Now that I am up to 7 {SEVEN!} grandbebes and another due in late March, I am very laissez-faire over their antics. Once perhaps overly cautious, I now tend to live and let live.
Which is why, when I heard Gavin say to Hunter, “Let’s go to the garage and get our tool belts,” not only did I choose not to interfere, I allowed them to borrow my {kitchen drawer} tools for whatever they were up to.
They found lumber and built a balcony on the swing set. No hammered thumbs, no one fell off the balcony onto their heads. All in all, a good day.
Oh, man. I had so much more to share about Christmas 2012
But alas, I didn’t get around to it.
Christmas to me is: baking day and the grandbebes getting their hands and feet into paint for me. It is searching for the gift that isn’t costly, but says in the deepest richest way: I do love you so much, please don’t forget. It is lots of family events and traditional music and seeing friends and easily THE most evangelistic month of my life each year.
Celebrate with great joy BECAUSE you understand!
Really? You can “Go Tell it on the Mountain!” You can declare “Joy to the World” and tell people how the bells are peeling the message that “God is not dead, nor does He sleep,” and so much GOOD NEWS, great tidings of joy and Peace on earth! :)
Um, yeah- don’t get me started. Guaranteed, the Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I will be back here in 10 months writing my head off about the sights and sounds of Christmas and celebrating most of all, a SAVIOR!
However, today being January 25th, I shall end Christmas 2012 (I meant to do this by Epiphany on the 6th) with this little presentation of a few images and a short video of the fam at Christmas.
Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”…Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy because they now understood the words that had been made known to them. Neh. 8.10,12 NIV
Is Christmas an awful lot of work and effort with the shopping and baking and cooking and decorating and wrapping and crafts and everything else? It sure is. To have a big celebration to show your love to the Savior and to your family, it IS an awful lot of work. But if just one or two of grandbebes grows up and remembers the satin running through our main tree, as it represents the scarlet thread of the blood of Jesus which washes sin whiter than snow for all time, if they recall the trouble I went through to communicate that message so they could know that blood cleanses them – well, then, I can assure you, I will never regret the work of it.
And if they remember they felt loved and cherished and over-indulged, then maybe I will have imparted a little of the love of the Father to them through us, and that is good, too. He gave it all.
The sound of rejoicing…could be heard far away…
And on that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced. The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away. Neh. 12.43
So….anyway. It was merry and these are a few of my memories. One month ago, to the day!
See short video!
This was a gift to Dave from the cast of “Merry Gentlemen”
That is the title of the best {headlining} story of January 24, 2013. He is thriving because of the deep love of his mommy and daddy and millions of prayers rising to heaven on his behalf. Fifteen days old. We love you, baby Kai!
Kai practicing sitting in his car seat a couple of days ago. He has some room to grow. :)
This is a promise that reminds us to put one foot in front of the other. It tells us that our present sorrow, the distress we are smack dab in the middle of – is not the end, but is the time to sow.
Sometimes, when all seems hopeless, we do the right thing – that thing we should/must do – and we may cry right through it. Then we do the right thing again and we cry. And maybe our tears are for things we have lost, for situations that seem hopeless, for the efforts we’ve made that seem utterly futile. But there are things you do because they are the right thing. And it is the time to do them.
Don’t be deceived. God is not mocked. You will reap what you sow. Galatians 6.7
You pray and you sow and you use lots of tissue.
Humble yourselves under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. 1 Peter 5.6
In due time.
And when the time is right (when it is “due”), you not only reap a harvest, you reap an arms-full harvest of rejoicing, of over-the-top-songs-of-joy and rejoicing! This is the promise of a God who is watchful. And He keeps His promises.
They are thoroughly wonderful people and completely uncontrollable (in a good way) and totally a gift from the LORD to us. Undeserved – but isn’t that what a gift is? Otherwise, they’d just be some sort of payment for anything right we might have done. Not, though!
Children are a gift from the Lord and grandchildren are sent to just thrill-you-silly.
He sets the lonely in families. Psalm 68.6
Children are a heritage of the LORD. Psalm 127.3a
The fruit of the womb [is a] reward. Psalm 127.3b
The blessing of the Lord definitely includes getting to “see your children’s children.” Psalm 128.6
Jacob told his brother, “These are the children whom God has graciously given your servant.” Genesis 33.5
Stormie did this print for me. To be framed and hung soon! Note the “pregnant” Jovan :)
“What pleasure God has taken in planning” to make us part of HIS great family through Jesus Christ!
How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son. ~Ephesians 1.3-6 The Message
The adoption is bringing me understanding about the Father. If I am head-over-heels full of love towards the family God has given me, how great must His love be towards us!
“No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.” -John Ruskin
On a winter day early in 1968, Mrs. Weiland, my 2nd grade teacher, showed us the landmark “I Have a Dream” speech, which had been given just a few years before in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.
In my mind, it is grainy and black and white, which is maybe because that is the footage we can still see. And our educators were explaining the civil rights movement and what it would mean to end racism, a concept hard to understand in our very integrated school. We were in an incubator, we all got along and treated each other respectfully – why couldn’t everyone else just see?
I was too young and naive to understand the brokenness of our nation and outrageous struggle being waged to right so many years of wrongs.
But I knew Martin Luther King’s speech moved me. It was strong, I could see it. I could visualize his dream coming to pass.
Just a couple months later, he was gunned down. My heart hurt. I poured over srticles and pictures in the Des Moines Register and the Tribune. The school flag was flown at half-mast the next day and after we said the pledge that morning, at Wallace Elementary, we observed a moment of silence. It felt, to my little second-grade mind, like it should go on and on.
In part he said:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
Today is the observance of the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. The dream lives on.
