward to.

expr. expectations, good reasons for expecting something; prospects.

Ex. He has expectations of money from a rich uncle.

Here I am, going along in my little world of growth and grace, and then SLAM-right into the great wall of expectations. All of my heart's freedom, strength, and anticipation turn on me and suddenly, I am the one people are looking to with expectations. This is my 13th year of playing Santa and being Christmas Morning Mama. I feel like the only way to get through it is to hold my breath, click on one more link that drains my credit card, and dream of January.

But, I absolutely cannot stand any season of my life to go to waste. How can I access peace of mind while rushing through department stores with "Peace on earth. Good will to men" playing in the background? If there is any truth I know, it is that true love, joy, peace, patience, etc. have no power at all if they are delicately balanced on my circumstances.

Giving and receiving gifts has become an obligation for me. Without all of the materialism and commercialism (and probably some more isms I don't even know about), finding a present that is a tiny representation of how I feel about someone is a precious opportunity. Opening my heart to receive what someone has thoughtfully chosen for me with graciousness is a lesson. To give and receive, not from a place of meeting expectations, but of sharing the smallest piece of God's goodness, is just about the most appealing thing I could be doing with my life right now.

So, Christmas, I've got something to say to you:

You will not steal my joy, you cannot have my peace. I will not even let you try my patience.

For the rest of these December days, I will be open to discovering and sharing the real gifts I have been given, and my heart and my hands will be open to receiving them.

(I wrote this 4 years ago on My Messy Sanctuary, but it is my Christmas devotion every year.)

Manic Monday: do you have time for a story?

Do you have time for a story?

My amazing friend asked me this question when I dropped by her house for just a few minutes yesterday morning. Of course, I did not really have the time. I made the time. Because Christina's stories are always worth the time.

Her question made me think how many days I rush through, even the really fun fabulous days of summer, without paying attention to the story it is telling me.

Other days, the story that needs to be told will not wait for me to finish writing my grocery list. It won't even wait for me to get dressed for the day. It demands to be told RIGHT NOW.

This is my first Manic Monday in many many weeks. Today was the day I was going to finally get to just a few things on my Manic list. I was on my back porch, drinking my coffee, still in my jammies, relishing one of the last long mornings of the season, when my daughter ran out to tell me that she needed my help. Her hamster, Lily, was missing.

Please note the picture above. See how there is a place for my daughter to play? An area of uncovered carpet. No. That space was not there this morning. Not a smidge of carpet in sight. Just a lot of dolls, stuffed animals, clothes, and tiny treasures for a cute chubby orange hamster to hide and crawl over and under for hours upon hours.

My son and I ran upstairs to help Avery. We locked ourselves in the bedroom, hoping to trap Lily in one space. Being the mother of the year that I am, I started to solve this problem by blaming my daughter for her messy room and her desire to have a hamster in the first place. Thankfully, I remembered my reading from More Language of Letting Go yesterday. Melody Beattie said that when we have problems, we often spend our energy on blaming ourselves and others for those problems instead of using the energy we have to solve the problem. (Thanks, Melody!) Because I was mad.

We all decided to work together to solve this problem. Which meant we had to clean up that room. We stayed focused, got all those toys off the floor. Once in a while we spied Lily's adorable face and all three of us humans, on our hands and knees, chased her all around the room. We cautiously moved furniture as not to crush that little beast. We tried to create barricades. She was unstoppable. Uncatchable.

After an hour and a half, we just had to leave the room. Avery thought to put Lily's cage on the floor and put some food all around it. With a hope and a prayer, we closed the door and went to Sam's to get some groceries.

The entire day, I had to live with the fact that there was a hamster running free in my house and there was nothing I could do but wait...wait for it to go back to it's house, wait for it to run into bed with me, wait for it to be dead in the toilet.

After HOURS of comforting a little girl who at 10 already suffers from all of the fear, pain and regret of a mom who failed her little one, I finally heard a glimmer of hope in Avery's voice as she called down to that she heard a noise in the back of her closet.

We tiptoed into her room, slowly and carefully pulling everything out of there. That little critter is so fast and squrimy. We could not catch her...but look where she caught herself:

Inside the candy claw machine. Seriously the best place anyone could be!

She threw quite a fit while we got her back into her actually cage, which included peeing all over me. She initially escaped because she has figured out how to use her little body to push up the side of the cage. We have now duct taped her cage closed. It is all so exhausting.

I really wanted to write a status update about our adventures with Lily today. But I didn't want to make my story as few words as possible. Would I have liked this story to fit into 140 charters or less? Yes. Yes, I would. But real stories aren't head lines. They are filled with blame and frustration, thrills and fears. They take hours and days and weeks and years to tell themselves. I want to make time for the stories my life has to tell.

And I want to hear your's too.