Let's Celebrate Jesus!

This is not meant to sound super spiritual or pious. I hate it when things sound like that. It's just that as the years pass by, as the Christmas memories accumulate, the more I see that really and truly He is the One who gives meaning to the celebration. He is the greatest gift, God come to our planet to be one of us - the Saviour who loves us, longs to know us and have us know Him. He understands us perfectly. He should - He created us! He paid the price for our messed up ways when He died on the cross and now He offers His forgiveness to us as a free gift.
As much as I cherish the family get togethers, the joy on my kids' faces as they open that "special gift," the heartwarming music and the twinkling lights on my tree ... I am falling in love with Jesus more all the time and I would celebrate Him with or without all those trappings. And not just in December.

Merry Christmas to you!

O come let us adore Him.

Solid Advice

“Don’t worry about genius and don’t worry about being clever. Trust rather to hard work, perseverance, and determination. The best motto for the long march is ‘Don’t grumble. Plug on.’

-Sir Frederick Treves

I have no earthly idea who this guy is, but that seems like pretty good advice to me. Plug on! As I tell my kids all the time, "it builds character." (Much eye rolling usually follows.)

"Don't feel totally, personally, irrevocably responsible for everything. That's my job."
Signed, God.

As the tightly wound, overly conscientious firstborn child that I am, this is advice I need to take pretty much every day!

Ooooo... but it's so hard to let go.... :))

Family Circus

Shall I tell you about my morning? Yes, I believe I shall.

9:00 - Call Donna, the grade one teacher I am subbing for next week, to ask if I can come to her house earlier than our originally scheduled meeting of 10:00, since my mom is watching Ben and needs me back by 11:30 (sharp) because she and Dad have a lunch date. Donna is not home and does not call me back.

9:35 - Tell Ben to put his shoes on so I can take him to Oma and Opa's house while I am meeting with Teacher Donna from 10:00 to 11:30 (sharp).

9:36 - Ben and Toby (terrier) are waiting for me in the van. Go to get my keys off the rack only to discover they are nowhere to be found.

9:37 - Search purse. Serious lack of keys.

9:38 - Grab spare van key off of rack and head outside, locking all house doors behind me.

9:39 - Slide spare key into van ignition, turn key. Serious lack of motor starting noises.

9:40 - Decide to look for a "better" spare key in the house. Realize all doors are locked.

9:41 - Congratulate self on remembering that there's an extra house key hidden in the garage.

9:42 - Reach into "secret spot" in the garage. Serious lack of keys.

9:43 - Knock timidly on Billy and Joan's front door (wonderful neighbours). Joan answers in her housecoat and freshly washed hair. Feel terrible.

9:44 - Explain predicament to Joan. Much sympathy from wonderful neighbour who then offers her phone to call my Mom.

9:45 - Call Mom and fill her in. "Can you come over here?" Of course - she'll be right over. Wonderful parents. Go back to driveway to hang out with Ben and Toby.

9:50 - Joan (still looking great in housecoat) comes out on her front porch holding the phone for me. It's Mom. Can't find the keys to their truck - Dad has the car somewhere. "Ok - I'll cancel with Donna. Ben and I will walk over to your house."

9:52 - Call Teacher Donna (still on Joan's phone - she's gone in to do her hair) to fill her in on the fiasco. Wonderful person - very understanding. We will meet tomorrow instead.

9:55 - Ben and I decide to bike instead of walk to Mom's.

10:04 - Pull into Mom and Dad's driveway. Back door is locked. Ring doorbell. Serious lack of Mother. See Charlie (terrier) in the house, so we know Mom isn't out walking anywhere.

10:06 - Panic at the thought that maybe Mom is passed out on the floor somewhere in the house. Calling through open window.

10:07 - Congratulate self on remembering that there's an extra house key hidden in the garage. Theirs is actually where it's supposed to be, too.

10:08 - Now in Mom's kitchen with Ben and Charlie. Call Mom on her cell phone. "Where are you?" "I'm standing here talking to Billy and Joan!"

10:09 - Laugh at the fact that Mom didn't hear me tell her that we were walking to her house. Laugh harder to hear that she biked to our house while we biked to her house. Almost pee my pants that she decided to take a totally new and different route today so our paths didn't cross. "Wait there at my place - I'll bike back home," she says.

10:13 - Wonder how Mom liked Joan's housecoat.

10:14 - Read one of Dad's birdwatching books with Ben. Learn the difference between a trumpeter swan and a mute swan - it's all in the neck. Discover that an immature bald eagle has a brown head, not white.

