Well … the end of another calendar year is in sight. I’m working on some posts right now … but I also got bit by a designing bug and I’ve got quilts coming out of my ears. Not literally, yet. But I have to get the ideas down, or I’ll lose them. So in the meantime, I thought I’d do some best of posts …

Tonight, a list of the most commented posts of the year. I just went through by month and picked the post for each month with the most comments. August was unique because there was a tie that month for most comments and it was a high too … 26 for both posts. So, I’ll begin with January, end with December and see where the road takes us.

January – Comestible Consumption Competition – Day 8
February – Love Them Patriots
March – Leaving Oz
April – The People Known As the Bride of Christ
May – Perspectives On Women
June – 7 Books I’m Reading
July – Losing My Religion
August – The Appearance of Holiness
To Whom Shall I Turn
September – OMG!!!
October – Vampire Protection
November – WWJS …
December – Twaddle and a Confession

Having spent so much time in my own writing this evening, I no longer have any confidence in myself. What am I thinking? Oy … my 7 readers are filled with grace. Thank you from the bottom of my pea-pickin little heart.

Tomorrow, or Sunday, a list of my favorite posts from the year. Maybe a photo of the quilt I’m designing too as a special extra (it’s an art quilt, so it’s small).

I wrote at some length about my best Christmas gift the other day.  But here are some other gifts I received on Christmas.

We have a new tradition now … spaghetti for dinner.  I spent a couple of hours making a (new) recipe for dinner.  Chicken Cassoulet with Acorn Squash.  It smelled delightful and yummy.  Just the thing for a winter dinner.  The thing about cassoulets is that they are soupy stews that you bake.  So I did as directed.  For the last half hour you should remove the dutch oven lid.  When the time came, I was feeling lazy and LightBoy loves to help in the kitchen.  So I directed him to remove the lid from the pot.  It seemed simple enough, but just pushing his envelope of responsibility so that he would feel necessary.  No.  It was too much.  He had not traversed the foibles of a heavy pan in the oven with the rack and the heat and everything before.  No one is really clear on what happened, but the cassoulet ended up on the floor, along with LightBoy’s self-esteem.  I hugged him and reassured him and mentally kicked myself in the a$$ for not getting up off the couch.  Then I promptly forgot everything I ever knew about the properties of heat transfer and suggested that he pick up the blazing pan lid that was sitting on the floor without an oven mitt.

LightHusband and LightMom made spaghetti for dinner after that.  I just could not recover.

And discovered that after years and years of thinking that Christmas dinner had to be special … it’s really the people, not the food.  We usually have roast beef because I love it.  Spaghetti was really wonderful.  They dressed it up pretty nicely with red wine and leeks and cut up steak and chicken sausage and whatever else they could find in the frig.  But it was wonderful.  I think it was one of the best Christmas dinners ever.  Yummilicious.  And there were no hours spent preparing it.  Half an hour.  And we all love it.  New tradition!

I heard two new family stories that will remain with me for a long time.  I’m working through them to find the nuggets to incorporate them into my life.  But they were gifts to me this Christmas.  One was a back story that filled in the gaps and holes of a story I’ve known for a long time.  The other was new.   They were both about my paternal grandparents.

When my dad was little, his paternal grandmother lived with them.  His mother was my grandfather’s second wife after my grandfather was widowed with three children.  So my grandmother raised 3 stepchildren and 2 of her own children in a house the size of a small apartment AND she had her mother-in-law living with her.  By all accounts, my great-grandmother was not the easiest person to live with either.  All accounts meaning my grandfather told me this one day.  I also happen to know that she was a person of fairly deep faith (because my father still pretty bitterly resents having to sit and read her Bible to her when she couldn’t see anymore … hehehe … he used to try to skip verses in the Psalms and she’d know right away 😉 ).  Just so you have some context.  So one day my grandmother was in the kitchen making dinner or something and fuming about something my grandfather had done or was doing or something and said to my great-grandmother (her mother-in-law), “When will men stop being so stubborn?”  and the story goes that my great-grandmother replied, “When women stop being so willful.”  Now, don’t reply to that … just let it sit with you for a while.  It’s pretty deep.

