Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest…
you who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world. Charmed by dove’s voices,
the whisper of straw, he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,
all years. Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught
that I might be free, blind in my womb
to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.
God May Not Have a Wonderful Plan for Your Life. He does, in the sense that He made it possible for us to go to heaven when we repent and believe He sent His Son to take our sins on the cross, and He has promised to be with us in this life, but some things in life are hard. The Bible said they would be, and we can give people the wrong picture of Christianity and rub salt in an open wound sometimes by spouting phrases like this.
Scowling at the Angel. “There in my brokenness I had so little to give. But grace, she never left. She met me in all my frailty, raw and wrathful, as exposed and defenseless as the day I was born.”
It Takes a Pirate to Raise a Child, HT to Bobbi. Loved this – about how children’s stories shape their ideas of right and wrong, e.g., telling the author’s son that he was acting like Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe helped him understand his behavior towards his siblings was wrong when explaining and exhorting wasn’t getting through.
Do any of you remember when bloggers used to do this kind of thing all the time – make up memes or questionnaires that others could chime in on or use on their own blogs? Those were fun – I guess maybe people just don’t have time for them as much as they once did.
But some fun questions came to mind this week, so I thought I’d make up a new one. If you’d like to copy these questions and use them on your own blog, you are welcome to. I’d appreciate a link back with acknowledgement as the originator of it, but it’s not like I am going to hunt you down if you don’t. 🙂 If you’d like to answer in the comments, or just leave a comment without answering the questions yourself, or just choose a few of the questions, that’s fine as well.
What is your favorite Christmas song? Hymn: “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly.” Secular: “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”
Favorite Christmas special/movie? Charlie Brown Christmas, White Christmas.
What kind of special goodies do you make in December?Harvest Loaf Cake is a must.
We used to do decorated sugar cookies when the kids were little, mainly for fun and the experience of it, but I was never particularly good at those and marveled at how some of my friends could make them look so beautiful.
Favorite Christmas beverage?Apple cider. It’s not exclusive to Christmas, of course, but that’s usually when I have it. The rest of the family likes eggnog, but I think it’s nasty stuff.
How many Christmas parties do you usually attend? Usually just two, the church ladies’ Christmas party and our adult Sunday School Christmas party. This year we’re putting off the SS one until January both to reduce some of the busyness of the season plus to have something to look forward to after it’s all over. In some years we’ve had choir or deacon Christmas parties, depending on what we were involved in during any given year. One friend used to have after-Christmas parties for the same reason mentioned earlier
Do you go Christmas caroling?Does anyone come Christmas caroling to your house? We don’t go caroling although we have occasionally in past years. Last year some folks from church went out caroling to all the “at-home” members who can’t make it out to services, and they included my mother-in-law for that at her assisted living place. She’s at our home now, and they are planning to do that again, so I imagine we’ll benefit from some carolers then.
When do you put the tree up and take it down? Nowadays we put it up after Thanksgiving because Jeremy is here then and the whole family can decorate together. We didn’t used to get it up until a couple of weekends into December, but I like doing it after Thanksgiving – we can enjoy it longer plus it’s less stressful to get it up earlier rather than mid-December when there are a ton of things going on (or used to be, when the kids were home and had Christmas programs, recitals, and parties both at school and church). We don’t have a particular time to take it down – just whenever we can get to it, usually within a week or so after Christmas.
Do you decorate with traditional red and green or with other colors? We have a variety of colors. I don’t have much red in my home, so I try to de-emphasize red a bit, but we do have both red and green as well as other colors. We have a lot of blue because the family room, where the Christmas tree is, has a lot of blue. There is also some silver and gold and white and a little pink. 🙂 I have a little pink-decorated tree on my desk.
How many Christmas trees do you put up (large and small?) The main big one is in the family room.
I have three little ones: the pink one I mentioned on my desk:
A miniature tree in the dining room on the dry sink:
And a small one on the living room end table in front of the window:
Are your Christmas tree decorations themed or hodgepodge?Hodgepodge. I like it that way. 🙂 When I was growing up, a lot of families had a themed or more formally decorated tree in the living room (remember the white or aluminum ones with the circular multi-colored disk that would revolve and throw different colors onto it? We never had those but many did) and a more hodgepodge “family” tree in the family room. My own family always had just the family one.
Ham, turkey, both, or something else for Christmas dinner? Usually ham with cheesy potatoes, some kind of vegetable, rolls, and apple and pumpkin pie.
Do you have any Christmas traditions that are unusual, out of the ordinary? Not that I can think of, except that we like to have these snacks during the Christmas season which aren’t in themselves Christmasy: Chicken in a Bisket crackers, spray cheese, and Pirouette cookies. Plus in our old house, there was a hook in the ceiling right above where we put the tree, where I guess the previous owners must have had a house plant or hanging lamp, and the boys would always put a snowflake ornament there above the tree. Our house now doesn’t have that, so they are creative about finding ways to hang that snowflake. And we continue to use some of our misfit ornaments – those are some of their favorites.
