Christmas – All The Glitter and Grace

December 22, 2016August 5, 2018

Butter Cookies and Waiting on God

p1040404-002

One of my favorite pastimes of the Christmas season is baking. I love to bake cookies and cakes. There are some recipes that are tried and true and I make them every year and then there are some that come and go depending on my mood.

One of the recipes that has made it’s way into my repertoire is a simple buttery shortbread. It has three ingredients…butter, brown sugar, and flour. It’ so simple and so easy that as long as you follow the very few basic steps it’s a total win. The butter must be cold and cut into tiny pieces before blending it with the brown sugar. The flour mustn’t be added in one giant plop but instead slowly and with ease. After you chill the dough you place small, rolled balls on a cookie sheet and then sprinkle your favorite colored sprinkle across the top. Bake, cool, eat. Yum.

I’ve done a little baking here and there this month. A cake to share here. A bread to give there. Some fudge, some cookies…nothing too fancy. Today felt like a good day for my favorite little butter cookies except that the cold front that blew into Houston over the weekend blew out yesterday and my A/C is back on. I’m not sure why I get disappointed by warm fronts over Christmas. This is my 18th Christmas in Houston and, if I really went back with a tally marker, I’d say the A/C years far outweighed the fireplace years. It is what it is. Cookies can’t wait for cold days.

So I pulled my butter and sugar and flour out and started the mixing. And the rolling. And the baking. The smell was wafting through the kitchen as the cookies baked and I cleaned the kitchen. I wiped the counters, loaded the dishwasher, and waited for the timer to buzz.

When I opened the oven, ready to beam with pride and joy over the golden sweet treats, I was mortified to see three cookie sheets of flat, burned, cookie blobs. What could have possibly happened?!?!?!

I didn’t chill the dough. I got in a hurry and I handled the dough too much without chilling it. My warm and harsh hands warmed the butter in the dough and caused it to flatten and burn.

While throwing three cookie sheets of cookies out is very frustrating, it served as a reminder to my co-dependent self of a character flaw I always have to keep in check…especially during the holidays. A lack of patience and a need to mold situations to my liking often gets me in trouble.

This is the time of year when expectations are high and my need to make things “right” often gets me in trouble. My mind races, I plan too far ahead, and I fail to be present in the moment. I skip steps, overstep bounds, and by-pass feelings in order to mold things into how I believe they should be. And while this is disastrous for cookies, it’s even worse for relationships. The lack of time to chill and the need to fill every moment with busy leads to a flat, burned out mom.

I read a short devotional thought a few days ago that included a reminder that God rarely shows us the whole picture up front. Sometimes he lets us walk around in the mess before he explains why we’re in it. When the angel visited Mary she was front-loaded with what was to come. Joseph, however, was tossed around in the wash before the angel visited him to clue him in. Everything looked messy and confusing and he could have dropped Mary, his pregnant girlfriend and ran to the hills but he didn’t. He waited. And when God’s plan was revealed to him he took each next step just as he was directed. How different might have the story turned out had Joseph jumped the gun? What if he’d skipped some steps and tried to roll the situation up in a perfect ball? What if he hadn’t taken the time to chill?

“All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means “God with us”). -Matthew 1:22-23

I want to be more like Joseph. I want to trust that God is working in all situations and have the patience to wait it out. I want to believe that God’s plans for me (or for my kids or for my friends) are well thought out and have purpose and don’t need to be handled by me. I want to be faithful and follow each step as God reveals it. I want to remember that it’s not my job to make all things “right” and that when I skip steps it almost always leads to disaster. Or burnt cookies.

December 7, 2016August 5, 2018

Unexpected Joy

15284120_10155458047887977_3019146202763630197_n

I love to decorate for Christmas. It’s my absolute favorite time of year. I love the glitter, the lights, the candles….all of it. But this is our first Christmas in this house and I found decorating to be a little troublesome.

You see, we spent 11 Christmas’s in our last house. I had sort of built a pattern for where things went. Every bauble had a place. I knew where my gingerbread men stood and where my elves sat. I always hung the big glass Santa in the middle of the tree and placed an antique camel with no hook near the top. My puffy fleece countdown tree always hung on my pantry door and the red and green glittered cones had a special order on the mantel.

