Christmas 2013

We had an amazing season of celebrating our Savior's birth! Lighting our advent wreath each night after dinner and directing our hearts toward Jesus through readings and songs was a delight for all of us. We went to church on Christmas Eve...

Christmas Day was relaxing and fun.  We were able to focus on Jesus in a way that was so worshipful and refreshing.  This was our second Christmas watching a sermon by Louie Giglio and I think it's going to be a tradition that sticks because there's no better gift to give yourself (or your family!) than to regain perspective on how HUGE our God is.

laughter over the gift Abigail gave Dan

Calvin made Emmery her own violin and she spent a LONG time enjoying it to the fullest!

She would play one song then say, "Um....what song should we do now?"

Calvin reading the "coupon" I gave him for a date

Easton smiling over the gift he received from Daddy...

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is sitting down as a family with Gospel for Asia's Christmas gift catalog and choosing gifts for those in need.  We pray over who will receive the gifts and ask God to work in amazing ways through our simple offerings of love.  It is a great joy to see our children learning that there is so much more joy in giving than in receiving!

Emmery picked up her violin many times through the day, especially when Abigail got hers out!  She sat by the piano to "tune" hers...

...and she stood right by Abigail the whole time Abigail was practicing along with her Suzuki CD. As you can see, she needs a bit of work on her form but she's already showing some serious focus! :)

Easton made a birthday cake for Jesus, much to Emmery's delight!

It was a wonderful day drawing closer together as a family as we all drew closer to Emmanuel.  What a gift to pause and celebrate the birthday of the Perfect Gift and the Ultimate Giver!

Recommendation: Keeping Holiday

Over the last couple weeks I have had the immense pleasure and privilege of reading Keeping Holiday to my children. When I heard about this book on the blog Girl Talk (highly recommend this one!) I assumed it would be a lovely book about Christmas for me to share with the children.  Oh, it was ever so much more!  This book drew all of us in and opened our eyes in a new way to what it means to have Jesus call us to Himself.  A regular quote in the book was "You don't find the Founder; He finds you.  He's not just the Founder; He's the Finder too."  As I contemplate each of our children's journeys with Jesus, it was very reassuring to be reminded that the ball is not entirely in their court (though of course they need to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit!)  Ultimately, the God of the universe is the One who takes them from the kingdom of darkness and brings them into His kingdom of light.  I think the target age for this book is 8-12 year olds, but having been deeply blessed personally by reading this book, I'd recommend that all parents find some excuse to read this even if your kids are a bit younger or older than that. Just pretend you're reading it to yourself and you can't keep quiet so everyone happens to hear you. :)  I was able to get this book from our library, but I already purchased a copy of it because it will be one we re-read and I'm anxious to share it with other families, too.

Thankful

 We've had some very sick kids here over the past few weeks, and life hasn't been one big rainbow, but I have snapped a few photos here and there, and wanted to share just a few of the things I'm thankful for in this belated Thanksgiving post.


I'm thankful friends blessed us with apples, and Dan directed an applesauce-making day with everyone helping out so we could get 30+ quarts in the freezer to enjoy through the winter.

 I'm thankful Emmery has a great routine of activities in her high chair after breakfast.  I've been seeking to bring some variety and incorporate some sensory activities, so here she is enjoying stirring, scooping, and transferring wheat berries from dish to dish:

 I'm thankful the kids have befriended the neighbor boy and spent many happy hours in the fields surrounding our house, collecting corn that the farmer left behind at harvest:

 I'm thankful for new opportunities, like husking popcorn from the field and then popping it in our airpopper for a very fresh, local treat!

 I'm thankful my parents could surprise the kids and visit us right in time to celebrate my Mom's birthday.  I'm thankful for my Dad's example of prayer (here he is praying a birthday blessing over my mom before we all dove into an upside down praline apple pie.  Oh yes, we like birthdays!! :)

 I'm thankful Abigail could be distracted from a bit of her misery (she had a fever for 8 days!!) by learning to play Rumikub with Grampa:

 I'm thankful Emmery has a Gramma who fully accepts her and treasures her...and blesses her with tea time and stories!

 I'm thankful for a juicer to aid my children through their battle with a nasty virus, and for DVDs to teach and entertain (here Emmery is snuggled tight to her big sis while Abigail drinks her green juice and they watch a DVD together.)

 I'm thankful Dan's Dad could join us for Thanksgiving and for the gift of happy family memories!

