I am getting a new nephew in a month or so. This will be my first (and perhaps last?) niece/nephew since I got married. I went to my sister - in-law's shower on Saturday. I made her a quilt with cute little fishies on one side and clouds and stars on the other. I told her I hoped she knew we would love her little guy from the depths of the sea to the stars in the sky.
I have mixed feelings about gifting my creations. I am happy to share, but I sometimes have a hard time letting go and just being grateful for the ability to create things and not worry about whether the item will be used or enjoyed as much as I hoped/dreamed/anticipated. It's a lot of work to do these things, and if you don't feel like it's appreciated, it makes you never want to do it again.
For example, I made an apple pie a couple of weeks ago. One of my kids refused to even try it and the other ate one bite and rejected it. Because of the circumstances, I felt like it had been an act of slavery to even try. I love apple pie. I was devastated beyond all reason (I was really tired, and I never seem to look at things reasonably when I'm exhausted) and their rejection of my hard work went straight to my "I'm taking this personally, even though I know I shouldn't" place. I vowed never to make an apple pie, or maybe even any other kind of pie, ever again.
I'm taking a risk this Christmas on gifts for my kids. This will be our first. They don't know about Reindeer Moments. They don't know about St. Lucia day. They don't know about Nine Days to Christmas, the Story of Holly and Ivy, the nativity I have planned, or Ramona and the Wise Persons. I am so excited to share all the wonder and goodness with them. I have so many things I love...if they don't enjoy Christmas crackers, then they'll have to hand in their little boy cards!
Just this morning we were debating about wake-up time for Christmas morning. Seven o'clock seems like disastrously late to them. It seems disastrously early to me. We do have 11 am church, so perhaps, in order to fit ALL the festivities in, we will need to get that early of a start. I hope not. Grouchy tired Christmas is not really what I have in mind.
I have been so grateful for being really excited for Christmas. I have felt lonely around the holidays for the last few years, and to finally have my own family for Christmas seems like the best ever. You only get one first Christmas with your kids. Mine is unusual because my kids will someday, perhaps, maybe remember a tiny smidge of it.
There has been a lot of heartache and bad feeling in this country. There has been, and continues to be, a lot of anxiety. I can't believe my neighbors voted to pass some of the initiatives that were put into place. I felt upset by the outcome of the statewide election. (Let's not talk about how I felt about the national outcome.) I thought that if they had voted with the children in mind, that the result of the vote would have been different.
But then I thought about Christmas, and about love, and about giving gifts. Yes, I'm still rankled if I think about it too hard. But the best thing I can do is to love my neighbors. Even the weird guy who sometimes wanders around wearing just underwear. I can make a difference in my community. I can be a force for the things I believe in. And I am grateful for the gift to see that no matter what happens in any election, I can still be the kind of person I want to be. Yeah, I'll probably still be neurotic about making and giving gifts. I'm working on letting go of that. But I think of the love my kids show me and I am overcome with the conviction that I can, and must, do my part -- to teach them, to love them, to do my best to help them become wise, loving, thinking, open-minded people who can love their neighbors and have a desire to make the world a better place.
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