I am unabashedly and unashamedly a scrapbooker. I chronicle our family’s ups and downs and turnarounds with pictures, mementos, and journaling. Why do I do this? Primarily I scrapbook because of the pure fun of losing track of time in a creative process and for the joy of looking back in retrospection.
Mary held her baby Jesus close to her heart on his birthday. She knew without a doubt how special he was, for hadn’t the angel told her so? I’ve given birth three times: twice to healthy boys, and once to a baby girl who didn’t make it to full term and never got the chance to breathe on her own. However, the baby who best taught me the awe-inspiring lesson about the nature of God’s love was a two and a half pound premature meth addicted newborn abandoned at the emergency room of the hospital where I had been volunteering in the NICU.
Christmas Advent is a time of waiting. I volunteer in our church infant nursery during Sunday School. There’s nothing like nestling with a newborn, their soft fuzzy heads laying just so on your chest, their padded bottoms cupped in your hand, feeling their butterfly breaths tickle your chin. I’ve been privileged to experience with our young families the mixed fearful anticipation and exhilarating excitement waiting together for their Advent newborns.
I’ve collected nativity scenes since I was a teenager. I especially like the folksy artsy ones. That is how I “deck the halls” for Christmas. I clear all tables and cabinet surfaces, store away items in bins for the season, and start resurfacing with nativities from all over the world. Each set emotes treasured vignettes of specific times and places. My mind tumbles down memory lanes paying attention to noteworthy stop signs along the way!
Today, I was knee deep in tissue paper, unwrapping Christmas ornaments I had so carefully stored the previous Christmas season. I cherish the warm fuzzies I get from unwrapping each tissue cocooned ornament, systematically rediscovering the stories they evoke. One such storied ornament depicts children from all nations holding hands around the earth’s globe. It was gifted to me by a dear young family who we introduced to my homeland, Lebanon, through our church’s annual mission trip. They serve in a residential Home for abandoned, refugee, or homeless children. This precious family now claims Lebanon as home for themselves also. The ornament, a thank you gift, reminds me each year of the equalizing universality of God’s love for us all.
As I’ve been learning to worship God and to place my trust in Him, a crisis will not break me but will reveal that I can go to the point of breaking yet without shattering. Learning to worship is a process. How does the result of worship manifest itself in my life?