The other story is about my grandfather.  I’ve known this much for a long time … that one Christmas when my dad was young, my grandfather got grumpy about something, collected all his gifts and refused to open them until April.  Everytime my father got a little grinchy about Christmas or a birthday or any celebration, that story was hauled to explain it.  So I asked my father about that this week.  Why did his dad put all his gifts away that year?  My dad got a funny grin on his face and said, “Oh, I think he (my grandfather) was mad because he told everyone not to spend so much money on him. And he was making a point.”  We were all sitting around the table when that was said … LightHusband, LightGirl and LightBoy all turned and looked at me … AHA, that’s where you get it from!  My dad went on, “My father … from the first time he began earning money … always, scrupulously put 10% of his earnings into savings.  So he always had money set aside to help his family.  He didn’t think people should spend so much on him, but it should be spent on other things.”

My intangible gifts … I’ll be pondering them as I continue on my journey.  You’ll probably be reading more about these thoughts as we enter the new year, but I’ve been appreciating them in the Christmas afterglow.

My parents are here for the holiday. We’re all having a grand time enjoying each other’s company. We all sort of hang out together and laugh and talk. We’ve already enjoyed many memory gaffes. But that’s not my best Christmas gift.

We did Christmas morning in our traditional way. Sort of. When I was growing up, the kids got up first. We’d rattle around just enough to wake up my parents. Then we’d get our stockings from the kitchen table. Yes, the table. First of all … we heated with wood and had wood stoves, so Santa would have burned his nether regions if he’d come down our chimneys. So we very thoughtfully left our stockings on the table. I don’t know how he came into our house. As we got older and learned the truth (that Santa is Satan, I mean that Santa isn’t real) we just kept leaving stockings on the table. So, us kids would get our stockings, plus Mom and Dad’s and take them up to my parents’ room. We’d all sit on their bed and open the stockings. When I was growing up stocking gifts were wrapped in newspaper. My parents have a gift with stockings … they do their best work with stocking gifts. They are inventive and silly; thoughtful and whimsical. I think that is my Dad’s contribution to Christmas, but I’m not entirely certain.

After stockings, we have breakfast. Then we’d feed and water all the animals … chickens, geese, cows, horses, dogs, cats, sheep. Some of the favored animals would often get a special treat or special ration of grain or something. Load the wood bins for the day. The woodstoves did not get any special wood. Clean up the kitchen and be dressed in decent clothes.

After all of that, the unwrapping of the gifts would commence. We went one gift at a time … youngest to oldest. Everyone had to wait turns and watch each person unwrap so we all knew what everyone got. This eternally confounded my maternal grandfather. He managed to call every year when we were about 1/3 of the way finished to talk to us. Every year he was surprised that we weren’t finished. Every year … Surprise! What?? He was of the rip and tear all at once theory. We did not ascribe to that theory. It was funny. And we all always laughed.

So … I am still the first person awake every Christmas morning. Still. At 46. What is wrong with me? I first woke up at 4:15 and decided that was silly. So I went back to sleep. I woke again at 5:30 and that was the end of that. So I got up and made a carafe full of coffee (3 french press pots), emptied the dishwasher for LightGirl and sat in front of the lit Christmas tree in awe. But that wasn’t my best gift

LightGirl was the next person up at 6:30 so she joined me with some hot chocolate, then LightBoy for some hot chocolate. We had a few minutes together with our drinks looking at the tree. But that wasn’t my best gift.

LightMom and LightDad came downstairs and we opened stockings that had been left (as we do) on the kitchen table. But we do this in the family room. It was so much fun to have them participating the stockings again … as I wrote above … it is their gift. But that wasn’t it either.

We did breakfast, cleaned up. And began opening. We were most of the way through when I got a gift with a tag that read: “This made Mom cry, but it will make you laugh. To Sonja Love from Mom & Dad” LightHusband jumped to get his camera. LightMom looked funny and I was not certain I wanted to open this package. If it made my mom cry, I was fairly certain I might cry too … and just what was contained herein that made my mom cry on Christmas?? It was all too mysterious … and squishy as well.

Then it was revealed and we all dissolved into howls of laughter.