Otherwise we’re pretty traditional, I think. 🙂
Do you display Christmas cards in particular way? I used to hang them up on a garland until we moved to a house where there wasn’t a place to hang one, so for a few years I kept them in a basket. This year we’ve found a place to hang a garland up again, so I am looking forward to having them displayed again. I enjoy having them out like that to enjoy more than the momentary opening. A lot of families have to just sending a Christmas letter instead of a card rather than in a card – I’ll probably keep those in a basket.
What do you do with the Christmas cards you received after the holidays are over? I’m actually asking this question to get some ideas. 🙂 I hate to throw them away. I usually keep them in a stack for a while and then go through and throw some out and keep the particularly meaningful ones (if I kept every single one, they’d just end up in a box in the attic and no one would ever go through them). When the kids were little I kept them, thinking the next year we’d use them to cut off the fronts and make a collage – but we never got around to that. 🙂
Christmas newsletters: Love ’em or hate ’em? I love them. I enjoy hearing what’s gone on with friends during the year. Some times they share things I didn’t know about, sometimes I enjoy reviewing in a condensed form what I already knew about.
There you have it! Let me know if you do these on your blog and I’ll come see what you have to say.
I first wrote this three years ago, but I’ve reposted it before and am doing so again this year, because it seems like almost every year I run into someone having a hard time over the holidays, and maybe this will help. I’ve edited it a bit so the time frames are current.
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December could be a rather gloomy month for my family. My mother passed away Dec. 10 eight years ago, my father Dec. 12 fifteen years ago, and my grandmother Christmas Eve a few years prior to that, leading my brother to exclaim once that he just wanted to cancel the whole month. In more recent years the husband of a good college friend passed away in December 21 on our anniversary, and our family dog died the same day.
The death of a loved any any time of year can shadow the whole Christmas season as we miss our normal interactions with that loved one, and several years later, though maybe the pangs aren’t quite as sharp, they’re still there, and it’s not abnormal to be caught off guard by a memory or a longing leading to a good crying jag.
When someone is grieving over the holidays, they may not want to participate in some of the “normal” happy pastimes. It’s not that they don’t ever laugh or enjoy gatherings. But as Sherry said yesterday, “I am enjoying the traditional holiday celebrations, and at the same time they move me to tears, sad tears for things that have been lost this year. I am singing the music, and yet I’m tired of the froth of jingling bells and pa-rumpumpum.” I remember almost wishing that we still observed periods of mourning with wearing black or some sign of “Grief in progress” — not to rain on anyone else’s good time, but just to let people know there was woundedness under the surface, and just as physical wounds need tenderness while healing, so do emotional ones. Normally I love baby and bridal showers and make it a point to attend, but for several months after my mom’s death I did not want to go to them. I rejoiced with those who rejoiced…but just did not want to rejoice in quite that way. I first heard the news of my mom’s death during our adult Sunday School Christmas party, and the next year I just did not want to attend – the grief was still too close to the surface and would probably erupt in that setting where I first heard the news. Even just three years ago when our ladies’ Christmas party was on the anniversary of my mom’s death, I was concerned that at some point during the evening I would have to find the restroom and lock myself in to release some tears (though thankfully that did not happen).
Other events can cast a pall over Christmas: illness, job loss, a family estrangement, etc. One Christmas we were all sick as dogs, and my father-in-law had just had a major health crisis and wanted us to come up from SC to ID to visit. There was just no way we could drag ourselves onto a plane until antibiotics had kicked in a few days later, but we did go, and if I remember correctly, that was the last time any of us except my husband saw him alive, so in retrospect we were glad we went, though it wasn’t the merriest of Christmases. A good friend grieved over “ruining” her family’s Christmas by being in the hospital with a severe kidney infection. Lizzie wrote about visiting her husband in prison for Christmas. Quilly commented yesterday about being homeless one Christmas. Yet both Lizzie and Quilly mentioned reasons for rejoicing in the midst of those circumstances.
If you’re grieving this Christmas, don’t feel guilty if you’re not quite into the “froth” this year. One quote I shared on a Week In Words post earlier had to do with giving yourself time to heal. On the other hand, there may be times to go through with the holiday festivities for family’s sake — and, truly, those times can help keep you from the doldrums. Sherry shared how making a list of reasons to celebrate Christmas helped. Look for the good things to rejoice in. Don’t let the grief turn you into a Scrooge who hates Christmas: your loved one who is gone probably wouldn’t want that to happen. I think they’d probably prefer that you enjoy the best parts of the season while still remembering them in it. E-mom left a valuable comment yesterday that we can treasure up the memories of good Christmases to tide us over the not so good ones, and then look forward to better things ahead. And as I said yesterday, remember that the first Christmas was not all about the froth, either, but was messy, lonely, and painful, yet out of it was born the Savior of the world and the hope of mankind. Rejoice in that hope and promise. Draw near to Him who has borne our griefs and carries our sorrows until grief and sorrow are done away forever.
