A Love Story

Christmas always catches me not looking.
Like a baseball in the side of the head.
I'm absorbed in a million other thoughts and relationships and activities when suddenly I realize that one of these things is not like the other.
I sit in front of a huge sparkling tree. An attempt to decorate nature, which surely doesn't need my help. A frumped up version of God's simplistic beauty.
This is my incline.

I lean toward the covering. I am a daily Eve sewing the fig leaves together to hide the starkness of myself.

I learn again. And again. That God desires to do the covering that He tells us to "put on" love over every other virtue. He designs the clothes, He removes the self-made inadequate rags, He dresses us in love and a bevy of other good garments. This is grace. God's grace that I don't deserve. God's grace celebrated in the form of a naked baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, provided by His Father. .

When the boys hit me in the side of the head with a baseball I get mad.
When Christmas hits me I get very sad, because it tells me that I wasn't looking in the right direction.
As the boys say in self-defense, "If you would have been watching us, you would have seen it coming." And they're right, where are a mother's eyes supposed to be if not on her children.
Or her Father.

But I'm hopeful. Jesus came and He brought us hope. I hope that one of these years, Christmas will catch me looking in the right direction.

And yet...
Even in my immaturity and inattentiveness...
He loves me and shows me His love in tangible ways.
Through my loving, prayerful husband.

Through my laughing, whining children.

Through divine protection.

Through the love and support of friends, far and near.

Through the quiet hours with books that reflect Him.

Through the celebrations of life.

Through the ability to serve others and the joy of doing so.

Through the gift of laughter.


Avonlea's latest crochet project.



 

 



I asked Avonlea how she liked one of the fiction school books she had to read this semester.
She looked at me with a frown and replied, "It's alright but there's too much love in it. It's about Robin Hood's men and they should be thinking about other things."
I laughed and replied, "Did you know the Bible is a love story Avonlea?"
She rolled her eyes and got out of the car. She knows a baseball when she sees one. As she ran into piano lessons I rolled down my window and yelled, "This whole life! Everything! It's all a love story!"
And there can never be too much love in any story....Christmas proves that.