Remembering Christmas

I found an article {you might have read it already} about a mom's 18 point contract with her 13 yo son over his iPhone. The contract in general makes beautiful, if startlingly rare, sense, but that's not what I latched on to.

It's her 13th point, about not taking 'a zillion pictures.' She says There is no need to document everything. Live your experiences. They will be stored in your memory.

I thought about her advice as I looked through my Christmas pictures. Nearly two weeks of family fun and approximately twelve pictures. None with DH's side of the family, which is especially odd because that side boasts two professional photographers and at least five DSLR cameras among us.

But I literally couldn't find the time. We were playing on the floor or talking or scheming at cards or cooking or giggling or a million other more important things. Things I will remember and enjoy in the file cabinet of my mind. They will never find a scrapbook page, but whenever we get together, this Christmas is one more family experience that we draw from.

I love photos. I love taking them, especially the random moments. As long as the camera doesn't own me. As long as the picture is a tool, not a crutch. Because sometimes, I find myself remembering the picture, not the event. And sometimes all I remember is my view finder, not the fun. Those pictures aren't worth it.

If you're not a photographer, if your kids' wedding slide show will be 30 seconds long, and you've never bothered to sign up for instagram, you haven't cheated your kids or your memory or missed your big life moments. They simply aren't on film. Neither are 99% of human history's most important moments.

If you join me in the photographer category, keep snapping art and sharing {your kids' slide show might need serious editing, however}. The scrapbook or the blog post doesn't make life legitimate, just documented. Our lives find importance through the people in those pictures.

Now I contradict my own post {as I frequently do} with the handful of Christmas pictures:

Sporting Momma and Auntie Em's reindeer antlers

He's an angry elf 

Reading the Nativity with PopPop on Christmas Eve - Momma's favorite part of Christmas

Favorite 'present' Christmas morning - camping with Nana on the living room floor

Mary, full of grace

How pitiful must the mother of Jesus have looked? A teenage mother, suspected of adultery, with a crazy story about an angel and a pregnancy from the Holy Spirit. Even her fiancé didn't believe her.

Did she rest for three months with her cousin Elizabeth because she needed time with someone who believes her? Another mother with a gift from God baby who leaped and shouted from the womb: HERE HE IS!

Her song is beautiful:

My soul praises the Lord; 
my heart rejoices in God my Savior, 
because he has shown his concern for his humble servant girl. 
From now on, all people will say that I am blessed, 
because the Powerful One has done great things for me. 
His name is holy.
God will show his mercy forever and ever to those who worship and serve him.
He has done mighty deeds by his power.
He has scattered the people who are proud and think great things about themselves.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones and raised up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with nothing.
He has helped his servant, the people of Israel, remembering to show them mercy as he promised to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his children forever. Luke 1:46-55 NCV

Would I pen such a verse asked to disgrace myself for the sake of God's glory? Would I count myself blessed to be labelled with a scarlet A? If everyone thought my husband was a weak pushover for marrying me and raising my bastard son? If no one believed the call on my life? Would I rejoice in God my savior?

By God's grace, she did.

And she carried his greatest grace in her arms and kissed his soft cheeks and made a bed for him where she could find one.

And all people call her blessed in verse and song, as we see, by his grace, what her disgrace gave to us all!

Silent night, holy night,
All is calm, all is bright,
Round yon virgin, mother and child,
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep In heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.

Big one's christmas gifts

An impromptu mommy daughter night with big one. We sit down to make a Christmas present for Daddy {which will be the next book in the series, "If you give a mouse a cookie..."}.

Once the paints were out, the masterpiece underway, she decided to make Christmas ornaments for all her friends, even their moms. We chatted about how much she loved her friends and how excited she was to give a present.

Next to her on the table sat a Christmas ornament made in 1990 by my best friend. It's hung on my Christmas tree every year since. Every year when I take it out, I think about him, really the whole family. One of those once in a lifetime finds - a kid for each of us, crafting mommas, engineering poppas. We did vacations together and sleepovers and birthdays. Life together.

We sip tea out of handmade Christmas gifts from Auntie Sarah and continue painting. She ran out of ornaments before she made one for me. Sorry, Mommy. I just guess I don't have one for you.

That's okay. The day is my gift.

Would we follow?

“We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” Matthew 2:2

A single spot of light in the sky. The most learned men in the land grabbed their gear and headed out in the night to follow it. What must that star have looked like to compel grown men with jobs and responsibilities, intellectuals, wise men to journey? Can you imagine setting out to follow a star? Would we make pot of gold and leprechaun jokes if we met them on the road?

Or would we walk too? Not knowing where the star will stop or what we will find when it does.

They obviously didn’t expect what they found. Surely the mightiest of all kings must have been born to command his own star! Who else in all history has had such a celestial birth announcement? So they journey to the palace in Jerusalem where “a star shall come out of Jacob.” Numbers 24:17 If he’s worthy of a star, he must be worthy of a palace. Surely Judah wouldn’t miss its great king.

Never did they dream the star would stop over a poor carpenter’s house, for a child of questionable parentage. Nor could they imagine that this star was for the King of Kings, the God-man. Who could imagine such a thing? Who could envision a holy God setting aside his mantle of glory for swaddling clothes and a dirt floor? 

I wonder if the wise men knew as they laid their gifts before him how inadequate their treasures were?

Do we know how inadequate our treasures are?

I wonder if the wise men knew that this boy would rescue the world, make right God’s broken world?

Do we believe he’s made all things right?

I wonder at these wise men, who didn’t know the God of Israel, who weren’t God’s chosen people, these Gentile scholars willing to walk the world in search of the King worthy of his own star.

Are we willing to walk too?

Baby rhino tree

I finished half of my Christmas shopping last week. Didn't matter. Christmas felt vague. Santa looked alien. Christmas music felt premature.

Until last night...

The tree is up, in all of its stunted, unbreakable glory.

Christmas trees are my thing, even as a little girl. I would sit in the dark on the living room floor, only the lights on the tree glowing bright. Watch the light bounce off the sequined ice skating dolls. The cracked glass owl that hung on my dad’s childhood tree. Mommy’s handmade ornaments from their broke newlywed years.

Christmas trees are story tellers, weaving two families together into a new one.

Our story tree feels brief this year. We opted for a short, live norfolk pine because it offered a heavy root ball, and I decorated with only soft, unbreakable ornaments. This is mostly small one’s doing. She denuded the front half of a friend’s tree in five minutes. Even pulled all the ornament hangers out of the top of the glass balls.

Last night as I hung the final ornament, leaving most of my favorites wrapped securely in storage, I was a little sad. Our tree isn’t ugly, exactly... No, it’s ugly, but in that baby rhino, so-ugly-it’s-cute kinda way.

And I really love beautiful, tall trees. And glass ornaments. And white lights.

But the girls have an opinion this year, so we have a short tree with colored bulbs. And they love it so much that they stopped in their tracks and stared, mouths open, hands clasped to their chests.

They reminded me that Christmas is about a family, God's family. And about sacrifice, Jesus'. He gave up the splendor of Heaven so that I could have access. How much more can I give up the beauty of a breakable tree to give my girls a tree they can touch.