Christmas Card Prayers & 12 Days of Christmas
Two more fun Christmas traditions:
1. Christmas Card Prayers. I’m never quite sure what to do with Christmas cards when they come. I look, ooh and ahh, read the letter and so forth. But then what? I don’t have a little display thing, and I’ll admit, do not cover my refrigerator with them. But I don’t want to throw them away and yet am not quite sure where they should go. So usually they go in a pile on top of my fridge until about mid-July when I find them, covered in dust, and then throw them away without guilt. There must be a better way.
So this year we’ve been doing Christmas Card prayers. Each day when I open a Christmas card or two I read them and then put it in the middle of our kitchen table. Then that night, when we do our family prayer time at dinner, we pray for the families, as specifically as we can, whose card we received that day. I find that we’re a lot more likely to care and really pore over the cards and pics when we’re actually praying for them.
Then I’m keeping the cards in a little prayer box, and I plan to keep them in rotation throughout the year. So when the flood of Christmas cards is over, we can still rotate through the fun pics of family and friends and lift them up to the Lord at dinnertime prayer. Simple!
2. 12 Days of Christmas. I am SO excited to do this this year. This idea was given to me by someone else who has done it for more than 25 years, every single year. Each year as a family you pick another family or couple or single person, perhaps who has gone through a hard time or could just use encouragement, or just whoever God places on your heart. You secretly put a tiny gifts on their doorstep for the 12 days of Christmas (1 candle, then the next day 2 packets of hot cocoa, then the next day 3 of something, all the way to the 12th day giving them 12 of something like fresh cinnamon rolls on Christmas day). Each day you include a verse or something encouraging that goes along with the gift. Obviously the point is not to get complicated, but just to have fun thinking creatively about one other family and encourage them from God’s Word. It’s helpful to pick someone who lives near you since you’ll need to go by their house every day for 12 days! For me it’s also probably a good idea to pick someone who doesn’t read this blog! 🙂 The person who shared this with me said that some years they reveal who they are and some years they keep it a secret, depending upon the situation. Just a little idea to spark creativity as we learn to love our neighbors and celebrate the greatest gift–the Giver Himself.
More on Learning to Be Fun: Flubber
Ok, here’s a true blessing–a dear woman responded to the (Re)Learning to the fun post by not only sharing her ideas with me, but by giving me the ingredients to do them! Now that’s setting me up for success. 🙂 Thank you!
Flubber
Ok, flubber is so much fun! Today Dutch had some friends over, and we gathered all 5 kids around the table and made this and they loved it. They got to do it all–pour the glue, stir it all around, and even mix it with their hands. This stuff is amazing. We called it “Oobleck” after the greenish goo in the Dr. Suess story Bartholomew and the Oobleck. (I skip over the weird parts about magic–the lesson about saying sorry is great) Here’s the recipe:
- 3 cups warm water
- 2 cups Elmer’s white glue (4 small bottles)
- liquid water color (food coloring stains)
- 20 Mule Team Borax (available in grocery store in laundry section)
Here’s what to do:
- In large container combine and mix: 1 1/2 cups very warm water and 2 cups glue. Add a few drops of water color and stir to mix completely.
- In small container mix 1 1/3 cups very warm water and 2 level tsp. Borax. Stir until Borax is completely dissolved.
- Using hands, mix contents of smaller container into large container (just dump in and start mushing around with your hands). Lift and turn mixture until it is fully combined.
It will soak up all the water until solid and SOO fun. We put a little bit in each child’s container and let them go for it. You can also keep it in an airtight container and it keeps for up to 2 weeks. (vinegar will dissolve it from carpet, hair, furniture, clothes.) So fun!
Thanks to all you creative people there is more fun to come…
More Special Days
Since beginning our new Special Day tradition, we’ve now gotten to do Dutch Day and Anniversary Day. For Dutch day, it was so fun to see how God coordinated everything. It was a busy Sunday, and we’d already had lunch plans that didn’t necessarily include anything special for Dutch. But it was so fun because this other couple surprised Dutch by getting him a new little Lego set, which he got to open after lunch. Then, they showed him their Lego room which is filled–no joke–with tens of thousands of legos, from floor to ceiling and everywhere in between. Castles, buildings, scenes, towns. Amazing. Dutch was so awed and inspired that we came home, got out the Legos, and he and Jeff played all afternoon. Even though I couldn’t necessarily do anything that special for him, for all he knew the whole day was set up like a Lego-loving dream come true. Thank you, God!
