Christmas Eve

Our Advent Calendar

  It's Christmas Eve.

  The majority of Christmas dinner is resting in the refrigerator, waiting to be cooked    tomorrow.  The turkey is brining away in its bath of salt and spices.  All the presents    are wrapped.

  On this day my Labor and Delivery nurse mind always turns to the birth of our       Lord.  Not the miraculous fact of His birth to a virgin.  Not the miraculous fact of     His  choosing to become a baby to live a sinless life and die as a sacrifice for our   sins. (Although, I do think about those things at Christmas.) But today, I have   thoughts about the actual physical birth.

In my 46-year career, I have witnessed over 4,000 births. But I know little about the one I would have loved to have witnessed. I have questions.

Was Mary already in labor when they began their travel to Bethlehem to pay taxes?  Did the walking and perhaps riding some on a donkey make the pain worse?  What would have been her response when her water broke?  Who, if anyone, was with Mary and Joseph when the baby Jesus made His appearance? Did they know what to do, or did they just "wing it"?

What was Mary's response to the realization she was going to give birth in a barn? Was the whole experience so overwhelming that the "where" no longer mattered?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions, and I would never even begin to speculate about one of the holiest events in the history of mankind.  But I do know this.  Whatever the situations Mary and Joseph went through, God the Father was leading them.  God the Father was protecting them.  He was preparing them for what would happen next.  They were carrying His Son to the place where He would make His appearance as a member of the human race.  There is nothing that could have prevented that from happening.  

It is no different for us as Christians today.  We, too, carry God in us.  If we have trusted in the Lord Jesus as our Savior, His Spirit indwells us.  He leads us.  He protects us, and He prepares us for what we will experience next.

Just as Mary and Joseph trusted in the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit on that first Christmas night, we, too, can trust Him in the nights of our lives.

"But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, 
if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." 
Romans 8:9

"If God be for us, who can be against us?"
Romans 8:31

Seeds Only We Can Sow

 "...each of us 'has opportunities that we alone can fulfill.'"

In the last few years, Glen and I have added to our Christmas traditions the reading of "Jacob T. Marley" by William Bennett.  This book is a prequel of sorts to "A Christmas Carol."  Being such a fan of the Dickens novel, I was quite sure I would NOT like this book when our son suggested it to us.  However, after reading it, I realized what a perfect complement it is to Dickens's Christmas Story.  In fact, I prefer to read the Marley story first before the Scrooge story.  Glen prefers to read them in the opposite order.  The two books are so perfectly intertwined either order is perfect.

In "Jacob T. Marley," there is a scene where someone sees Scrooge through the window of his counting house but does not choose to have any interaction with him.  The person goes on to tell someone else, who once knew Scrooge, about the sighting, though.  Watching this happen, unseen, are the spirits of the ghost of Christmas Past and Jacob Marley.

The Ghost tells Marley that the person seeing Scrooge missed an opportunity.  He goes on to say that the person could have gone into the counting house and offered condolences to Scrooge on Marley's death.  When Jacob suggests Scrooge might have chased the man out again, the Spirit tells Jacob that the man's kindness might not have had an effect on Scrooge at that moment, but "that experience might have worked within him."

As more of Scrooge's past flows by, the Ghost goes on to tell Jacob that in life, there are times when two lives are meant to cross paths.  He states that what is meant to be accomplished in those lives can only be done by those two people.  He finishes the discussion by telling Jacob that each of us "have opportunities that we alone can fulfill."

The thought that each of us has "opportunities that we alone can fulfill" pressed upon my mind.  There are counting houses, as it were, that we are meant to go into.  There are people we are meant to interact with if only briefly, to plant a seed, to display a kindness that might work within the heart of another to draw them to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  The tiny seed we plant may be part of what causes their miraculous transformation, just as Scrooge was transformed.

Perhaps our little seed is just a kind word, a cheerful countenance, a helping hand, or a word of encouragement.  We will not know in this life how mighty a tree grows from our little seed, but if done with a good and faithful heart, we can know the Lord will use it to accomplish His will and His way.

Let us keep our eyes open for opportunities to sow seeds wherever we can.  Our world needs love and kindness more than ever, and through Christ, we have an endless supply of both.

"Give, and it shall be given unto you; 

good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, 

shall me give into your bosom.  

For with the same measure that ye mete 

withal it shall be measure to you again."

Luke 6:38

What Have I Been Up To?

 When I looked at the lists of my posts, I couldn't believe  how long it had been since I had an original post.  But looking back over the last two years, I have been incredibly busy for someone who is "mostly" retired.

On September 2, 2022, I decided to stop being a full-time Labor & Delivery nurse and go "PRN", which means I would only be required to work two shifts a month.  I was just dipping my toe into the lake of retirement.  But that doesn't mean I wasn't doing anything.

My husband and I do Chapel services in four nursing homes.  We do seventeen of these services each
month.  Then we also have a Small Group meeting in our house four times a month.  If this wasn't enough to keep me busy, I decided to write a book for new nurses in my spare time.  Along with this theme, I also made a journal specifically for nurses.  I created a "journal of smiles" because I believe the more we acknowledge things in our lives that make us smile, the more we will notice other things that do.  But the most unexpected thing, and the thing I have enjoyed the most, is the children's books.

Me and Ellie with our first "proof book"

I have written three Christian children's books and the fourth will come out in the Spring.  The books are stories of our beagle, Ellie, and the Box turtle who lives on our property, whom we call Percival.  In the books, Percival teaches Ellie lessons through the experiences she has with animals in our neighborhood.  Writing the books was the easy part, the stories just seemed to show up in my head.  The part that takes the most time is the illustrations.