The story goes like this: When I was a baby my mom knit me a stocking. It was the stocking I had all through my childhood. Until a small closet fire when I was about 10 years old. The fire was started by my little brother who was playing with matches. My stocking and my other brother’s stocking and other family things burned up. My mother burned her hand pretty badly, too. I think a lot of my dad’s things from his term of service in Alaska were destroyed. So the stockings were gone. Except for the brother’s who had started the fire. There is no justice. Oh wait. My mother was too busy by the time he came along to ever knit him a stocking. So now none of us had stockings. Maybe there was justice. But I mourned my stocking. I held no grudge, I just missed my stocking.

When I got married, I discovered that LightHusband had had the same stocking all his childhood that his mother had knit for him as a baby!! What are the chances? So my new mother-in-law knit me a matching stocking. I had a new treasure and I loved it because of it’s ties and significance.

When the babies started to come along in all of our siblings families I discovered that my mother had been hiding her light under a bushel all these years. My mother loved to knit! She became a knitting machine churning out tiny sweaters and hats and mittens for the grandchildren. Each one also got a personalized Christmas stocking. I don’t mean name either. She would change and modify the directions to make the stocking for each child personally. They are all beautiful. So are all the sweaters and hats and mittens. We have all treasured them.

Sometime less than 4 years ago, my mother surprised me with a replacement stocking for the one in my childhood. We can’t remember the exact year, but we know it was since the youngest of my nieces was born and she turned 5 this past June. But she forgot. We don’t know what happened … she just forgot that she’d done that. I didn’t. But then you never tell the recipient of a gift what you’re thinking. In my family of origin that principle gets carried out perhaps a little too far. You tell no one. We operate like the Dept. of Defense when it comes to Christmas. So my mother did not even mention this to LightHusband, because he would have known and reminded her.

So she planned and found the special wool (white angora) to make Santa’s beard. She knit away on their trip to Florida and back to visit my uncle this fall. She grinned happily when she read my philosophy on gifting on my blog. She was thrilled at her choice in gifts this year. She knew she had outdone herself. And … she had. Oh yes … she had.

She had outdone herself TWICE!! I am doubly blessed! So that is the story of my best Christmas gift … of 2007.

UPDATE – (written by visiting author LightMom) –

Once in a lifetime….I hope!

In the 50’s I started knitting Christmas Stockings for my nephews – nieces would arrive much later!
As our children were born (1961, 1963, 1nd 1965) I knit them what had become a favorite stocking with name, a Santa with angora beard, and crossed candy canes.

In the summer of 1969 with Sonja at camp and LightUncle1 visiting a friend, LightUncle2 (not quite 4) practiced lighting matches in the front closet of our home at Kent’s Corner. And, of course, the result was….fire! Fortunately for us the closet was lined with tongue and groove cedar boards and GrandPea and I were able to squelch the fire and throw much of the burning material out the door onto the lawn. Among the belongings that were too burned to save were Sonja and LightUncle2’s stockings. I suppose in the back of my mind I intended to replace them but ….it must have been w-a-a-y-y back!

LightUncle1 continued to use his stocking, and when his daughter was born in 2002 asked if I might knit one for her. I searched the internet and various knitting stores for the pattern, but it was not to be found. So, I did my best using LightUncle1’s as the model. He was satisfied, I was not. Since we are trying to get rid of the flotsam and jetsam that has accumulated over 45+ years, we are continually sorting through it all. And wa-la I found the original – now 50 year old – pattern.

So, I set about re-knitting LightNiece3’s stocking (I hadn’t liked the non-wool yarn I had used, either) and now (2004) one for her brother, LightNephew.

So, this Christmas I decided to start replacing the burned stockings and since we were due to spend Christmas with Sonja and family, hers would be for this year! So I set about the task, and a friend found me some faux angora. And it was actually completed before we boarded the train to D.C.

Sonja had written that she and her family were trying to move toward a less commercialized Christmas and she most wanted to give gifts that she made or were really relevent to the giver/givee. Ahh… I had the perfect gift!