 I'm thankful for this Nativity set we could purchase in Israel many years ago, never dreaming that one day our ten year old daughter would be carefully arranging it at the beginning of Advent.

 I'm thankful for brooms to sweep up broken Christmas tree ornaments and for a God who takes the broken pieces of our lives (including fevers and endless coughing and toddlers who give up naps prematurely and to-do lists that never get crossed off) and makes beauty out of ashes.  He has given me so much peace and joy amidst the current chapter He is writing of my little story.  He is good and I am loved.  What's not to be thankful for?

Christmas 2012

This was my best Christmas yet. I had just finished reading Anything by Jennie Allen. I devoured it in less than 48 hours.  I'd waited months for my turn to get it through the library but now I have to buy my own copy so I can go back and highlight and loan it to as many of my friends as possible. Reading this helped to soften my heart before God and make me hunger for Him more.  It reminded me of what I already knew...that I'm wasting my few breaths on earth if I live for my own comfort and happiness.  I've got all of eternity to be comfortable and happy.  Right now I'm here to live out my little part in God's story and I good and well better be listening to Him each day to hear what that is.





 I've been reading in Isaiah where God makes it clear that we are here for His glory, and we watched some Louie Giglio sermons that reminded me in powerful ways how big our God is.

So with a softer heart and a hunger for Him to increase and me to decrease, Christmas was a time of worship and joy.  On Christmas Eve Day we had our shepherd's dinner (actually a lunch) and remembered their part of the Christmas story.  Then we went to church and worked in children's ministries. When we got home we gathered around for some fun holiday snacks and read a special story.  Christmas Day we slept in, ate incredible food, exchanged stockings (we sent the kids on a treasure hunt for theirs), selected gifts for Gospel for Asia, watched How Great is Our God by Louie Giglio, and had a candlelight worship time singing praises to the King who came as a Babe. This year we enjoyed a little Advent book by Nancie Guthrie, Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room.  It's one of the best advent resources we've discovered!

 I've not been very successful with my camera recently, and I also didn't want to be so busy trying to take pictures that I wasn't fully present in the moment.  So although I don't have a ton of photos, I'm grateful for how God blessed our season of celebrating the gift of Jesus and wanted to share a few of our treasured resources with you!  Hope you and your family had a blessed Christmas!

Getting ready for our Shepherd's Lunch

Shepherd's Lunch by the fire

Emmery examining her new doll

Checking out an art book from Grandma

Advent

This is the wreath that is sitting in the middle of our dining room table - it is the centerpiece of what this season is all about! The time we spend each evening after dinner lighting the candles, reading Scripture, praying, and singing is definitely the highlight of Christmas for our family. We've used a variety of resources/readings, advancing a bit as our kids grow up. I don't have any one resource to recommend above the rest, but I do highly recommend having a tradition like this in your family. It is a great teaching opportunity, a time for worship, and I believe something our kids will remember for the rest of their lives when they think back upon their childhood Christmases.

It's about the Cross!

My friend, Maria, introduced us to this song, and we love it! It's exactly what we're celebrating during this season.




All of the words to this song by Go Fish are great, but here is the highlight:

The beginning of the story is wonderful and great
But it's the ending that can save you and that's why we celebrate

It's about the cross
It's about my sin
It's about how Jesus came to be born once
So that we could be born again

It's about God's love
Nailed to a tree
It's about every drop of blood that flowed from Him when it should have been me

It's about the stone
That was rolled away
So that you and I could have real life someday

It's about the cross

Focusing

December has become a very special month for us as a family. It is now a time that both Dan and I look forward to as a highpoint in our spiritual journeys - a time to saturate ourselves in the Savior whose birth we celebrate; a time to renew our minds and to be filled up in Him alone. As always, we turn to some books to help us in this, and I wanted to tell you about a couple that have been valued resources for us.

Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus:Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas includes 22 readings for advent, edited by Nancy Guthrie. We just purchased this last year and have both appreciated the readings in it. It includes works from classics such as Luther and Spurgeon as well as some contemporaries such as John Piper, Francis Schaeffer, and Joni Eareckson Tada.



Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ by John Piper is a book that I've read at Christmas time for several years now. It does a powerful job of tying together various Scripture passages to help the reader grow in understanding and awe of who Jesus is. And my favorite part is the prayer at the end of each brief chapter. One portion of a prayer that has stuck with me through the years is this: "Wean us from our obsession with trivial things."

