I’m pleased to announce the winner from my recent Pray A to Z giveaway and blog tour. Thanks to everyone who entered!
Congratulations to the winner: Erica Green. My publicists from Litfuse Publicity Group will be in touch via email with details on how to claim your prize. You can also email your mailing address to info {at} litfusegroup {dot} com. Congrats!
If you’re looking for a last-minute gift, consider giving the gift of prayer. A copy of Pray A to Z with a note letting someone know you’ll be praying for them in the coming year or an invitation to join you on a prayer journey would make a meaningful gift. You can find the book online at all the usual places, but to get it in time for Christmas, please check your local Christian bookstore, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, or in Grand Rapids visit Baker Book House.
A couple weeks ago, I invited my husband’s brothers and their families over for dinner and to watch our small-town Christmas parade. It was the first time we’d hosted an event in this home.
Eight extra people in our house!
We moved into this house in July. It’s an 1890’s fixer-upper, and we aren’t Chip and Joanna Gaines. This remodel is taking way longer than an hour t.v. show. We also don’t have a crew of plumbers, electricians, and woodworkers at our disposal.
It’s also half the size of our previous home, and we’re still figuring out how to make enough room in the living areas to actually have more than 2 people over to visit.
In the weeks leading up to the Christmas parade we finished stripping the last of the wallpaper and painting our bedroom. (Glory Hallelujah!!) But to do so, we emptied everything out of our bedroom, put it in the living room, and finally bought bedroom furniture. (Yay, no more mattress on the floor!)
In short, our small home was a disaster.
Not the best-case scenario for hosting a family dinner.
We spent the day of the parade hustling. Kedron put together furniture in our bedroom while I moved boxes out of the living room back into the bedroom.
Halfway through the day, in between moving a stack of boxes and catching my breath, I said, “I knew when I invited them over that we wouldn’t quite be ready for guests, but I figured we need to start sometime. We’ll figure it out, right?”
“Absolutely,” he said and nodded as he headed back to reading IKEA directions and nailing together bookshelves.
Let’s not even talk about how this was the start of the holiday season and I had exactly zero holiday decorations up. It wasn’t going to be a festive party.
But that’s not the point of the season is it? We get so wrapped up in decorations and presents and events, [tweetherder]we can easily forget that Christmas is about relationships.[/tweetherder]
And honestly, sometimes those relationships are broken down, crumbled, tense, or downright toxic.
[tweetherder]Christmas is really about God restoring relationships.[/tweetherder]
It’s about God coming to us, giving His own Son so we could have a relationship with Him. It’s about God restoring our relationship with Him and paving a way for better relationships with each other.
It’s about the Son of God who taught us to love each other by following His example.
It’s about this God-Man who did the most selfless thing ever to restore relationships – giving up His own life.
So we hustled that day to make space for our family to sit in the living room and gather to make memories.
We set aside our pride and invited people into the chaos of an unfinished remodel. (Don’t ask me about the current state of our only full bathroom.)
We opened the door with smiles and crowded in, with kids running in and out of the house making memories.
We huddled on a street corner and watched dazzling, lighted floats and tapped our feet to the marching bands and waved to the Danish festival queen.
We made room in our schedule for each other.
We made room for relationship.
We made room for God to knit us together in the chaos and unfinished place of our home.
And to make room sometimes we have to let go. Of expectations. Old habits. Our plan or schedule. Of striving for perfection.
We let go of bitterness and jealousy and resentment and fear to make room for relationship.
Letting go to make room.
Emptying our hands so we can receive something new. Someone new.
I pray that each of you reading this will have a Christmas of renewed and restored relationships with God and with those you gather. Thank you for joining me here this year. I look forward to journeying together in 2017!