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Showing posts from December, 2019

Christmas Eve Reflections...pt 2

Things that didn’t make it on the last post’s Christmas Eve list: Grown child suddenly overwhelmed by anxiety-ridden coughing attack ✔️ Heavy doses of prayer ✔️ Not everything is always perfect. Tonight as we wrapped up our festivities, one my my precious children suddenly began coughing uncontrollably. The coughing led to anxiety at not knowing what was wrong, which led to more coughing...you get the idea. This is not how we planned to end our night. As I calmed her, brought her anything I could think of to ease her pain and discomfort and prayed fervently over her, I was struck by a feeling of helplessness. Her coughs subsided. Then I sat down and wrote a beautiful blog post about Christmas Eve and what a wonderful night we had had. In all honesty, I meant every word of my previous post. Tonight was special for our family, and I needed to write about that. But I could not leave it at that. I needed to write this part too. I need to remember that life is full of joys and God i

Christmas Eve Reflections

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Christmas Eve this year: Grown, globe-trotting college girl home ✔️ Grown, living on her own, slaying the workforce girl home ✔️ Munchies (aka Party Food) for dinner ✔️ Muppets Christmas Carol ✔️ Reading the story of Jesus’ birth from the gospel of Luke ✔️ Nostalgic gifts from youngest child ✔️ Heart full ✔️ This year looked different for our family. Three of our four children are grown and out of the house. We are finding a new normal. Grown children also means our Christmas traditions are growing up too. For the past 15 years we have done nightly devotions from the Advent Jesse Tree, each with a special ornament to represent the part of the Jesus story we were reading. This year, with only one kiddo at home the whole time and most of the devotions memorized by now, we put that tradition on pause. Instead we went with the flow of the season, and then intentionally paused tonight to read from Luke chapters 1 and 2 and John 1:1-4. We reflected on the first Christmas and the