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Traditions are a good thing. Every family has them to some degree …especially at Christmas. I've always enjoyed talking with others and hearing the traditions they have carried out for generations. Surprisingly a lot of them centered around food.
Growing up, the star of the Christmas dinner was always the ham with raisin sauce followed by a few side dishes and a dessert of my mother's famous nut rolls and cold dough cakes. My mouth waters just thinking about them. I remember watching her painstakingly spend hours rolling them out and spreading the filling on each one. I think she enjoyed watching us devour them more than eating them herself. It was a labor of love.
Once I had my own family, I continued the tradition but took it to a new level. We had the traditional ham and nutrolls but I expanded into dozens of various cookies and chocolates. Like my mother, I enjoyed seeing the pleasure on the faces of my family and friends. The tradition continued.
This year, things are different. With all my family moving down south, no one is coming home for Christmas. The oven is cold. The tree is still in the box and I've been desperately searching on how to keep our traditions alive.
As I'm writing this, I'm hearing these words, “and the greatest of these is love.” Life is not so much about tradition but the love that is behind it.
As I fly out next week to spend the holidays with some of my kids, I'm hoping we'll keep some of the traditions alive, but if not, we'll make new ones. Whatever we do, I pray it will be a labor of love because, after all, isn't that what Christmas is all about?
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:16
Helpless. I hate feeling helpless. Any time I face something I can't fix, that's how I feel. It started when I was a little girl. As some of you know, my sister developed epilepsy and started having seizures when she was 18 months old. I would've been six. I don't remember much about that time or the years that followed. It's said that trauma can cause you to block out events and store them away in the recesses of your mind. Children are especially prone to this because they don't have the coping skills to deal with them. There are a few things that I do remember; such as the time when my sister was in Kindergarten and she started having seizures that wouldn't stop and the doctor told us there was no hope…helpless. Another time when she was around eleven, she had ten seizures in one day. All I could do was stand by and wait for them to pass…helpless. This feeling of helplessness made me feel out of control and put me on a path of making sure I would do everything in my power to stay in control. It got so bad that I would manipulate people and circumstances in order to stay in that place. I'm sure you can imagine how well that worked. The harder I tried, the more out of control I felt because life happens to everyone and like it or not, sometimes there is nothing we can do to fix it. Lately I've been battling with control again. It's never really left but subsides if things are going my way. I've had some physical issues lately that have triggered old feelings and emotions and it's made me feel that I was going backward which terrifies me. Today I met with my counselor. She asked me two things. First she asked “Who's in control?” I knew the right answer was God and that's what I told her but then she asked me “If Jesus were here, could you convince Him you believe that?” I was dumbfounded and it took me several minutes to give her an answer and that answer was “no.” I couldn't convince Him because I wasn't convinced myself. Oh, how I want to be convinced. I'm not saying I've never trusted God because I have but I pick and choose when and how. In the situation I'm facing now, it's one that I've fought Him for control all my life. When Jesus gave His life for me, it was for all of me, not just for the pieces I would choose to accept. Think of it this way. Imagine an occasion is coming up and you knocked yourself out to make it beautiful. Part of it involved making a lot of sacrifices to buy special gifts to hand out. As you gave out the gifts, you noticed certain people pushing some of the gifts to the side and they left without taking them home. I know I would feel sad and disappointed that what I had done was not enough. This is what we do to Jesus when we don't surrender control in every area. If you can relate, please join me in this prayer. Father, I want to give You control in every area of my life. Help me to recognize when I'm fighting You for it and release it. You will never force me and it's my decision to make which I thankfully make now. Dear God, help me to remember that You are with me wherever I go and You will always give me the strength I need in any situation. Thank you for sacrificing Your only Son so I can walk in freedom from feeling the need to control. Amen
Do you remember spinning in circles as a child? The whole point was to get dizzy and stumble around trying not to fall down. I'm sitting here watching my two granddaughters doing that exact thing. They're twirling around and around with big smiles on faces and laughing as they stumble. To be a child… Somewhere along the line, this simple pleasure became a source of bondage for me. I have a fear of vertigo. In fact, I'm experiencing a season of it right now and it has me in a state of anxiety. It's become a stronghold. I have asked myself how this fear started. I have prayed many times for God to take it away but I know the best way to get rid of it is to get to the root. If you ask God what's going on, He will tell you. So today as I sat watching my grandchildren, He showed me that it was another area where I was afraid of losing control. The difference between my grandchildren and myself