I will create a "Books" page and put more information on my present and upcoming books there, as well as books written by my husband, which we will be publishing next year. All of the books are or will be, available on Amazon.com.

On January 2, 2025, I will officially - and - fully retire.  One of my goals is to be more consistent with blog posts.  This is more of a mindset issue than a time issue.  Once I begin thinking in this vein, the posts generally come naturally.

I also plan to do some much needed updating of this site.  I may move it to another venue and may even change the website name, but for now it will all stay the same.

I cannot begin to tell you how much or how often the Lord has clearly guided me in all of this.  I have been amazed at the ways He has directed me and/or kept me from following the wrong path.  He has been abundantly faithful in our lives through our almost 46 years of marriage and for the 51 years that I have been a Christian.

"And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; 

and He that sat upon him was called 

Faithful and True..." 

Revelation 19:11

God Bless the Lady in Savannah

Christmas 2024

I have tried to make more of an effort to enjoy our Christmas tree this year.  I especially enjoyed sitting by it while reading William Bennet's prequel to A Christmas Story entitled Jacob T. Marley.  It is even better when our beagle, Ellie, is snuggled in our lap.

We have had a Christmas tree every year of our marriage except 1980, the year our first child was born four days before Christmas.

Our tree, while very beautiful, is quite unusual.  Every year I like to post how our very different tree came about.  This is the post from December 1, 2008:

Santas, concert tickets, and the lady in Savannah...

I am sitting here snuggled up with our dog Sparrow, looking at our 28th Christmas tree.

 Although we have been married thirty years this year, we got married five days after 

Christmas, so that first year we didn't have a tree together. The year Marie was born, 

four days before Christmas, we didn't have a tree, either. So this year makes our 28th 

tree.

Our tree is very similar to most, I suppose. It has its share of Santas and holly wreaths 

and candy canes. But our tree is not just a Christmas tree, it is a Life tree. Let me explain 

what I mean.

When I was eighteen, I went to visit Savannah, Georgia, right after Christmas. While I 

was there I attended several Open Houses -- where people open up their homes for 

celebrations. At one of these festive occasions I saw the most unusual Christmas tree I 

had ever seen. It was covered with movie tickets, theater tickets, trinkets, and 

memorabilia of all types. The lady who lived in the house was in her eighties and as 

lively and full of spirit as anyone I had ever met and I asked her about her unusual tree.

 "It is a celebration of my life," she answered. She went on to tell me that on all 

occasions in her life, she would take some sort of memento to place on her tree, some 

token of remembrance. Then each year when she would decorate her tree, "I re-live 

those special times in my life that would have otherwise slipped away."

Needless to say, the lady and her tree made a great impression on a young 

impressionable teenager. I determined that whenever I had a tree of my own, I wanted 

it to be something special, too. When Glen and I were engaged, I shared with him the 

story of the Savannah woman and the story seemed to touch a chord with him as well. 

So that first year we celebrated Christmas in that tiny, cold apartment, we 

determined that the ornaments on our tree would be ones that we had specifically 

picked out for our tree, not just to fill the branches but because of their beauty or 

meaning or special significance to us. Or they would be ornaments we had made, or 

someone else had given us, or like the lady in Savannah, they would be mementos of 

the events of our lives. We wouldn't even have actually had a tree that year if my sister 

hadn't brought us one -- we thought our apartment was just too small for a tree. 

It was, and it wasn't. Our first Christmas tree only had nine ornaments on it (some of 

which we still have today). They were given to us by my mother and her friend.

Our tree today has hundreds and hundreds of ornaments. I started to catalog and count

them one day and stopped somewhere after 900. Along with the snowflakes (some of 

which belonged to my mother) and the balls (most of which I put on my trees growing 

up as a girl), there are "Savannah" ornaments: the doves and butterflies from our 

wedding cake; the golden bells off my parent's 50th anniversary cake; concert tickets; 

Metro tickets from Washington, DC; a baby's pacifier; my girls' little black patent 

leather baby shoes; a hickory nut I picked up at my brother's house one day when we 

spent the day with his family; candles from a 40th birthday cake; and from a 50th 

birthday cake; school band Security Tags; Election buttons - both from elections 

won and lost; footprint buttons from babies born; favors from weddings; silk flowers 

from a baby shower; silk flowers from a wedding bouquet; dough ornaments older than

my marriage, given to me by a friend in college; I could go on and on. Like the lady in 

Savannah, when we decorate the tree, we have the joy of reliving memories, of 

remembering people and events. Our tree is an expression of our lives, a creation that 

continues to grow each year because each year, there is something new to add to the 

tree.

All those years ago, that lady in Savannah gave me a great gift. She shared with me 

a small moment of her time and herself. The small seed that life can be something 

that is worth re-living blossomed in me into something that has affected me and my 

family. We love our tree and the special ornaments and mementos that hang from its 

branches, and we love remembering what the tree brings to mind.

Today there is someone in each of our lives waiting for us to share with them some

great gift that the Lord has given us. Something that will be a seed that will blossom in 

them into something great and beautiful. Perhaps it is just a kind word, a thoughtful 

look, or an act of encouragement along the way. The world is full of hearts, just waiting 

for those seeds.

Hear; for I will speak of excellent things;
and the opening of my lips shall be right things. 

Proverbs 8:6