Pondering All These Things

How is it that amid all the bustle and keeping of commitments during this season, a mother can be deep in thought about the future and the present and the shape of her kids' spirits? It makes me smile to realize that the pondering I'm doing is not really so odd. There was another mother who pondered the child she held and the shape of his future and his spirit.

"But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." Luke 2:19

Mary pondered Jesus' life on the day of his birth, and all these years later as we look back on that humble yet glorious day, I feel in the best of company doing some pondering at Christmas over three boys and the way the Spirit of Christ is forming and shaping their futures.

Are they growing more and more in their sense that God is life and life is God? Do they get that what matters most is a life lived daily with God? Are they learning to be still inside and listen to the voice of the Spirit? Are they learning to live and grow in community with the people of God? Are they learning to choose the hard way  sometimes rather than the easy way or the attractive way or the natural way because sometimes it's the road more difficult that brings life?

Mary pondered how the particulars would play out for this Savior babe. She considered how it would be that the Child born of her loins would mean eternity for every soul to ever live.

And I ponder how this Christ Child will day by day, year by year draw my children into an ever-deepening life with himself, Immanuel, God-with-us. As we focus with our boys on Jesus' birth, I think along with Mary about all Jesus means to me and to them.  It's the story of Jesus that I ponder as I consider my kids' stories and how they will live into--and out of-- this story of Christ.

Christmas and pondering. The season of the Story gives us mothers and fathers a lot to think about.

The Many Voices of Christmas

© Luke Saagi, used under Creative Commons License.

What's not to like about Christmas? It's a wonderful season. The music and good cheer, bright lights and parties, secrets and stories and sentiment. It's a magical time for children, and a time that as parents we love for our children's sake even as we cherish quietly, and with them, the focal point of the whole celebration--the coming of Jesus to our lives.

This will be our fourteenth Christmas with children, and as I think back on the years and look toward another celebration this month, its the voices of Christmas that come flooding to mind. The voices that have spoken into our choices about what and how to celebrate...

"What if Christmas, [Grinch] thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!”

Three gifts for each child--Gold, something they will value and treasure. Frankincense, a gift to help them meet with God. Myrrh, something to anoint and care for their body.

Sinter Klaus Day, Dec. 6. A first gift to each child in celebration of the caring bishop who provided dowry's for girls without one.

A birthday cake for Jesus on December 25.

Cub scout giving of gifts to needy families. Operation Christmas Child gift boxes. Gifts to men and women  serving far away in the military. Gifts to orphans  in Africa and others at risk worldwide.

Advent wreath lighting and reflection.

Epiphany remembrance and observance.

Creative and tasty gifts for neighbors.

Crafty holiday touches throughout the house.

Meal traditions for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning and Christmas lunch.

Caroling in nursing homes.

Gingerbread houses and cookie exchanges.

"Bah," said Scrooge, "Humbug."

Oh, the list goes on. Each of us with many voices, many choices before us each year as we hurtle from Thanksgiving to Christmas and New Year's. And laid back as we might be, surely we all have to squelch just the vaguest inclination toward a "Bah, humbug" as we spend our December days determined to remember the reason for the season and to keep the meaning the main thing as we live out all the ways of doing that.

Just last week I heard on the radio that many years ago, Christmas was not even celebrated. The church celebrated Easter in a big way, but because birthdays were not celebrated overall, the birth of Jesus just was not a church holy day. The thought. No Christmas, compared to ChristmasofToday. It's a startling dichotomy.

An article by Eugene Petersen tells the story of his family's Christmas when he was eight. Eugene's mother had found  a passage in Jeremiah that seemed to speak against the tradition of Christmas trees, and so that year, much to his own and his neighbors' chagrine, his family had no tree.  He reflects back now:

Mother, thank you ...  for providing me with a taste of the humiliation that comes from pursuing a passionate conviction in Christ. Thank you for introducing into my spirit a seed of discontent with all cultural displays of religion, a seed that has since grown tree-sized. Thank you for being relaxed in grace and reckless enough to risk a mistake. Thank you for being scornful of caution and careless of opinion. Thank you for training me in discernments that in adult years have been a shield against the seduction of culture-religion. Thank you for the courage to give me Jesus without tinsel, embarrassing as it was for me (and also for you?). Thank you for taking away the Christmas tree the winter I was eight years old. And thank you for giving it back the next year.

I don't know that we ever settle into an easy, contented Christmas rhythm. Much as we would like to, the good and the tradition and the holy are so intermingled that, without tossing away the holiday and stepping back a few hundred years, we can't escape the cacophony of voices and choices year by year.

