...that is worth celebrating!
by Lissa:
"I couldn’t help but grin today at the contrast between the cozy Advent post I wrote before the children awoke, the one celebrating the best moments of the past week, and the complicated, messy, full-of-friction day that commenced as soon as the first child staggered out of bed. The thing is, every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious, and I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
"Life is messy, and complicated, and full of friction. That stable in Bethlehem must have smelled like manure. Was the manger clean?...But the parts of the Nativity story we celebrate are the shining star, and the awestruck shepherds, and the singing of angels. The image of the baby swaddled snugly, sleeping in the hay, with His mother smiling down at Him in wonder, oblivious to the muck and the grime and the prickling straw and the snorts of the livestock: that’s the image we’ve carried in our hearts for two thousand years. That doesn’t mean the muck wasn’t there. It’s just not the important part of the story, the thing worth holding on to. The muck is always there, always here. But so is the radiant star, the heavenly choir, the sleeping Child so full of promise and hope.
"My children may bicker, and I may—almost certainly will—complain. But the bickering and the griping are chaff, and what’s left when the winds of time carry them away are the golden kernels I want to savor..."
Read the whole post here: Real Life
So don't mind me and my little blog if we get too sappy and sentimental and sanguine. My blog shows the things I wish to remember; it's the things I want my family to enjoy and remember when these days have passed away like the snow we had the other day.
This is a time capsule for my family and I can fix it up and store within it whatever I feel is important and good and true and beautiful.
It isn't that I keep rose-colored glasses on all the time. I see the muck and manure. Who wouldn't? This morning I have five play-away tents to fold away. We have a mouse cage to clean. We have to go to the doctor for the upteenth time for yet another urinary tract check. I have last minute gifts to get wrapped. I have some of the cutest little dust bunnies ever scampering across my kitchen floor that I need to wrestle-up. I have to figure out why it smells like rotting meat at my front door. :( Possibly the sausage making my husband gloried in the other day. I have to be grateful for the sausage. I have to ignore my messy, unorganized pantry and be grateful for its excess.
Some people call me an idealist and fret that I don't see the "realness" in life. I just smile and keep my secret because, really, they don't understand that I'm a realist who has choosen to be an idealist. It isn't that I ignore the grime. Idealists, in fact, see it all too clearly; and we don't like it but we know there's no getting away from it so we pick-up the only cleaning tools we have...sometimes it's a little blog...and we tidy things up a bit because we realize the grime is not the whole story and we want people to see...especially our children..."the important part of the story".
Life is short and there's so much more than just the muck, the manure, and the grime. So much more, though the media and society around us prefer to rub our noses in the dirty laundry.
We don't ignore the muck and manure and certainly not the dirty laundry; it's all around us all the time. Neither do we ignore the manger and the Man. He's around us all the time too.
Thank you, Lissa, for giving me my Christmas Eve meditation.
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