So now…imagine my dismay when I walked in their home to find……………..all their stockings ‘hung with care..’ and one of them being a replacement stocking I had apparently knit around 2004 or 2005! I was crushed. This was to be my major gift to my daughter and it was now a mere ditto!

I decided I needed to ‘punt’. Instead of hanging the stocking after she went to bed Christmas Eve – my original plan – I wrapped it as a gift under the tree. The tag read, “love to Sonja from Mom and Dad. This will make your mother cry and you laugh.” I forewarned photographer son-in-law, LightHusband, to be ready with his camera.

And boy, did we laugh – the laughter went on for some time – we held our sides and wiped the tears and just let it roll. Even a ditto can be the best Christmas present ever!

The ubiquitous “they” say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So, this is high flattery for Mak, my Colorado friend who is the originator of this stunning idea … a digital Christmas card posted on one’s blog. Or that’s where I originally saw it. I am going to attempt to send out tangible Christmas cards as well this year (made on my Mac) and here is what is written inside:

LightGirl plays hockey, LightBoy plays hockey, Sonja manages LightGirl’s team, LightHusband takes pictures and drives. Yep. We’re a hockey family. Hockey, hockey, hockey. Broken up by the occasional trip to Colorado, Vermont and yes, our 20th wedding anniversary in August. There were a knee injury (LightGirl) and a pancreatitis attack (Sonja) to keep things lively, but we are otherwise healthy, happy and enjoying the holidays with family (Thanksgiving with the Andrews and Christmas with the Naylors).

Click on the image for a larger representation …

I am blessed to “know” so many of you through the virtual world of the blogosphere. I have grown through writing and reading all of you as well. May the coming year be one in which you experience the Kingdom’s grace in unexpected places. Peace and Blessings to your home during the holiday season.

Sonja

LightGirl “Mom, what do you want for Christmas?”

Me “I’d really like world peace. … but I’d settle for peace in the house.”

long pause complete with sardonic look on LightGirl’s face …

“I was thinking of something I could buy!”

“Because if you haven’t noticed this house is FILLED with stubborn people.

So. Is there anything I can … BUY?”

At which moment I was practically on the floor in laughter. That’s my daughter for you. Almost fourteen, full of herself, and tellin’ it like it is. The funny thing is that she’s usually dead on.

Our house … filled with stubborn people, attempting to live out the Kingdom, incarnation and all. And isn’t that really much of the problem with attaining world peace too? Our world, filled with stubborn people. Hmmm … kinda makes you think.

I haven’t played along with the RevGals Friday Five in a long, long time … but this one really caught my eye. So I thought I’d throw in my two cents for the day. Here’s the challenge from RevRodH:

I have debated with myself for weeks about today’s Friday Five.

* Self 1: It should be deep and theological.
* Self 2: But it’s almost Christmas, it should be fun and warm and sweet.
* Self 1: But your last Friday Five was sort of silly. You should show your more serious side.
* Self 2: You worry WAY too much!

So after consulting with my fourteen year old daughter, we’re going playful, pals o’ mine! I love stories, so I hope you’ll tell some about your favorite Christmas memories.

1. What was one of your favorite childhood gifts that you gave:

This was the best all time Christmas moment ever. I don’t remember our respective ages … but I think I was in my early teens (say 13 or 14 … about the age that LightGirl is now). My next brother was about to turn 11 or 12 and my youngest brother was about 10. So this is about my youngest brother. He gave his Christmas list to our mother as we all did. There were several items on it … as all of ours had, but nothing stood out very much. My other brother and I decided to pool our resources and get him one of the items on the list, but we didn’t think too hard about it. It was just one of the items. We bought it and felt kinda good about it, but we were not attempting to get the “best” one or anything. We wrapped it up and felt a little bad, because it was very small and it came from both of us. But it was costly, so we just hoped he would know that.

Now, what you have to know about my youngest brother is that he is very tall. He’s always been tall for his age and when he was young he was very gangly. And at this time in my childhood we didn’t have any money for first hand furniture … we had cast-offs and lived in an old Vermont farmhouse with insulation for wallpaper. It was pretty stark, but we were generally speaking well-fed and happy. We heated with wood so the livingroom was always warm around the woodstove.