I saw that you can purchase this book for $3.99 (or less) - including shipping - on Amazon.

Shepherd's Dinner

One of our Christmastime traditions is to have a dinner where we dress up like shepherds. While eating a dinner of soup and bread (a round loaf that we all rip chunks off of), we think about what it must have been like to be one of the shepherds who was out in the field when the angels appeared with the glorious news!

In the middle of the table you can see what's left of our advent wreath (Dan had put live greens around it, but they quickly dried out, so we just stuck with the simple wire frame for the rest of the season. :) The advent wreath is probably our most favorite Christmas tradition because it allows us to spend time each evening pondering the gift of our Savior's birth. We have special readings, Scriptures, prayers, and usually a song we sing. It has been a great tool for teaching our kids, and also for keeping Dan and I focused on why Christmas is so exciting!!!

Perspective

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and my sister Lydia took many great photos! As soon as I get them from her, I'll do a Thanksgiving post. We're already full-swing into our Christmas celebration and thoroughly enjoying our advent reading/singing each evening. The kids are memorizing a portion of Luke 2 and all three just blow me away with how quickly they can store it away!

This afternoon I was feeling a bit frustrated with some of the mothering challenges of the day, and also a bit under the weather with a cold. Easton woke up way too early from his nap, just screaming and screaming. I thought, "this is going to be a looooooooooooong afternoon..." I finally got him calmed down, and I decided to read a bit from Noel Piper's Treasuring God in our Traditions. She has a lot of good ideas for how to make God the center of your Christmas, and I was also skimming through some other portions of the book. I came across a song that was special to her after the birth of one of her babies, and the words were such a blessing to me that I wanted to share them with you, too! Take the time to read it slowly, and savor the truth of it...

O Let Your Soul now be Filled with Gladness

Words by Peter Aschan

O let your soul now be filled with gladness,

Your heart redeemed, rejoice indeed!

O may the thought banish all your sadness,

That in His blood you have been freed,

That God's unfailing love is yours,

That you the only Son were given,

That by His death He has opened heaven,

That you are ransomed as you are.

If you seem empty of any feeling,

Rejoice, you are His ransomed bride!

If those you cherish seem not to love you,

And dark assails from every side;

Still yours the promise, come what may,

In loss and triumph, in laughter, crying;

In want and riches, in living dying,

That you are purchased as you are.

It is a good, every good transcending,

That Christ has died for you and me!

It is a gladness that has no ending

There in God's wondrous love to see!

Praise be to Him the spotless Lamb,

Who through the desert my soul is leading

To that fair city of joy exceeding,

For which He bought me as I am!

I didn't feel bad for myself after reading this! It makes you want to shout, "hallelujah!!" And as a bonus, Easton decided to fall back asleep for a very long time so it ended up being a peaceful, quiet afternoon. :)

Advent

On Saturday we made an advent wreath to use as the centerpiece on our table. This week when we do our advent readings in the evenings, we light one candle, next week two, and so on... Christmas Day we will light the Christ candle in the center. The kids love this and it is one of our favorite traditions. Gina, remember when we started this together many years ago in Grand Rapids? We love having this season to ponder anew who Jesus is and why He came to earth so long ago. There are a couple things that help me to maximize the spiritual focus of this season that I just had to share with you...

Seeing & Savoring Jesus Christ by John Piper.
I read this book last year at Christmas and it was so helpful to me that I decided to read it again this year. (We have 2 copies, so let me know if you want to borrow one.) One of my favorite parts is the prayers at the end of each chapter. Here's an excerpt:

"...O merciful God, incline our hearts to your Word

and the wonders of your glory.

Wean us from our obsession with trivial things...

We believe that you are the All-glorious One, and that there is none like you.

Help our unbelief.

Forgive the wandering of our affections

and the undue attention we give to lesser things..."

pp 17-18

Sovereign Grace Ministries music CD: SAVIOR - Celebrating the Mystery of God Become Man
This CD is so rich with the real meaning of Christmas! Our song of the month at church (The Son of God Came Down) is from this CD, and I also put a quote from it in my "quote I've been thinking about" box. Here's another:
God has sent his greatest treasure/Shown His love in greatest measure/Sending Christ to bleed and suffer/Purchasing our joy forever/Let the earth rejoice!
I *highly* recommend this CD as a core part of what you fill your house with at Christmas to draw your heart closer to Him. If you want to borrow it from me to check it out before you purchase it, just let me know - but I can't part with it for more than a couple days. :)