Let the stable still astonish: Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes, Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen; Crumbling, crooked walls; No bed to carry that pain,
And then, the child, Rag-wrapped, laid to cry In a trough. Who would have chosen this? Who would have said: “Yes, Let the God of all the heavens and earth Be born here, in this place”? Who but the same God Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms of our hearts and says, “Yes, let the God of Heaven and Earth be born here– in this place.”– Leslie Leyland Fields
Is God an Egotistical Maniac? Read this if you don’t read any of the others. This is a thought that is becoming more popular with unsaved, and Christians sometimes unwittingly fuel it by their responses.
A Blank Check. Quote: “A recent lesson talked about giving God a blank check with our lives. It’s a biblical concept. If God is God, and we owe everything to him, we must be willing to follow him wherever he leads. It’s picking up our crosses and dying to ourselves…We push the blank check across the counter to God, only to be miffed if he writes ‘nursery duty’ in the line.” Most of us are called to minister in small ways rather than the big, public ways.
Let the stable still astonish: Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes, Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen; Crumbling, crooked walls; No bed to carry that pain,
And then, the child, Rag-wrapped, laid to cry In a trough. Who would have chosen this? Who would have said: “Yes, Let the God of all the heavens and earth Be born here, in this place”? Who but the same God Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms of our hearts and says, “Yes, let the God of Heaven and Earth be born here– in this place.”
Most of us have a vision in our minds of the perfect Christmas: family gathered around, a clean and sparkling house, a beautifully adorned Christmas tree with piles of lovingly chosen presents underneath, a feast for the eyes and the table, scents of roasting turkey or ham, pumpkin pies, apple cider, everyone marvelously getting along like the end of a made-for-TV movie.
But what if that’s not reality this year?
What if one member is in prison? Or overseas or across the country? Or in heaven?
What if a lost job or a major medical expense has led to a depleted bank account and bare cupboards?
Is Christmas then ruined?
Let’s go back to that first Christmas.
Mary and Joseph were alone and away from home and family in a strange city. They did not have a beautifully decorated house: they did not even have a hotel room. The only place someone had available for them was a stable. The only scents of the season were those of animals in a barn. Mary, as a young, first-time mother, did not have the blessing of a modern hospital and sanitary conditions, a skilled nursing staff and childbirth training. Giving birth was painful and messy. Joseph would have been out of his element helping a woman deliver a baby, and perhaps he was dismayed or frustrated that he could not provide better for her in general, especially in her moment of need. And after the blessed relief of a healthy child safely born, there was little acknowledgment of who this Child was besides the shepherds, Simeon and Anna, and, later on, the wise men. Soon they would face the danger of a king bent on killing the Child in their care and the loss of reputation Mary would endure her whole life as many thought her Child was illegitimate, and soon the ominous promise that a sword would pierce through Mary’s own soul.
What did they have then, that lonely, uncomfortable, smelly night? They had the Child of promise. A Child whom they were told to name Jesus, which means “Jehovah saves,” whose very name is a promise, who would reconcile them to God by taking care of their greatest need, who would “save His people from their sins.” They had the realization that, as the angel told Mary when first delivering the news that she would bear a child though she was a virgin, this Child was the long-awaited and longed-for Messiah, the King, the Son of the Highest. What cause for joy and wonder! They had no idea how it would all work out. But they had the promise, and because of the promise, they had hope.
It’s certainly not wrong to enjoy a decorated tree, presents, wonderful food, and family gathered. But we can celebrate Christmas even all of those elements are missing or less than ideal…because we can celebrate in our own hearts and with those around us that same promise, that same hope. If that’s all we have this Christmas…that’s more than enough.
December could be a rather gloomy month for my family. My mother passed away Dec. 10 five years ago, my father Dec. 12 a few years earlier, and my grandmother Christmas Eve a few years prior to that, leading my brother to exclaim once that he just wanted to cancel the whole month.
The death of a loved any any time of year can shadow the whole Christmas season as we miss our normal interactions with that loved one, and several years later, though maybe the pangs aren’t quite as sharp, they’re still there, and it’s not abnormal to be caught off guard by a memory or a longing leading to a good crying jag.
