Sunday, December 30, 2007

More on Christmas and a bit of New Year's Day


Anji's sure right: we'd gotten woefully behind with the blog. So behind, in fact, that I just went out to look at it and found out that Anji had posted! 

Bless her "pea-pickin' heart" (as my dear ol' Dad would say).

But that doesn't keep me from feeling guilty (darnit) about not posting, especially knowing that you're all just waiting... no... anticipating... no... desperately counting the minutes... until we post again!

Christmas was weird (but good) like always. No one admits it too often, but Christmas is pretty much the biggest letdown of the entire year. You prepare and you decorate and you purchase and you pray for snow and you send cards, then "POOF!" it's outta there in one day! Maybe that's why there's that traditional song about the 12 days of Christmas. That guy, while completely broke by day 5 (a.k.a., "the day of the golden rings"), was probably thinking "man, Christmas is just too short; how could I make it longer?" I can relate to that guy.

Our family had a good day (even with a curmudgeonly father and gimpy patriarch in tow). We opened gifts in the morning, ate in the afternoon, and wonders of wonders, we finished Jotham's Journey on Christmas Day. For those of you who aren't familiar, Jotham's Journey is an adventure story set around and tied to the true Christmas story (the one about Christ). It's meant to be read each night of the Advent season to prepare our minds and hearts for the Christmas day celebration. For Anji, Emery, Asa, and me it was helpful in doing so. Jack and Sam? Notsomuch. A couple more years and the tradition's impact will grow. The Lord grants us grace for our efforts with our children, no matter how seemingly frustrated we are or distracted they may be.

We attended church here in Cookeville for the first time today with the Cookeville Primitive Baptist Church. It's a small congregation that's focused on the simplicity of the first century church meeting: a cappella singing of traditional hymns, biblical teaching from a pastor/elder, and joyful fellowship. It was funny, but our family of six nearly doubled the meeting size for the day. We were graciously invited to lunch after the service and enjoyed the fellowship with other Christians immensely. Whether we return or not I don't know, but it was refreshing for our spirit to join a meeting again.

The new year is upon us and we're joining some local acquaintances for an evening celebration with their family on the 31st. Snow, as Anji mentioned, is expected to come that night or early on the 1st. We welcome it but we concede to you Washingtonians that snow on New Year's Day doesn't beat your white Christmas! 

We pray that you and your family are richly blessed in body and spirit in 2008! Stay tuned for more Tennessee news!

1 comment:

holly darling smith said...

Oh, the boys are too much! So cute.

We read Jotham's Journey a few years back, and loved it too.