I can still remember the moment that my brother opened that gift. It was over 30 years ago. But it is still crystal clear in my mind. I can see him and where he was sitting on that old green sofa … between the woodstove and the window. He was all folded up because it was low to the floor and he carefully pulled the Buck Knife from it’s box, cradled it in his hands upon his knees and said over and over again, “Buck. Knife. WOW!” His eyes were huge and it was all he could do. Stare at that knife, cradle it in his hands and gasp. In my memory this went on for about 15 minutes. More likely it was two or three. But it made a huge impression on me. We still tell the tale between us siblings with huge foolish grins on all of our faces, about the gift with unexpected rewards for all of us.

2. What is one of your favorite Christmas recipes? Bonus points if you share the recipe with us.

Christmas morning Candy Cane Bread … yummy sweet bread made in the shape of a candy cane braided around maraschino cherries and apricots … served warm with confectioner sugar icing on top. I’d post the recipe … but it’s long and complicated. Hmmm … I’ll think about a link to a .pdf document. I have to give credit to my mother-in-law for this tradition. I don’t know where it came from before her, but I love it … so does everyone but LightGirl. She gets to start her own tradition when she has her own family. Ha!

Oh … I couldn’t stand it … I “need” those extra points 😀 LOL.  Here is a link to download the recipe.

3. What is a tradition that your family can’t do without? (And by family, I mean family of origin, family of adulthood, or that bunch of cool people that just feel like family.)

Having a big tree … as I discovered this year when I proposed having a small, living tree and was thoroughly ridiculed for it. It’s become a family joke. LightHusband has taken to calling me Moses because I want a “burning bush” as he calls my proposal for a small living tree to go with our reduced Christmas. So, apparently, my family cannot go without a big tree with all … every last one of the ornaments out, every last year.

4. Pastors and other church folk often have very strange traditions dictated by the “work” of the holidays. What happens at your place?

Well, this is the first year in a long time that I have not been directly involved in anything churchy around Christmas. I kind of don’t know what to do with myself. My parents are coming to visit, but we realized too late that it should have been the other way around, we ought to have made plans to go to them. Eh … such is life.

5. If you could just ditch all the traditions and do something unexpected… what would it be?

Take my children and all the money we spend on Christmas and go to the local women’s shelter in January. When we get there, we’d sit down and find some families to befriend and walk with. I’m tired of Christmas and all of it’s pressure, both sacred and secular. It’s just too much. We ask too much. We do too much. We want too much. We don’t love enough. I’d want to love more. That’s it …

Way back when … when was it now?

Oh yeah, back when I still had hope and faith in the political system of this country. That would be about 4 years ago. Maybe a little longer ago. It was back when Howard Dean’s campaign for president was gathering steam and before the powers that be in the Democratic party put their foolish heads together to decide that he was unfit. What a bunch of nincompoops. They chose John Kerry as the heir apparent. Because that was a good choice to run against George Bush. I said it then and I’ll say it now … idiots. So, it was late 2003 and I had some hope in our political system.

I joined a few of the grassroots political organizations that were popping up all over the place. I had hope that they might actually change some things around here. Iowa and then New Hampshire dashed my foolish hopes. And the election reminded me of harsh reality. But that’s another blog post.

In any case, I stuck with my memberships … but my activity was reduced to cynical and jaded readings of the e-mails that came through my in-box. One came through today from Move-on.org. I usually just skim it in preview and delete them. But this one caught my attention. They are raising money to send phone cards to the troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea and elsewhere. Okay, you got me now. I’m a sucker for the troops. I may despise the war, but the troops are another story altogether. Being the wife of a disabled veteran and having been married to the Army for umpty-ump years … I know the drill.

So I clicked through to see where it would take me. It took me to their donations page which also had an introduction talking about phone cards for troops. To best of my knowledge they are rounding up donations which will then be used to purchase phone cards for our service men and women in foreign lands. It will also be used to bolster the rolls of Move-on.org. Eh … okay. Two birds, one stone. I get it. But I’d rather just get phone cards, so I did a little bit of searching … very little. I found two places that you can get phone cards for service men and women serving abroad in far away places. One is through the military’s post exchange system. You have to be military or retired military to purchase here, but this is by far the best buy. And it will get the cards into the hands of the troops the quickest and most efficient method possible. But … there is the caveat. Second is through the USO’s (United Service Organization) Operation Phone Home and they will get cards to the service men and women very quickly as well.

