December

It's been a very different December.

Other Decembers began with a slow crescendo on December 1st featuring Christmas music and baking of cookies and became progressively faster with Christmas parties and cookie swaps. By December 23rd, the flurry of activities turned into a mad dash for the last perfect gifts, a resolution to not spend quite as much the next year and culminated into a joyous frenzied Christmas Day.

But this December, I am worn. It started with a family funeral. Somehow funerals tend to sap more than just a day of visiting loved ones. It's so much more.

And then the month snowballed into a bevy of bereavements from there. I managed to putter into Christmas Eve a bit threadbare. I took a moment to pour some melted chocolate onto a cookie sheet, sprinkle it with crushed candy canes and crack it into pieces for our Christmas Eve night. An hour later we were calling the plumber due to our basement which decided to flood.

With God's help I managed to keep my head screwed on straight throughout this December. And by God's grace, I walked through it. He held my hand at my grandfather's grave. He enabled me to show love to friends who are very important to me, who are struggling. And in a large, watery puddle in the basement, He kept me from crying as my husband and I held each other in the flood.

In retrospect, there really isn't a more appropriate way to spend Christmas Eve than threadbare, poor and tired. There just isn't.

After Christmas, I was reading Morgan a new Bible. It's the Storybook Bible and it's perfect for the kid who says, "I've heard this story before." Absolutely perfect.

As I read Morgan the story of Abraham and Sarah, I wept. I've heard this story 100,000 times if I've heard it once. It was brand new to me. The book refers to God's saving hand as "the Secret Rescue Plan" and calls Jesus the "Rescuer"... It's an adventure book about love. It sees the big picture of each story. It's marvelous.

I read her many stories from this Bible. I couldn't stop. "Why are you crying, Mom?" my daughter asked. "Because I'm happy," was all I could tell her.

Because I'm threadbare.

And poor.

And washed out.

And He rescues me.