This house, while lovely and exactly where I want to be, is different. Our Christmas tree didn’t fit in this living room. We had a twelve foot artificial tree at the old house. We have nine foot ceilings in this house. There are shelves I didn’t have before which are begging to be filled but with what I’m not sure.

I know, these are completely first world problems. I am fully aware that the starving children in Bi-Africa don’t care about my gingerbread men not fitting in. (I’m not even sure Bi-Africa is a place but my friend, Denise, says there are starving children there and I’m certain they have bigger problems than me.) But I needed to figure it out. My heart has been crying for simplicity for quite a while in every area of life and as I started to pull out the boxes and boxes of decorations, some of them didn’t feel right anymore. It all felt frivolous and too much. There were quite a few items that I had no desire to even pull out.

And yet I still wanted to decorate. Decorations have always helped my heart warm to the season of Christmas. This year, however, I was turning away from the pieces that were just about the pretty and was drawn towards the pieces that had a story; had meaning.

There was one ornament that was a gift from a friend after our first trip to the Nutcracker market together.

Then there were the sport ornaments I’ve purchased over the years for my husband. Some of them were his heroes growing up and some of them reminded me of special games or seasons we celebrated together.

I have 9 or 10 “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments from the year my daughter was born. She was an October Baby so it was a popular gift. I didn’t pull them all out this year but instead hung the one my in-laws brought her from a trip they made to Germany to visit my husband’s brother. It wasn’t like the rest. It was hand carved and painted and felt like it had love all over it.

I have a million hand made ornaments from the kids preschool and early elementary days but there were two that almost called out to me as I sifted through the box. They both had the same teacher in 1st grade. She’s an amazing lady who seems to have been born to teach 1st grade. She dipped their hands in white paint and wrapped them around a glass bulb and wrote their names on it in silver. So simple and yet so precious. I hung them side by side on the tree this year.

And then I found the Santa ornament. Listen, Santa is my jam and I have LOTS of Santa ornaments. But there’s one that is more special than the rest.

When my parents got married in 1967 they were very young and, from what I understand, didn’t have two nickels to rub together. But my dad bought a little tree and my mom hand made ornaments that year. She took Styrofoam balls and pinned sequins and ribbons to each one. She made one by gluing a Hallmark napkin with a jolly Santa to a ball and wrapping ribbon around it.

A few years before my parents split up she threw out all of those hand made ornaments. She said they were old and ratty. She replaced all the decorations with shiny blue and ivory ornaments. She put blue lights on the tree and in the yard. All of the hand-made, multi-colored Christmas pieces were gone.

The Christmas after her suicide in 1997 I got all of her decorations out. It made me so sad that the boxes were full of bulbs and balls and lacy pieces that had no meaning. But at the bottom of one of the boxes was the Santa ornament made from the napkin. I sobbed with sorrow and with gratitude. I have no idea how that one ornament made the cut. I don’t know if it was special or if it was an accident but it’s the only handmade ornament I have of hers. I’ll treasure it forever.

We can gather joy and delight from the most unexpected of places. My mom had no idea how precious that napkin glued ornament would be to me almost 50 years after she made it.

When my kid’s first grade teacher dipped their little hands in white paint she probably didn’t know it would bring tears to my eyes this far down the road.

I suppose that’s what Christmas is though, right? Christmas is about unexpected joy. The people of God waited for hundreds of years in darkness for a Savior. They expected a mighty king or a swift warrior – not a baby- and certainly not a baby in a barn! It’s the unexpectedness that I cling to these days. The hope of when life feels dark and I don’t know what to do or where to go that God has a plan. It rarely looks like what I expect or could design on my own. No, God’s plan is always unexpectedly marvelous and always just in time.

So if your heart isn’t feeling it this year and you’re struggling to make sense of why any of the glittered poinsettias matter, know that you aren’t alone. Know that the God of the Universe cared about your story so much that he sent his one and only Son to a dark and lonely world. He sent him to bring light. He sent him to be light. He sent him to be the light. And if asking him to light your whole season seems unrealistic, ask him to light up your week. And if a week feels too big then ask him to light up your day. And if today feels like too much you can ask him to light up the next moment. He will. His love for you is so rich and deep and good and joy will show up in the most unexpected of places.

