"The Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with Joy."
Um....yeah.
Me. Well, not so much.
Don't get me wrong; we have been amazingly blessed. My Pilot husband went to Afghanistan and came home again with nary a scratch on him. We got to take some amazing trips. We became first time homeowners, to a house that I love. We moved back to our church and friends here in SoCal, which is exactly what we asked for (minor miracle in military life). God has done great things for us this year.
And, yet.
I'll be honest. I'm not feeling the joy part. In fact, my man and I were talking tonight about how we don't really feel Christmas-y. The Happy in my Holidays and the Merry in my Christmas have been sadly lacking.
As good as it's been, it's also been not-so-good. Christmas day will now also be the anniversary of my grandmother's death. We had friends walk through the valley of death too. Family members are hurting. Marriages have crumbled. An economy on the brink of...something. Less than encouraging national and international news. And, the culture shock of moving back to the U.S. has been, well, shocking. It's been a good year and a tough year.
Add on to that, I'm now on the other side of the Christmas equation now; I'm making the "magic" instead of taking the magic. Where does one begin to celebrate a holiday in a Christ honoring way in a society that doesn't honor Him at all? Yeah, daunting, to say the least.
All that to say, as much as I've been actively looking for, and finding Grace, I really needed some tonight. But first, I had my Christmas to-do list. There are still a couple of things on it; two of them are breads, crescent rolls and tea rings. I learned a long time ago that it does NOT feel like Christmas to me if we don't have them. Some of my earliest memories are of my mom delivering tea rings to friends and neighbors and if I didn't make them, Christmas was not happening, not in my house at least.
So, at 9:30 tonight, I started baking. I've made these breads so much that I can do them in my sleep. In fact, I probably have made them in my sleep. My hands went into automatic mode leaving my brain....free.
That is where I met my Grace. I had the mental space to sort. To think. To talk to God. I'm mature enough to admit that I got sassy and talked back to Him. It's okay; He set me straight.
I thought of these verses but when I looked them up, I read them in The Message-
"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life- your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life- and place it before God as an offering.
Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.
Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out.
Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings out the best of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."
Recognize them? It's Romans 12:1-2, the "do not be conformed....be transformed" verses that most Christians have rote memorized. But tonight, it grabbed me.
My ordinary every day life, the obeying that I'm trying to do.
Fixing my attention on God, the Grace I'm looking for.
God bringing out the best in me- tonight, that was the bread. The Christmas celebrating, the making, the creating, the obeying.
And suddenly, I feel Christmas-y. Or rather, better even: I feel Christ.
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