This year, I am searching for meaning. Not material.
I am blessed with a roof over my head. I am blessed with a loving family. With a child who is healthy. I am blessed beyond measure.
I want NOTHING. I want FOR nothing.
And I believe that having a small impressionable child has really colored my idea of what Christmas should mean. In the past, it was simply a time to get presents, and to see family. Now it is different...now it has a totally new meaning.
It means that I am celebrating the birthday of the One who made it possible for me to live my life as it is. This blessed life. This open life. This life as a new creation. I am celebrating the day He chose to become human and begin his life on this earth. For me. For all of us.
I am celebrating that one splendid night under a starry sky, when God became man. Wholly human, wholly divine. I am celebrating a miracle.
So how will I choose to celebrate this? With a mad rush to every store within driving distance? With creating a list of the things I want and need? With concentrating on the material?
This year, I chose differently.
To make blankets for children who have...nothing. Pain, and anguish. Who are teetering on the line between the family they have been pulled from and a foster family. Children who have been wounded.
http://www.yahwehcenter.org/
And it was fufilling, and a wonderful way to spend my time. And it was right and good. It even felt a little selfish. But with each one I sewed I became more and more convicted that this Christmas needs to be different from every other.
I really feel like God is calling me into a season of having less. Spending less. Wanting less. Spending more time in prayer and teaching Lily what a life in Christ is like by example rather than by words. Listening without distractions to the Holy Spirit.
I want to give, surely. I want to see my beloved family's face light up when I give them just the right gift. But I need, for myself, to spend this Christmas having nothing, emptying myself, and giving only. No taking. No wish lists. No gifts for myself.
This year I want only to give OF myself, of my time, and of my love.