Our family had a wonderful 2012 Christmas! Ron and I gathered with his mom and our son and his family on the Saturday before Christmas. We enjoyed a meal at Cracker Barrel (because cooking a BIG meal is not high on our list of priorities!) and then went to my son's home in another city. It was so much fun seeing the grands open their presents and visiting with the family there. A six year old and a thirteen year old add joy and pleasure to the Christmas excitement!
We had an uplifting church service Sunday morning, worshipping with friends and gathering at the altar to pray for the physical needs of several members of our church family. We should never be surprised when our prayers are answered! It was particularly joyful to have our daughter and her husband in church with us on this Sunday-before-Christmas morning. It has been many years since Sunday was not a "work" day for them, as they served churches themselves.
After church my husband and I finished last minute packing for the trip to Tennessee that afternoon. We were driving to my family home where my mother would again host us for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. At 90, she would find it very taxing to decorate and prepare all the food, so everyone had planned the menu and contributed to the effort. It was a famous tradition to hear my husband utter his annual complaint when packing the car. "
I don't think I'm going to get it all in!"
But of course, he did!
I woke up on Christmas Eve to a fun gathering around the kitchen table - the quiet before the storm - when my sister, her husband and my daughter and husband arrived. We spent the day preparing food for that night and for Christmas Day when more family would arrive to share it with us. I cherished this time together - a time of easy-going preparation and teasing and fun.
"
I know what YOU'RE getting for Christmas!"
It has been ten years since my dad traditionally called to tease us with this phrase, but we've all taken up the slack and that phrase is bandied about among our different families with a great deal of sly looks and glee and laughter!
There was some good-natured (I hope) grumbling about what time we'd get up on Christmas morning. Long gone are the days when little kids came excitedly into our bedroom WAY too early to shake us awake and get Christmas morning started!
There are stockings (of course, Santa still comes!) to check out first as we gather around the fireplace in our pjs - drinking coffee and eating our traditional sausage pinwheels, breakfast casserole and fresh fruit - and then a rush to get showers and get Christmas dinner on the table before more family arrives. We made it easy on ourselves in planning our menu, but it is still a busy task to prepare dinner for that many.
It was a beautiful day, a fun family time, a day of thanks and appreciation for our many blessings and the birth of our saviour.
The "party" broke up by early afternoon due to the drastic forecast. After weeks of foretelling a dry and non-white Christmas Day, newscasters suddenly threw words like "blizzard" and "deep snow" into their newscast. Ron left to get back home to KY because he couldn't afford to get stranded in TN. Courtney and Adam left to visit his parents in another area of KY, where hopefully the heavy snow would skip. The cousins also left. By evening left-overs, only my sister and her husband, who were spending the night, remained with Mom and me. I had previously made plans to spend the rest of the week in TN to de-decorate the house! I looked forward to a quieter time spent with my mother.
The snow came ... to my home in Kentucky! Lot's of deep, blowing snow. It started by early evening, fortunately
after Ron arrived safely home. Because it was dark, no one actually got to "see" the blizzard - a first for our area. But the snow was heavy on the ground and every roof, limb and road the next morning ... and beautiful! (very thankful for snowplows and their brave drivers!) I only got to see the pictures!
In Tennessee we had a few flurries!
By the time I returned homethe following weekend, there was still thick snow on the ground, but the roads were clear. All the beauty and none of the hassle, to my way of thinking!
As I close out 2012, I can recall many wondeful moments, some not so good and some in between. But that's the way life is, isn't it. The good mixed in with the bad, the not-so-good and the not-so-bad, as the joy and tragedy of just breathing blends together in a patchwork of living. I want to be a "see-through-er" - someone who is capable of seeing through whatever the difficult circumstances may be to the joy and/or healing that is beyond the immediate. I want to live my life in a such a way that it shows my faith, that my choices become a testimony to someone else.
To choose the positive over the negative and to allow my voice be one that is pleasing to Him. Each day, I want to choose LIFE, not just living.
This is my hope and prayer for 2013.
