Christmas thoughts

I'm taking a brief respite while feeding the baby, and so I ramble.

The past several days have been very busy as I try to reclaim our house (sheetrock dust is a formidable foe), decorate for Christmas, finish my Christmas shopping (which couldn't be done until I'd relocated and sorted the things I purchased before we tore our house apart), and help the family participate in Christmas Week activities. There have been a few Freak Out moments, I confess, but I think I am learning how to take it as it comes, seeing as how I haven't cried once about the fact that I don't yet have a single Christmas cookie in the cookie tins.

Despite the busyness, this year I am acutely aware of the fact that my life is in far less upheaval than what many people around the world and before me are experiencing and have experienced. I suppose it is only obvious that I think especially of years ago when Mary-- a young girl in many ways, very pregnant, perhaps a social outcast, alone in her journey except for her betrothed (and possibly still somewhat unfamiliar) husband-- had her life turned upside-down.

How many moments were there when she had to purposely quiet her soul and stay her tears? I think there must have been at least a few, because she was only human. I think her tears might have sometimes even overflowed despite her best efforts, because even when there is a keen sense of the hand of God, things can still be trying and hard and we don't always lean into Him and His grace the way we ought to.

Here I am, snug in a beautifully renovated home. I have a new washer & dryer, a new furnace, reclaimed floors. I am surrounded by candles and lovely decorations and so many things that represent the generosity of so many wonderful people. My husband is really priceless. Really. My children are safe and sweet and full of love and forgiveness. The upheaval of my life is not truly upheaval at all.

I am a rich, rich girl.

But I am freshly desiring to offer myself to Him. When He comes to me and brings a message of destiny and calling, I pray that my response would be like Mary's so many years ago: "May it be done to me according to your word." I don't want to try to calculate the cost or wonder how to preserve myself. I want to lose my life in His grace and purposes.