When someone is grieving over the holidays, they may not want to participate in some of the “normal” happy pastimes. It’s not that they don’t ever laugh or enjoy gatherings. But as Sherry said yesterday, “I am enjoying the traditional holiday celebrations, and at the same time they move me to tears, sad tears for things that have been lost this year. I am singing the music, and yet I’m tired of the froth of jingling bells and pa-rumpumpum.” I remember almost wishing that we still observed periods of mourning with wearing black or some sign of “Grief in progress” — not to rain on anyone else’s good time, but just to let people know there was woundedness under the surface, and just as physical wounds need tenderness while healing, so do emotional ones. Normally I love baby and bridal showers and make it a point to attend, but for several months after my mom’s death I did not want to go to them. I rejoiced with those who rejoiced…but just did not want to rejoice in quite that way. I first heard the news of my mom’s death during our adult Sunday School Christmas party, and the next year I just did not want to attend. Even this year, when our ladies’ Christmas party was on the anniversary of my mom’s death, I was concerned that at some point during the evening I would have to find the restroom and lock myself in to release some tears (though thankfully that did not happen).
Other events can cast a pall over Christmas: illness, job loss, a family estrangement, etc. One Christmas we were all sick as dogs, and my father-in-law had just had a major health crisis and wanted us to come up from SC to ID to visit. There was just no way we could drag ourselves onto a plane until antibiotics had kicked in a few days later, but we did go, and if I remember correctly, that was the last time any of us except my husband saw him alive, so in retrospect we were glad we went, though it wasn’t the merriest of Christmases. A good friend grieved over “ruining” her family’s Christmas by being in the hospital with a severe kidney infection. Lizzie wrote about visiting her husband in prison for Christmas. Quilly commented yesterday about being homeless one Christmas. Yet both Lizzie and Quilly mentioned reasons for rejoicing in the midst of those circumstances.
If you’re grieving this Christmas, don’t feel guilty if you’re not quite into the “froth” this year. One quote I shared on a Week In Words post earlier had to do with giving yourself time to heal. On the other hand, there may be times to go through with the holiday festivities for family’s sake — and, truly, those times can help keep you from the doldrums. Sherry shared how making a list of reasons to celebrate Christmas helped. Look for the good things to rejoice in. E-mom left a valuable comment yesterday that we can treasure up the memories of good Christmases to tide us over the not so good ones, and then look forward to better things ahead. And as I said yesterday, remember that the first Christmas was not all about the froth, either, but was messy, lonely, and painful, yet out of it was born the Savior of the world and the hope of mankind. Rejoice in that hope and promise. Draw near to Him who has borne our griefs and carries our sorrows until grief and sorrow are done away forever.
Most of us have a vision in our minds of the perfect Christmas: family gathered around, a clean and sparkling house, a beautifully adorned Christmas tree with piles of lovingly chosen presents underneath, a feast for the eyes and the table, scents of roasting turkey or ham, pumpkin pies, apple cider, everyone marvelously getting along like the end of a made-for-TV movie.
But what if that’s not reality this year?
What if one member is in prison? Or overseas or across the country? Or in heaven?
What if a lost job or a major medical expense has led to a depleted bank account and bare cupboards?
Is Christmas then ruined?
Let’s go back to that first Christmas.
Mary and Joseph were alone and away from home and family in a strange city. They did not have a beautifully decorated house: they did not even have a hotel room. The only place someone had available for them was a stable. The only scents of the season were those of animals in a barn. Mary, as a young, first-time mother, did not have the blessing of a modern hospital and sanitary conditions, a skilled nursing staff and childbirth training. Giving birth was painful and messy. Joseph would have been out of his element helping a woman deliver a baby, and perhaps he was dismayed or frustrated that he could not provide better for her in general, but especially in her moment of need. And after the blessed relief of a healthy child safely born, there was little acknowledgment of who this Child was besides the shepherds, Simeon and Anna, and, later on, the wise men. Soon they would face the danger of a king bent on killing the Child in their care and the loss of reputation Mary would endure her whole life as many thought her Child was illegitimate, and soon the ominous promise that a sword would pierce through Mary’s own soul.
What did they have then, that lonely, uncomfortable, smelly night? They had the Child of promise. A Child whom they were told to name Jesus, which means “Jehovah saves,” whose very name is a promise, who would reconcile them to God by taking care of their greatest need, who would “save His people from their sins.” They had the realization that, as the angel told Mary when first delivering the news that she would bear a child though she was a virgin, this Child was the long-awaited and longed-for Messiah, the King, the Son of the Highest. What cause for joy and wonder! They had no idea how it would all work out. But they had the promise, and because of the promise, they had hope.
It’s certainly not wrong to enjoy a decorated tree, presents, wonderful food, and family gathered. But we can celebrate Christmas even all of those elements are missing or less than ideal…because we can celebrate in our own hearts and with those around us that same promise, that same hope. If that’s all we have this Christmas…that’s more than enough.
Stray Thoughts 