Tis' the season...

As I sit here in the settling dust of a post-Christmas day with 3 small children, my mind is full of thoughts.  I think of the YouTube clip of the 5yr old boy who had just gone to the dentist, "Is this real life?"  I laugh as we bustle through breakfast and presents and family and colds and thoughtless Christmas movie quotes run through my head.  I rest in the solitude of Clark Griswold's "It's all part of the experience" as he responds to the news of his daughters eyes beings frozen after searching the frosted wilderness for the perfect tree.  It's hard to imagine 5, 10, 15 years down the road when the innocence is gone and our traditions change as the boys grow up.  That's why I choose to embrace these moments and experiences as we walk through this life we've been blessed with.  I think back to 4 years ago when we were in the middle of fertility treatments and trying desperately to have a family of our own.  Do we really have 3 kids just 4 years later and the fertility doctor told us that a natural conception wasn't "looking good"?!?!  That thought leads me to God's faithfulness amidst our distrust and disobedience.  Imagining the God of the universe coming to us in the form of a helpless child so many years ago is just I unfathomable.

This Christmas I am thankful for my faith, my God - the unshakable rock that provides us with peace in the middle of an uncertain world.  I am thankful for my wife, Liz and the commitment she makes of raising our boys as well as the love and support she shows to me.  I am thankful for my boys - Matthew, Wyatt and Greyson.  They teach me to love more and more every day and they teach me the art of patience.  I am thankful for my parents, Mary Grey and Derrick.  I think about the Christmas traditions they established of enjoying family and celebrating faith.  As a parent now,  I laugh at the countless hours spent on finding the perfect gift and making every holiday extra special.  I am thankful for my brother as he steps into establishing his own family and traditions.  I look back on all of the Christmases we spent as children getting so excited about what waited under the tree.  I am thankful for my godparents, Doug and Susu.  There's not a Christmas I can remember when they weren't an integral part  of our experience and I am forever grateful for their involvement in our lives.  There are a number of additional names that come to my mind - great friends and examples that have shaped and molded me up to this point.  Folks that have shared the ups and down, the highs and the lows.  If you're reading this and thinking , "I wonder if that's me?"  That's a yes!

I wish everyone reading a very Merry Christmas and the best 2013 that up can imagine.

Beautiful Words from a friend

This post is from a childhood friend who is a beautiful writer. I was not gifted in the subject of writing so I admire those who can do so. Here is her post, which will be prayer. God bless her sweet soul.

Come to Behold

Beneath the clamor of the season, I hear the faint cries in the quiet.  Above the noise of the hustle, I sense a new stillness beckoning in the night. While I hurry and plan, do and make, the truth of God so loving this world lies swaddled in a blanket, waiting.  I hear the cries and I sense the stillness.  I desire the awe and I crave the wonder.  But my lists are long, and my calendar full, and my own blanket of holiday drapes over the truth of advent, muddling the gentle cries of invitation.  

I work to create traditions and memories, recipes and beauty, when all the while, Beauty rests in the dark of night calling me to come and adore.  My eyes are fixed on my family, these children for whom I long to know of God, and all the while, God waits in a manger.  I need only to bring them with me to come and kneel.  But I want it wrapped in color.  I want it to smell freshly baked.  And over all of it, I want the shiny glitter of perfection. 

But it has never been my job to create perfect.  For Perfect has already come. Perfect calls in the quiet coos of a Father become Child.  Perfect waits for me to stop running, and to start crawling, slowly and steadily by the side of Love, to come and behold. 

Yes, I hear it, the gentle cries, the soft coos, the quiet invitation to come and adore.  Yes, I see it, the light in the night, the star in the sky, the flesh of the Love.  But will I come?  As I rise in the morning and fall in the night, will I come?  In spite of the noise and the activity, the calendar and the lists, will I come?  Will I come to kneel, come to be stilled, come to behold?