For our anniversary day we celebrated 89 months of marriage! It was also a busy Sunday, and while circumstances kept us from going out on a date, we planned a very special date to celebrate Jeff’s graduation from seminary next Tuesday! 5 1/2 years we’ve been plugging away at seminary and he has one week left! So we’re redeeming a very generous gift certificate that we were given to a fancy restaurant and enjoying a special date next week. Sometimes planning a date is almost as much fun as going on it–so for our 89th anniversary we planned out a date and an upcoming family vacation. Oh, and Jeff bought me a Starbucks card… that always helps too. 🙂
So yada, yada, details, right? What all this has shown me is the value of celebration. Just as God commanded the children of Israel to periodically hold feasts and gatherings and celebrations, it is healthy for us to learn to periodically celebrate the big things and little things in life. I’ve been a major dud in this department. When every day is the same it’s not long before the family’s morale is dangerously low. There is so much value in little celebrations to bring little dots of memorable moments to this long line of daily life that can tend toward monotony. Tonight I made a yummy salmon dinner (our favorite). The occasion–we’re celebrating a Happy Monday! Why not? Somehow that made dinner seem special.
So let’s sprinkle our lives with little doses of joyful celebration, amen? For This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24
Frustration and Growth
Right now Dutch is learning to write his letters. Against his will, I might add. He is easily coaxed by Gummi-Vites and Omego-3 Gummies (I heart whoever created those things!), but if I simply let him do what he wanted he would do nothing but play with legos and mack trucks all day long. And yes, I’m all for Delight-Directed learning, but I simply try to give him about 15 minutes a day where he works on his verses, copies letters, practices sounds, etc.
All that to say that Dutch gets easily frustrated. Just as we all do when learning something new. When it was his shoes, he would crumble in a heap of tears when he couldn’t get his heels in and the backs of his shoes would get all squished. Now it’s frustrating when he can’t make the pen make the curve of the Q or when he can’t remember which way the bump on the b goes. Of course it’s no big deal. He’ll learn.
Lately I’ve felt like that a bit. I think, I hope, that God is growing me. Challenging me. Maturing me. He’s probably doing the same in you, yes? He’s promised to do that so I trust that He is. Is there something you don’t understand right now? Some prayer that seems unanswered? Some irritating issue that doesn’t seem to dissolve? Chances are God is growing us. And chances are we’re frustrated by it. 🙂
Just as every day I seek to give Dutch new challenges, new things that he can do on his own, God is entrusting us with more and more responsibility, challenges, opportunities to trust Him in new ways. It’s funny to read blogs from just last year and remember the HORRIBLE time I was having with potty-training. Talk about frustrated! We were both in tears most of the time and there was always poop in some corner of a room. It was awful. But now? It’s funny to even think of him in diapers–now Dutch not only uses a toilet, but he makes his own bed, brushes his teeth, gets dressed, clears the table, helps unload the dishwasher, puts away his laundry, recites verses, knows his letters and numbers–Wow! It’s so encouraging to simply look back over a year and see all the ways that he has grown. But you know what? Every single one of those things began with frustration. Not a single one did he get perfect the first time. In fact, not a single one of those things did he actually want to do, as he tends to be very resistant to trying new things. (gulp, he gets that from me.) But, a year of frustration and practice and the viola! … there’s growth.
It’s not really any sort of crisis going on, just a sense that things don’t seem as easy and clear-cut as before. Then today I read this in the book Spiritual Leadership:
We naively think that the more we grow as Christians, the easier it will be to discern the will of God. But the opposite is often the case. God treats the mature leader as a mature adult, leaving more and more to his or her spiritual discernment and giving fewer bits of tangible guidance than in earlier years. (121)
Talk about timely. That’s exactly how I was feeling (thanks for that bit of tangible guidance, God!). I used to feel like God was always giving me such clear bits of tangible guidance, confirmations, etc. Certainly He still does, but it sure does seem a lot foggier out here as the years go by. Anybody else?
Interestingly, I also came across an article written by my brother, on Confirmation Bias. While pride is what pushes us to simply seek those opinions which fall in line with our own beliefs, it is also immaturity. As a child, I like many clear and easily discernible directives from God. And, I like for every bit of input in my life to confirm whatever direction I am taking. It is humbling, maturing (and terrifying!) to not only walk a path that is not clear but to also take time to investigate other paths along the way. Yikes!
All this to say that growth and frustration go together. Often when I say I want “peace” what I really mean is that I want everything to be crystal clear and I do not want to hear any opinions that contradict my own. Above all I do not want anyone to contradict or criticize me or my choices. That, of course, would be the opposite of peace! Or would it? Dutch would certainly be at peace spending his whole life tinkering with legos and having me get him dressed and make his bed. If he never had to try writing his letters he would never know how hard it is to make the curve of the Q. But that would not be life. He has to grow up, and so do we.
Is there frustration in your life right now? I pray, then, that the Master is at work in the growth process. And I pray we will continue to walk in the fog when need be, by faith, and humbly listen and understand those contradicting views, knowing that we are safe and secure in the One who orders our steps. Who knows, we may even be spiritually potty-trained one day.