Here’s a bit of our Christmas…

The Christmas program at the Towers with Mom and Dad was an enjoyable evening of music. Doesn’t Dad look handsome in his red sweater vest. It was a good day for him and he appeared to enjoy the program, holding Mom’s hand and tapping to the music.

We were thrilled to have Uncle Herb (Dad’s brother), Mary Ann and Taylor come for an afternoon visit, while they were in the area for a golf tournament. It was one of Dad’s sleepy days, but he finally woke up and had a nice visit with them. Thank you guys for coming!

Every year we look forward to our “burning bush”. We have a row of crepe myrtles and this year their turning leaves were in their glory on Christmas day.

We celebrated Mom’s birthday, thankful for her love, strength, and grace.

The highlight of my Christmas was waking up to this Christmas morning…

Just too much!

I am so thankful for these two beautiful women who enjoy being sisters

for the loving leadership and humor of our men

and for our wonderfully imperfect  family being together.

Before you think our Christmas was perfect, let me confess that I did get my tinsel in a tangle. Even though I had this in front of me everyday…

Got myself all tangled up around life and those expectations. They’re  everywhere… blogs, magazines, commercials.  My “picture” of  Christmas got out of whack and needed a reality check. I visited here a couple days ago and she says it so well. I encourage you to go read it if any of this rings true.

We lost a good friend 3 days before Christmas. There is now a wife whose reality is turned upside down, three boys who are fatherless, a mother who is devastated, friends who are grieving, a church family that is missing their brother. There is no easy way around that kind of reality.  Only straight through it…  believing that even when the feelings don’t back it up, God is still good and loving and faithful to his promises.

That’s what is important. That is Christmas.

Things like forgetting to buy potatoes or the dishwasher malfunctioning  or all the other insignificant things that got my tinsel tangled, really don’t matter.

Feel free to remind me of all this next December.

See you in 2011!