For me, one voice helps bring perspective each time I feel I've failed or fallen irreparably behind. Funny, it's Scrooge again, but later in the story: “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”

Each day, all year, is a celebration of Jesus' life come to change mine. Each day is the time to spend meaningful moments with family, to care for another in need, to offer a thought-filled gift, to meet God in his Word over the light of a candle. It's a wonderful season, and all the more when we let Christmas illumine each day of our lives.

Recipe for a Happy Thanksgiving

Folded up in the back of my recipe box are greasy sheets of notebook paper filled with Mike's scrawling. Homemade stuffing. How to make turkey gravy. How to stuff the turkey. How to make a pie crust. All written during numerous phone calls with his mom between Denver and Chicago. They're from our first years of marriage, and those greasy pages have guided us through many a Thanksgiving production over the years. Early on, Mike's parents came for the holiday about every other year; eventually they moved here. My mom and extended family have always come, and year by year a baby or two joined the mix--a child of ours, a new cousin. For so many years the cooking happened in-between nursing and diaper changes, naps and play breaks. We set up assembly lines of bread and vegetable chopping, onion-simmering, turkey-cleaning. Grandparents came a day early for food prep, and year by year the boys began to grasp that Thanksgiving is all about lots of commotion, good smells, plans with family, hours of play time with cousins, games and sitting close with grandparents, and sometimes new, friendly faces.

If I'm honest, there have been tiring days and weeks getting ready for these gatherings. We've had plenty of cooking fiascos. Just last year the foil turkey pan was gouged with a knife and I found turkey juice and oil days later seeped down inside the cupboard. But it's also gotten a little easier over time. The recipes have become so familiar we don't have to pull them out and follow the steps. The boys help with food and place cards. It's become a traditional, anticipated season.

Not so in my own childhood. Holiday traditions took a turn when my parents split up and each year became a different combination of here and there and what and how. We gave up on tradition and, without saying it in so many words, simply accepted each holiday for what it brought and who we were with. Now, two of my siblings and one of Mike's also face this reality of back and forth with kids and ex-spouses. Once again, we all have learned to take the day as it comes.

When I think about Thanksgiving as a parent and as a moderately accomplished Thanksgiving chef who accepts any and all help, I come back to those gravy-stained recipes and realize that family love and grace, shared together and with others, is what holidays are meant to be in the spirit of Jesus. Tradition is wonderful when it fits. When that recipe doesn't work, flexing with one another and appreciating each hour for what it brings is really what it means to be grateful. No doubt all our families are stained and worn in one way or another. It's in unfolding those grease-covered pages of our lives and partaking together in whatever the day holds that we really live out with our kids the meaning of Thanksgiving.

Meet the Quinns: An Unlikely Journey

quinn

We’re an unlikely family. Mike and I married after being single for quite a few years, and then we waited a few more years to have kids. As two introverts who are very content reading the evening away, we’d have laughed you out of town if you’d told us we had three lively boys in our future.

Well, laughter happened over a baby in the Bible. It seems that baby surprises are more common than not when God is on the move. And so here we are, fourteen years later and still wondering how in the world you parent boys, how you keep a household running and clean and fun and meaningful as the world presses in on all sides and the culture won’t pipe down about what we need to do, watch, buy, see, and be.

It’s hard to parent day in and day out. Hard to keep up with children’s changing stages and capabilities. Hard to know when to let it be hard and enforce anyway, and when to let up and let them own their choices. And hard to stay connected personally with God while also teaching and guiding our kids in spiritual growth.

The parable of the soils is one of my long-time favorites. I’ve known Jesus since I was small and for many years I’ve carried with me the mental image of good dirt, of green things growing and thriving in dark, wet soil. It’s a metaphor that’s always worked for me and it’s been the focus of my prayers for people I’ve loved. Being dirty is pretty common around our house. Being good dirt, though, isn’t a given, for me or for my kids. I hope it will be true for us, nonetheless.

And so, this Good Dirt adventure is one Mike and I are eager to enter and live out together with our kids. Helping them to understand the spiritual disciplines, letting them experience how the choices in our days make us who we are in God, helping them to see that words and habits and attitudes of the heart matter a lot, that our life with God is worth more than anything else in this life. This is what we’re seeking. This is the quest for the Good Dirt.

An unlikely journey? Maybe. But unlikely journeys are always part of the story when God is on the move. We’re looking forward to embarking on the Good Dirt adventure together with you.