Skip to main content

Unexpected

One week till Christmas.

Seven days.

How are you doing?

Hanging in there?

Excelling?

Crying?

It's ok. I've done all three in the past week.

This morning I woke up with nothing to do. Of course there are things to do, but the calendar is clear today.

Today I get to bake and clean and listen to Christmas music and rest. We have been running winter colds through the six people in our house and I woke up with a sore throat, but today I can rest, so I will be thankful for that.

I know this next week can be really hard. I know that losses, finances, and hardships are heightened this time of year. It's ok to be sad. It's ok to feel the weight of unmet expectations.

I am walking into this week with hands open.

I will not let the dreams of what could be ruin the truth of what is right in front of me.

I still have gifts to wrap, goodies to bake, I didn't get a Christmas card sent out this year, snow is threatening to ruin my travel plans, kids are sick, and tensions tend to run high in our house during the holidays.

None of that matters.

Love matters. Showing up late, messy, unwrapped, bringing my best, even at my worst and offering it  to the people around me, that is what matters.

I hope you are feeling joyful, hopeful and at peace this holiday season. I hope that you are surrounded by love. I hope that you feel accepted despite your own perceptions of brokenness and shortcomings.

But if you don't feel those things, rest in this; Christmas has never been about showing up with everything all put together. Christmas is about finding love, peace and joy in unexpected places.

Sometimes we find Christmas under a tree, surrounded by family, with music playing, candles lit and the scent of dinner wafting from the kitchen.

But sometimes Christmas is disguised in the form of cancelled plans, burnt food, and the imperfect people that make up the everyday life that we are living with all year round.

If you miss the mark this week and the big day leaves you feeling defeated and let down, it's ok. You have 364 other days to show up and try again.

Let's go into this week, wanting nothing, expecting no certain outcome. Let's rejoice in the simple, let's give thanks for the mundane, lets marvel at the unexpected, because the unexpected is often where miracles appear.

With love,
Me


Be still. Take time and pray. Thank God for the simple things in your life right now. I am thanking God for my quiet time this morning, and the peace he gives me when I ask.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Changes

I was cleaning today, which gave me time to think, and thinking always leads me here. The house is 'weekend messy', so decided to clean my floors, because The Nester says if your floors are clean the rest of the house feels clean too, even if it isn’t.  I have found that it is pretty good advice, so when everything else feels chaotic, I clean the floors. Of course for me, cleaning the floors also means picking up the toys, shoes, clothes, etc. so that I can even begin to vacuum, which naturally leads to a cleaner home as well.  While cleaning up I began to think about how this blog has evolved over the years, from a desire to write like The Nester about home, into what it is now.  I started writing this blog when I was dreaming of building a new home. Then plans changed, life took turns, and we ended up in a home so different than I expected and so perfect for our family. Somewhere along the way I realized that home wasn’t in the walls that went up or in the co

A Year End Photo Review

I have been catching up on the blogs that I follow and I see so many end of the year round ups. I am not that organized, nor am I anywhere near having before and afters of the work on the Lucky house  all tied up in a pretty bow. What I do have though, are before and in-progress photos. I will let the pictures do most of the talking, but here is a little recap of where we started and where we are now! The journey to finding our home was a bit of a surprise and definitely a whirlwind of the best kind. In May of 2013, I got a message from a neighbor asking if we would be interested in buying their farmhouse. You can read all about it, here , here ,  here  and here ! So we bought a house, poured the foundation and moved the ninety year old house approximately two miles. We then jumped into renovations, additions and remodeling. We moved into Lucky in February 2014. Since then projects largely stalled, while I awaited the arrival of our third baby! It has been a crazy year and

How to Brighten Up a Friday!

What's a girl to do when the babies are driving her crazy on a Friday and she's in the middle of an existential crisis ? Go shopping of course, then out to lunch with her brother and a good friend! I couldn't help myself today when I found this bright turquoise chair at a local store and the star strainer was just what I needed to brighten up another gray skied day. Have a beautiful Friday! P.S. A blog I follow just released a fabulous app for pictures! I used it on the photo above!   Posted with Blogsy