So, if you still have some money to do a good deed may I gently suggest that we have many military families in this country who would love to speak with their fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters … well … you get the point. They hardly ever get to phone home and this would be a blessed gift of grace.

I love the beach and the ocean. It’s always been a favored spot of mine. We haven’t been in a very, very long time. There was a time when we went, along with several other families, every October. It was an annual retreat to the Outer Banks. That has gone by the wayside now for a variety of different reasons, almost all of which point to a new season in our lives. I will have to find a new time and place to visit the ocean each year.

When I was a child one of my favorite things to do was to stand about knee deep or so and let the waves buffet me. I wanted to see how long I could stand before the outrushing tide swept the sand out from under my feet and I no longer had a foundation on which to plant myself. Could I curl my toes around enough sand to make a stand? Me against the elements! The horse she saith into the trumpets ha ha! And I played that game with myself for many long minutes, until the temptation of the waves and my brothers became too much and off we’d go to swim or build castles in the air or something equally delightful.

As an adult, I’ve tried this but it’s lost much of its charm. I’m stronger now and more adept. I can stand now in the face of all but the most outrageous waves. In fact, the waves that it takes to knock me down as an adult are really quite dangerous and I should not be standing out in them. The ocean holds other charms for me now.

I was reading through the blog-o-sphere this morning and came upon this at Bill Kinnon’s place:

One writer against Christmas went so far as to say that the shopkeepers for their own commercial purposes alone sustain Christmas Day. I am not sure whether he said that the shopkeepers invented Christmas Day. Perhaps he thought that the shopkeepers invented Christianity. It is a quaint picture, the secret conclave between the cheese-monger, the poulterer, and the toy-shop keeper, in order to draw up a theology that shall convert all Europe and sell some of their goods. Opponents of Christianity would believe anything except Christianity. That the shopkeepers make Christmas is about as conceivable as that the confectioners make children. It is about as sane as that milliners manufacture women.
— G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, January 13, 1906.

Bill, in dry spot, was quoting the inimitable Chesterton. Fancy that. It kinda got me thinking though. I had a conversation yesterday with BlazingEwe about the nature of stuff and why we have so much. And why we think we have to have more. Why we like to shop, etc. We have these sorts of conversations regularly. Because we both know we have too much stuff and we feel assaulted by the messages to get more all the time. I commented on Bill’s post that shopkeepers might not have invented Christmas, but they surely feast upon it. Yes, they do.

This quote got me thinking about the ways in which we attempt to stand against the tide as adults. Chesterton is both pithily correct and yet, wrong. We’ve long known that in the aftermath of the Depression and WWII, the shopkeepers did get together and consciously (or perhaps not) decide on the path of planned obsolescence in order to create markets and economies and desires for their products in the masses. It’s a very symbiotic relationship and this did not happen overnight, nor was it done in a vacuum without the consent and knowledge of said masses. We may like to pretend we didn’t know, but we know. We’ve bought into it on some level.

So what have we done? Over the years, the decades, the generations, we’ve allowed the powers and principalities to tell us and we’ve told each other that the way to express our love for each other is to buy bigger and better gifts for each other. We’ve done this. No one else has. We can point to the manufacturers, the advertisers, the shopkeepers, etc. But in the end, we have met the enemy and he is us. Gifts keep getting bigger. Credit card debt gets deeper. The advertising gets gnarlier. First it was radios. Then it was televisions. Now it’s big screen televisions complete with play stations. Or complete kitchen makeovers. The giving is enormous. There is jewelry, clothing, automobiles. Using one’s credit cards will allow one to compete for prizes such as the perfect gift (that will cause the special someone to swoon). ( Lest you think I’ve been watching too much television, a good friend has been working retail this year and many of my examples come from her.)

