Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Not Keeping Up

When I asked Holly to help me get blogging, I thought I'd have hundreds of thoughts and want to be posting everyday. Well that hasn't happened - obviously - so here we go again. The last time I sat down to do this the "keeper of the sign in" wouldn't let me...so I had to play the game of re-entering my password and then, setting the old password as the new password and by then I'd lost my enthusiasm. Not like I'm doing anything great and wonderful that takes up so much time, but I get bored easily. So this must be ADD, "Oh, look, a chicken".

I have accomplished a lot in the days I haven't been posting, like doing the Christmas shopping, getting a cold, doing more Christmas shopping, stressing about the number of gifts for each grandchild, doing more Christmas shopping, still having the cold that's now in the chest and head, wrapping the Christmas shopping, catagorizing ( I need grandma's Instant Speller) and placing Christmas shopping under the tree by family and when they will be here to collect the Christmas shopping, baking three kinds of cookies, baking pumpkin bread, stressing about not enough presents (I need 2 more), still having the cold... You get the picture. Then the big day will come and under the tree will become empty and I will feel empty and stress about whether I had enough Christmas shopping for everyone and why couldn't I just have been able to find the darn Wii's.

So, amidst all this, here is what I strive to remember: The reason for the Christmas celebration is our Savior Jesus Christ. We celebrate His birth, all the wonderful thoughts and words written in Luke 2. But mostly for me the celebration is His life and the gift He gave of himself, to ransom himself so that all of us may partake of His atonement, repent and be able to have the gift of eternal life with our Father, and all our brothers and sisters who avail themselves of this gift. The gospel is true, I know this. It is a gospel of love, we love others because Christ loved us first.

A little book called "Christmas is a Time of Giving" by Joan Walsh Anglund, helps join the secular fun with the spiritual. It says: "Christmas is a time of giving. It is a time of wrapping gifts and making cookies . . . a time of presents, tucked in secret places . . .and of children waiting. It is a time of toys and drums and dolls . . . a time of holly and lights . . . and goldent tinsel and green pine boughs. It is a time of stars and midnight . . . and soft prayers whispered in the dark. Christmas is a time of family . . . and good friends meeting once again. It is a time of song and caroling...and silver sleigh bells jingling across the snow. For some people, Christmas is a time of remembering . . . remembering other happy days filled with laughing voices . . . and other treasured times, now past. But for everyone, it is a time of magic . . . when troubles melt and once again the world is young. It is the time, above all others, when peace may visit earth and find a dwelling place in every heart. Christmas is a time of giving . . . a time of hope . . . a time of joy. Christmas is a blessed time . . . of love.

I love you gang. Love, Mom

1 comment:

Holly said...

If you feel like you need to buy more presents, I'm willing to be the recipient. You know, for your own mental health. Stress is bad for you.

Christmas is fantastic, it will be fantastic, Dad will be there, assuming they don't close the airport, to help you through the afterward blahs, and I will be calling to tell you all about the magical visit from YOU KNOW WHO, and I ain't talking Santy Claus. So you'll have plenty to laugh about, I'm hoping.

If we can still travel the roads on Monday, we're still planning on coming up. Do you want to have the kids open presents from you there so you can see or do you want them wait for Christmas? I think doing it there would be fun so you can see their joy and they can spread out their spoiling. You pick.