10:25 - Mom walks in the back door. We laugh and laugh. Many explanations.

10:26 - Mom reaches up to her key rack to show me all the spare keys she used to try to get into the truck.

10:27 - Find my set of keys hanging on Mom's key rack.

10:30 - Dad comes home and has to listen to the whole story. Wonderful listener - he laughs so hard he almost cries.

11:25 (sharp) - Leave with Ben to bike home.

11:37 - Ben decides to watch his feet as they pedal the last few metres of the trip home.

11:37 - Ben runs into a parked car right before we get to Billy and Joan's driveway. He laughs, but then he mostly cries.

11:40 - Ice Ben's hand. He is sad that it is his right hand, which will seriously impede his baseball playing today.

11:41 - Call John at work to tell him the story. Maybe this is why he feels he lives on the set of "I Love Lucy."

A Bird Pooped on my Bible

One of my favourite things about summer vacation is sitting outside in the morning on our back deck and reading my Bible and praying. It's so peaceful and fresh and quiet out there.

One of my least favourite things about summer vacation is the birds that eat mulberries and then come to roost in the maple tree beside our deck and drop their purple poops on whatever happens to be sitting below them. The other day it happened to be my Bible. Romans 5, to be exact.

I'm Shaken Up

"Fifteen thousand Africans are dying each day of preventable, treatable diseases - AIDS, malaria, TB - for lack of drugs that we take for granted.
This statistic alone makes a fool of the idea many of us hold on to very tightly: the idea of equality. What is happening in Africa mocks our piety, doubts our concern and questions our commitment to the whole concept. Because if we're honest, there's no way we could conclude that such mass death day after day would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else. Certainly not in North America or Europe or Japan... Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. It's an uncomfortable truth."

That was Bono. An uncomfortable truth, to be sure. Then he says this:

"We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies - but will we be that generation? Will we in the West realize our potential or will we sleep in the comfort of our affluence with apathy and indifference murmuring softly in our ears?
...This is Africa's crisis. That it's not on the nightly news, that we do not treat this as an emergency - that's our crisis."

Still processing. And praying. God, show us how to help the poor and give us the courage to obey You when you do.

A Zinger from Mr. Luther

A friend of mine showed me this quote from Martin Luther yesterday. (I know he looks kind of intense in this picture, but hey, the guy started the Reformation. He probably had a lot on his mind.)

"And if we have encountered adversity in our lives, we dwell upon it as much as possible, magnify it, think that no one is so unhappy as we are, and imagine the worst possible consequences. In short, when we are alone, we think of one thing and another, we leap to conclusions and we interpret everything in the worst possible light. On the other hand we imagine that other people are very happy, and it distresses us that things go well with them and evil with us."

Zing! He got me. This is me to a tee, whenever I'm struggling or obsessing over something unpleasant in my life. I find it to be especially true when I am agonizing over my own personal shortcomings and weaknesses - my anxious tendencies, my insecurities and fears, my worries for the future. When I am alone, when I am thinking only of ME, I can imagine all of these things to be so enormous that they begin to feel almost insurmountable. And, I will admit, I begin to look around at everyone else ... at the people who seem to have it all together, who don't appear to struggle at all with the things that consume me. And therein lies the problem, I believe. I ASSUME that they don't struggle because they don't APPEAR to struggle. But I've noticed that when I am NOT alone, when I sit with a friend and share my heart and listen as she shares hers, I am reminded that everyone faces adversity - at different times and on different levels, to be sure, but we are all in this TOGETHER.

Lord, I pray that today You will help me take my eyes off myself. Show me how I can help someone else who is struggling and thank You for this reminder that none of us faces a trial that someone else out there hasn't faced as well.

Bragging Rights

So, the reason I've been gone so long is that I needed to build anticipation and a sense of urgency. I mean look at that thing - a work of fine art cannot be unveiled too casually, you know.

Happy Birthday, Benjamin Daniel Hollingsworth! You are 8 years old and, despite your protests, most of us around here still insist on calling you Benji. You will always be Benji to me - my last baby, our precious thirdborn, the boy who still calls from his bed - "Mom? Cuddle?" - almost every night. (Don't worry, bud, I won't let that get too far.) You have brought our family more joy than I can put into words and we thank God for you.

Hope you enjoyed your hockey party, kiddo! Thanks Uncle Joe and Aunt Beth, for the ice time!