was that they welcomed the loss of control while I am paralyzed by it. I feel my chest tightening just talking about it so I know that hit the mark. So what do I do with this? I need to do what He's shown me to do…I need to face it and take the steps necessary to overcome it. I've already talked to my doctor and my son and daughter-in-law, who are also doctors. They all recommended a simple maneuver that should fix it. The only problem is the maneuver will bring on the vertigo while I do it and the thought of it terrifies me. I know I have to deal with it so today when I went to church, I went to the prayer room for prayer. God is so merciful when we struggle. I know I shouldn't be afraid to do this but He didn't judge me. Instead, He sent a woman to pray with me and it turned out she knew exactly what I was talking about because she too had to do the same exercise for vertigo. It was then I looked at her name rag. Her name was Hope. God used that woman to give me hope when I needed it most. Two days have passed and I'm still wrestling with this. I spoke to my counselor who told me she did the same maneuver on her husband and his vertigo stopped. I didn't need any other confirmation of what I needed to do. After our phone call, I positioned myself to do the maneuver. The first step is to lie back quickly until I'm flat on the bed. I went halfway a couple of times and then the fear would get me and I'd sit straight up again. At one point I got up and sat in a chair beating myself up with shame. I knew I had to face this fear but in order to do so, I had to walk through it. I prayed and asked God for courage. I stood up, sat down on the bed and did the maneuver. It made the vertigo pretty intense and I wanted to get up and run but God gave me the strength to finish the exercise. The last step was to rise to a sitting position. There was no vertigo and I haven't had any since. I had no idea whether that maneuver would work for me but I knew I had to try even if it didn’t. I'm reminded of the verse from Psalm 56:3: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in You.” No matter if the fear is small or a stronghold, God is greater than your fear and He will strengthen you as you walk through it. Jesus, thank that You know our fears and You want us free from them. Please help us bring them to You and receive the strength and courage to take that first step and You walk us through to the other side.
When I was a little girl, I used to go and stay with my aunt for a week every summer. My aunt loved birds and would feed them right outside her kitchen window so she could watch them. She even learned how to replicate some of their birdsongs. Her favorite was the cardinal. Every time I see one, I think of her. I inherited her fascination with birds so if you come and sit with me in my backyard, you'll see my birdfeeder and birdhouses. I look forward to spring when the sparrows build their nests and I will soon hear the baby birds chirping their song. This year was a little different. Instead of building their nest in the spring, they came in the summer. I thought it was a little odd but it wasn't long until I heard the babies singing. The other day I noticed the roof to the birdhouse was giving way and was only hanging on by one corner. Not good. I had visions of the last corner letting go and that precious little family plummeting to the ground. Last night we had a bad storm and I was afraid to look outside. Thankfully it was still there hanging by a thread. I went out to investigate and as I got underneath it, I didn't hear anything. I pulled the branch down and peered in. Nothing was moving so I thought maybe the little birds were big enough and flew away. I decided to take that house down and replace it with another. As I set it on the ground, I lifted off the roof and to my surprise, there were three little birds fast asleep! I was horrified because I didn't know what to do. How was I going to fix this? The key word here is “fix.” Earlier this morning I was struggling with a couple of situations happening to people I love. I was tormented with worry because I couldn't do anything to fix them. I sat there and prayed asking God for His help. He reminded me of this verse: “Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?” Matthew 6:26 NLT At first I thought He was talking to me about the birds but then I realized He was talking to me personally. He was trying to help me see that there are certain situations only He can fix and therefore, worrying is pointless. He cares about my loved ones so much more than I could even imagine. He has always taken care of them and He always will. My job is to pray and leave it in His hands unless He tells me otherwise. So back to the birdhouse. At first my mind started racing frantically with “What do I do?” but then I heard that verse again about God taking care of the birds. I ended up putting super glue on the roof and hammering in the old nails the best I could. After the glue set, I carefully put it back in the tree. I checked 30 min later and it's still there with the mother bird flying in and out caring for her babies. If you have been following my journey, you know there's a moral to every story. This one is about hope. Hope that God is in control and I don't need to worry. Hope that He will fix what needs fixing in His way and His time. Hope that I can believe even when I don't understand. Hope that He will always bring about something good. And hope that He will make a way where there is no way. I know it's not easy to stop worrying but with hope, it's possible. Father, help me to remember how much you care about everything that concerns me. Bring back to my memory all the times You worked everything out. Help me to let go and lay my worries at Your feet. Thank you for loving me even when I doubt.