November 30, 2015August 5, 2018

Extravagance from a Barn

“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” – C.S. Lewis

I became an orphan after my mom’s suicide. There were lots of reasons for this and truthfully, most could never be fully explained. It just happened and I was alone. The peace I have come to, however, after almost 19 years, is that pointing fingers gets you nowhere. Every soul grieves in it’s own way and even within family we don’t always agree on what the way should be. People need space to process, to understand, to breathe. Each heart touched by tragedy has it’s own cracks, it’s own scars. We all experience the story from a different seat and judging the point of view you can’t see from your angle is madness. It’s a waste of time. It serves no greater good.

This weekend I experienced nothing short of a miracle. I prayed a simple prayer for over 18 years.

“God, show me where I came from.”

My previous knowledge of my family had come from a child’s view; the stories I knew by heart heard through the ears of a small girl. I wanted to look into eyes that were my eyes. I wanted to touch skin that was my skin. My heart learned to identify itself with a heavenly father. I made peace with a wrestling that tied me to an eternal home and an angelic clan. Yet even still, I wanted flesh and bones to cling to.

“God, show me where I came from.”

This yearning is the fertile soil that a passion for family ministry grew from. It’s the place I tilled and planted and cared for my husband and my own children. I wanted, no needed, people to call my own.

My husband’s family scooped me up and adopted me as one of their clan. They call me daughter, granddaughter, sister, cousin, niece. I love them every minute of every day for the gracious ways they have loved me. They have loved me well. Yet I still prayed.

“God, show me where I came from.”

I wanted the connection again. I wanted to walk in a yard where generations had gone before me. I wanted to sit under a blanket stitched with loving hands that looked like mine. I wanted the recipes. I wanted to laugh at the inside jokes. I wanted the knowing glances and the finished sentences.

And then the call came.

A weekend gathering. A meal. A barn. My people. They called me and invited me home.

We ate and we laughed and I sat with Grand Daddy, who at 97 is sharper than many people half his age. He patted my hand and said he was so sorry for wasted years, time lost, decisions made in anger. Aren’t we all? My kids snuggled in hay with other great-grandchildren and surrounded him. All of them were only slightly aware of the history, the stories, the joy and the pain. They smiled, not all-together sure how the DNA connected them, how their eyes matched.

His children sat with him, smiling, missing two. One because of work, one because of death. They, the carriers of the stories, smiling through pain and gladness, survivors of their own right, moving forward; letting go.

“God, show me where I came from.”

God answered. And as he is accustomed to doing, he answered in the biggest and grandest of ways. There was a barn and a fire and a swing. There were stumps to sit on and turkey to eat. There was laughter and tears and hugging and clinging. There were questions and answers and knowing. There was healing. There was so much healing in that barn. I heard stories with fresh ears. I learned new pieces of history, pieces a child couldn’t have known. I leaned in and was embraced. I realized I was never an orphan, only a missing child. I have been found.

It was when I finally made peace with being without that God surprised me with a gift. I never gave up on asking but had come to be okay with the answer being negative. God is so faithful. He is so loving and he is so good. He is extravagant in the gifts he gives. As we enter this season of Advent, this time of waiting, I think about the people who prayed for hundreds of years for a word from God; an answer. They prayed to be connected. And then there was a barn where He displayed extravagance. This God of love couldn’t stand his people being separated from him by sin and they needed a Savior. He sent his one and only Son, not as a mighty warrior in a palace, but as a baby who needed a family. The one who would save the world came as a helpless child; a baby w ho needed touch and skin and love. A baby born into family.

I pray that you would hear the story fresh this year; that your heart would be fertile soil for beauty to grow. I pray that you would not give up on asking God for new revelation, new connections, and new perspective. I pray that you would see wounds heal and scars fade. I pray that you would know where you came from and know how to move forward. I pray you too, will experience extravagance from a barn.