Now before you think I’m a grinch (though I am 😀 ), I don’t have anything against gifts to express our love. I just wonder if we haven’t derailed a bit. I wonder if there isn’t some other way that we can express how we feel about our loved ones. I remember reading Little House in the Big Woods with LightGirl. And in that series Laura Ingalls Wilder revealed an entirely different cultural expectation for love and how it was expressed. It was seen over and over again, not just during their several Christmas celebrations, but during the thick and thin of their lives. And … no, I’m not advocating a return to the prairie. I’m just thinking about how they expressed themselves to one another. The gifts they gave each other were rarely physical. When they were, the gift had a special significance that revealed something about the recipient’s character or the relationship between the giver and recipient. The gifts revealed a level of thought and care that are rarely seen these days.

As I reflected on Bill’s GKC quote, the things that have been disturbing me about Christmas giving were put to rest. I’m relatively unconcerned about whether or not a gift is handmade. I don’t care about how much or how little is spent. I want to know that the giver spent time and care thinking about me. Just as I spend time and care thinking about the people that I give gifts to. Giving is akin to a spiritual ritual for me and I don’t enter into it lightly. It is one of the places where I continue to curl my toes into the sand and attempt to stand against the tide. I still can’t keep my feet. I get knocked around fairly regularly by the waves. But I keep getting back up and trying again. It feels just about as useless as standing against the ocean, but she saith into the trumpets … ha ha!

I haven’t posted in a while. I think it might be the longest while ever. This is not a good record to break. But I suspect that all will live and probably thrive. I finally gave up and just marked “all as read,” in my Googlereader. Some of you will go unread into the dustbin of history. I feel really badly about that … I really do. But I was overwhelmed. Completely. Still … all will live and probably thrive. Such is the stuff of life.

Some really good things have happened lately. My blog, that would be this very blog that you have cast your eyes up now, was accepted into The Daily Scribe. It happened several weeks ago and you may have noticed the shiny new logo in my sidebar. I try to keep it gleaming and crisp because I’ve still got a shine on too about the whole thing. Wander on over to the village square and check them out … what a bunch of fabulous writers and thinkers are gathered there.

We’ve managed to have a few gatherings in our home to celebrate Advent. This has been wonderful and gentle and most of all expectant. The most amazing thing was being able to pray through Isaiah 35:1-10 using lectio divina with 7 children ranging in age from 8 to 14 last evening … and only 5 adults. And, both children and adults got something out of it. I’m still amazed. The kids are loving it too. This is even more amazing. I love watching God at play among the people.

This weekend was so hectic. Four hockey games, a hockey party (for LightGirl’s team), Advent gathering and yes, we squoze in time to breath and eat. The party for LightGirl’s team was so much fun. We had it here at the house. 11 girls, 2 boys and assorted parents. I planned lunch, a couple of activities and lots of time for talking and giggling. One of the activities was building gingerbread houses with ye olde standby … the trusty graham cracker. I didn’t think the girls would buy into it. But it was their favorite thing. They begged to get started and were completely into it. Much more than I anticipated 12, 13 and 14 yo girls would be. I still have their creations proudly displayed on the breakfast bar. I don’t have the heart to properly dispose of them. They are beautiful. LightBoy and his friend made gingerbread tanks (of course!) … after doing the appropriate research! Hilarious.

LightBoy is feeling the tension of not playing the war games, but is being good. He did, however, get a war movie at Blockbuster the other day. He couldn’t help it he said and swatted his eyelashes at me. Today at lunch I joined in mid-conversation when I overheard his father exclaim, “What are you going to do? Behead them and blow them up?”

“What?! Behead and blow what up?”

“No, Mom … I want to get Barbies at the Dollar Store to make angel Christmas ornaments.”

“Oh … well … you can’t do that either. Barbies … whether they’re at the Dollar Store or elsewhere are made by slave girls in China and we can’t support that. So you can’t get a Barbie. Or a knockoff. You could just Google how to make an angel ornament and make one like that.”

My poor, deprived children. They get great, creative ideas and their deranged socially alert mother shoots ’em down and makes them create out of recycled soda bottles and tissue paper … it was the saddest angel ornament you ever saw. I think Sam the dog might “accidently” eat it. That would be a shame. Maybe I will give him a little bit of guidance tomorrow.

