Grace and Glory

Musings from the Threshold

Category Archives: Christmas

Thoughts

I mentioned to a friend the other day that I have so many things floating around in my head about which to post, that I end up not posting because I don’t have time for everything. Silliness!

So here are some miscellaneous thoughts, mostly Advent focused (thanks, Tracy, for prompting me to get some of these thoughts down… there’ll be some familiarity for you here):

I’ve gotten almost no Christmas decorating done yet, which is unusual for me by this time. But, my Christmas boxes are in the attic (where I don’t venture) and my man has been very busy with work (thankfully!). I’m hoping he’ll bring them down tonight. I’ve been working on getting the house cleaner. Some people are motivated to clean by Spring… I’m motivated by Christmas! Can’t stand the thought of decorating dirt and clutter. 🙂 I have a spot all cleared out for the tree and hope we can get one this weekend.

Being still in anticipation… something I think He’s working on teaching me. The calm and overflowing joy instead of the frantic doing. I want my heart and mind to be more aware of Him and less focused on the going, the glitter, and the getting.

The Christmas season brings so many memories to me, not only of family (precious!), but also of dear friends that, in my school years, I would often only see during school breaks. Sweet memories.

I’m hoping to start our Jesse tree tomorrow; that’s something I can start without the Christmas boxes, so I’ve no excuse. 🙂 And I’m so looking forward to our quiet times of worship aided by the reminder of the advent wreath.

We had a neat time over Thanksgiving with the families with which we usually celebrated Thanksgiving when Eric and I were growing up. Our “fake family,” as Beka lovingly refers to them, are dear to us, and we enjoyed celebrating with them again (with many more than there used to be!).

I have lots of Gifts for which I’ve noted my Gratitude mentally that I need to get written down or posted.

Sometimes when I’ve been away from blogging, I need a misc. post like this to get me back in the saddle without feeling like I have to catch up chronologically. Thanks for bearing with me. 🙂

Pictures!

I have at last uploaded some pictures from December to my Picasa albums. Click on the slideshows to see them individually, etc.

The Byrd Visit:

The Bloom Visit – did I even mention this?!? It was such a treat to have John and Ruth in town for a couple days! We ate together and played Rage at the chapel on Saturday night Dec. 20th, then on Sunday John shared about Immanuel Mission as well as sharing a very challenging and encouraging message about being a Refresher. They joined us for lunch on Sunday and visited some more before heading in to St. Louis. We were so blessed to have them with us – they have been such an important part of our lives over the years, and they are refreshing people!

Christmas Day:

And New Year’s Eve at Believers Bible Chapel:

More Imperfection


And isn’t it beautiful?!

I made another step of progress in my It-doesn’t-have-to-be-perfect-to-be-beautiful journey. And in my the-whole-point-of-Christmas-is-a-Person-not-my-imperfect-decorations journey.

See, despite our good intentions, we didn’t buy candles for our Advent wreath before Advent started last Sunday. The only places “locally” (read: 30 minutes away) where we can buy official Advent candles just don’t happen to be open when we can get ourselves there. So today, I was out doing Christmas shopping for neat stuff that I really want to tell you about but can’t because certain people for whom I was shopping sometimes read this blog. Thank your lucky stars I just took the word “when” out of that last sentence, because it was headed towards being a record-breaking run-on. Anyway, I made an imperfect-but-beautiful decision to buy three blue tapers and one red taper instead of three blues and one rose/pink (as “called for” by tradition).

So tonight, as we began the second week of Advent, when we focus on Peace, we had an Advent Wreath with candles to light. And it was lovely. Even though our Christ candle (the one in the middle) is awfully short. I repeat, it was lovely, and we had a wonderful time reading, talking, and singing about the peace we have through our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Jesse Tree

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
Isaiah 11.1&2

The advent season has begun! Christmas music started playing in our home yesterday, we had our first advent devotional last night (sans the advent wreath, which has yet to be put together). And hopefully, I’ll manage get to some Christmas decorations in my unpacking and sorting today.

At lunch, the kids and I started our Jesse Tree. This is the second year for us to use this particular focusing tool. Last year, we made a big tree out of corrugated plastic and made our own ornaments. Sounds neat, doesn’t it? Except that we only got through about 16 of the 25+ lessons we intended to do!

This year, still being deeply in the work of moving, I am committed to finding simple ways to celebrate Advent/Christmas. I will settle for something that is not so fancy/perfect as I might like – because the point is to focus on our Lord’s coming, not to have a perfect method for doing so!

So, in contemplating what to do for our Jesse Tree this year (I don’t want to use the huge tree we used last year), the focus was on what will be simple/quick and help us train our thoughts and minds properly. After deliberating for while, I’ve decided that we won’t even have an actual tree to put our Jesse Tree ornaments this year. We’re going to use one of our glass back doors, and simply form a tree as we tape the ornaments to the glass.

And the ornaments? Instead of making our own, I printed out the ornaments from Faith Magazine that I found in my googling. I printed them in color, two pages on each sheet of cardstock because I wanted them to be smaller. I started to cut them all out, but realized that it was not truly needed for them all to be cut out today, so I rough cut the others enough that I could number them. I’ll cut them out as we go, or sometime when I need to sit down and rest for a while.

Guess what? I don’t think the forbidden fruit was an apple! I’m partial to Answers in Genesis’ illustration of it that looks more like a luscious purple hand-grenade – so apt. And I don’t think the ark was a round little thing that would never float. But the details of the symbols aren’t as important to me this year as they used to be.

The process of figuring out what our Jesse Tree plan is this year has been another reminder of the truth that these traditions are tools. They are not our masters, they simply have the potential to aid us as we focus on the true reason for the Christmas season. May you be blessed as you focus on Jesus, Creator of the Universe, born to die that we might live!

Anticipating Advent

For the last couple of years, our family has been making use of some of the Advent traditions to help us focus on the true meaning of the Christmas season.  Although I’m generally committed to waiting until after Thanksgiving (which is one of my favorite holidays!) to let my Advent/Christmas juices start flowing, the guys at The Rabbit Room have gotten me off to an early start.  This post about Living Between Two Advents is the kickoff for a “Virtual Advent Wreath” series of weekly posts they’re going to be having.  I’m really looking forward to it!

Good idea for Christmas…

I’m mulling over this idea from Malia Russell at homemaking911.com

Here’s the intro:
Several years ago I heard about an easy way to narrow down Christmas gifts for children. Instead of buying a bunch of toys or other clutter, each child receives the following:
Something to Read
Something to Wear
Something to Play
Something to Share.

She goes on to give some thoughts on how to implement this. Like – if four gifts per child is still too many gifts for your budget, considering asking people you know will be buying gifts for your children to choose a category (or two). And – if they’d like to spend more, ask them to contribute to a savings/investment of some sort for the children.

Any thoughts? I like the idea, but would welcome some more practical implementation ideas.