I spent today fighting with my blog to upgrade it. Tomorrow I can do fun things like make cookies and angel ornaments with my children. Today I had to fight with technology. Maybe tomorrow I will be in a better mood. Tomorrah is a bettah day, after all.

I know most people have heard the term, “ants in your pants,” and most of us have talked about being itchy for something. But I think I’ve taken the idea of being itchy and waiting too literally this year.

I cannot stop itching. I’ve had this rashy thing going on since early November. I had a brief respite last week through the wonders of pr*dnisone. So I have an appointment with a dermatologist today and an allergist tomorrow.

In the meantime I’m on my version of an allergy-free diet (I’m not allergic to meat, dairy, potatoes, apples, and spinach) and I’m waiting. The joke around the house has become that I can eat dirt. If it lives in the dirt, I can eat it. LightHusband (unwittingly) bought a nice pork butt for the crock pot today. I announced, as I put dinner together this morning, “Great! I’m now eating dirt and butt. What a wonderful life!” In true 10 year old fashion, LightBoy pounced on the idea of eating butt.

“Are we really eating butt?”

“Yes.” flat-eye look.

“Well. I hope they washed it first.” and he knocked himself over with his comic prowess.

Being itchy as I am has given me a weird dynamic to reflect on the waiting that we do and how we do it. I suppose I shouldn’t speak for everyone here, I can only really speak for myself. I’m not a very good wait-er. I don’t think our culture is very good at waiting. We want what we want when we want it. If it’s not given to us, then we go out and get it for ourselves somehow. We find ways around the rules. We don’t like change so much. Change requires that we live within the rules and work through them.

God requires that we wait. She sent a baby in response to several hundred years of waiting for a king. It was so upside down that no one saw what was happening. Despite the prophecy, they could not see it. I’ll bet none of us could have seen it. The Light came and the darkness didn’t know it.  History is always obvious once you know what is going to happen. But in the moment? Not so much. And no one took note of a poor Hebrew couple from a hick town who were so unorganized and disconnected they couldn’t even find a room for the night. It wasn’t the holiday season back then. It wasn’t cHannukah. It wasn’t anything. It was just mid-winter and a census. There was nothing going on … it was the long dry spell between the high holy days of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret in the autumn and the Pesach holiday in the spring. Into that period of waiting and rest for the winter, Herod called a census.

So, the child/babe was born. We celebrate this every year. But here’s the thing. He had to grow up. More waiting. 30 years of it. For Mary, thirty years of clinging to a couple of sentences with an angel in a barn, sprinkled with a few incidents throughout Jesus’ young life. We throw around casual phrases, “Jesus was either a liar or a lunatic or Lord of all,” and think we’re cute. I wonder about how those paradigms played out for the waiting that Mary lived. Or Joseph. What is it like to have a 12 year old son break all the strict rules when you know in your heart He is the messiah? And very few others recognize that? Mary had a powerful, earthy faith in the Father that allowed her to continue on. We don’t know what questions her heart asked. But we do know that she kept on in the face of them.

How we wait and whether we wait, I’m coming to believe, is a reflection of our levels of faith, hope and peace. Waiting is difficult. Whether or not we can talk ourselves through it is a reflection of where our faith is, whether or not we have hope and what we think of of peace. Are we willing to wait on God and Her timing for a particular issue, or will we shoehorn our timing and plans in where they do not belong? Waiting is hard and discerning the difference between God’s plans and mine is even more difficult sometimes. It is very beguiling to think that because this or that appears to be working out, it must be within the Divine will. So, I must wait. Wait. And wait again. Even then I usually get it wrong. When we want something, that still small voice would appear to become smaller and even more still. This means we need to sit very, very quietly. Instead, what do we do?

When we are not hearing from God, when there is “an issue” looming large, bearing down on us … in our families, in our personal lives, in our communities. What do we do? Do we sit quietly and wait? Do we, in fact and deed, trust that God will come through for us? Or is our real bottom line that we think that God helps those who help themselves?

So, while you’re out shopping, prepping dinner, making cookies, whatever … think about how you wait and how you trust. What do those say about your faith?