Christmas has come and gone and we truly did have a wonderful season. It was full of family, gifts, sorrow, and mostly it was full of great reminders and challenges for the New Year. God has been teaching Michael and me so much lately it has been such a wonderful time in our life. Christmas this year we decided not to get Addie too much (we had a $100 limit, it should have been less). She still got so much because she is at the age where a coloring book and stickers are super exciting. It was so much fun to see her excitement. I must admit that it is hard to be a parent this day and age. It is hard to not let your pride get the best of you. We gave Addie a little play kitchen for Christmas that I got at a church sale. It was really cheap and I knew Addie would love it. However it is NOT cute and normally I would not buy something like that to put in my house but like I said God has really been teaching Michael and I a lot lately. However Christmas morning when I got on Facebook it was so hard to not let my pride get the best of me, so many kiddos got play kitchens for Christmas and ALL of them were better and cuter than Addie’s. I just had to tell myself to let it go and realize that Addie loves her kitchen and it is really DOESN’T MATTER! So yes God has been teaching Michael and me a lot about how we spend our time and finances. That being said we usually get extra money every year around Christmas and I had great plans this year to get us in a better place financially. God however had different plans. Michael was asked to go to Honduras last minute for a mission trip. We prayed about it and we actually had the money for the trip since it was Christmas time. So instead of paying off debt and getting in a more “comfortable” financial place Michael will be going to share the love of Christ. It seems like such an easy decision do we spend the money to help ourselves or do we spend it to further the kingdom? But when you are actually making the decision as humans we make it so much harder. A challenge that our pastor gave us at our Christmas Eve service is to look at the amount you spent on Christmas gifts this year, you should spend AT LEAST that much on missions or advancing the gospel this season as well. Wow, we didn’t do that and it hit me hard. Look how much money we are spending on just worthless stuff. Not that we don’t enjoy giving to our friends and family but we have welcomed the habit of over spending. Since when do we have to spend like $30-$50 a person just to show we care? Anyways, this was just one thing that just hit me hard.
God is also teaching us a lot about faith and perspective. The week before Christmas I had another miscarriage. It was a hard one, they all have been, but for some reason this was physically a lot more painful. I actually ended up going to the ER one night because the pain was so great. However, I am fine now and we will be running tests soon to see what is causing the miscarriages. What is amazing to me is that before I had the miscarriage in August we had talked about adoption. We talked about how this is something that we feel so lead to do. So I am at ease that we will have more children, we don’t know how many God will bring us biologically and how many he will bring us through grace of adoption. My faith in God has grown so much stronger during this time and I have no doubt that this was part of God’s intention.
God has also taught us a lot about being thankful! Thankful for the material possessions that we have and that we absolutely 100% do not NEED. Being thankful that I have an amazing husband who encourages me, strengthens me, and pushes me towards our heavenly father. And I know I can say for Michael and myself we are overwhelming thankful for Addie. Addie is just the most amazing child (I know we are biased). But she is going to be such a great sibling to whoever God brings into our home. We know that God blessed us with any easy going, sweet, kind, loving, protective, and helpful child so that she will help transition our home to a larger family in whatever way God leads.
To sum up our Christmas, there was a lot of the normal “Christmas Festivities” that we love but there was also so much happening in our hearts through the grace of our savior that made the season even sweeter!
I am awful about downloading our pictures but so I will try to remember to do another post soon with pics.
To a Christ Glorified New Year!
Thank you for sharing your heart! I love hearing about how God is moving in you! I still am so touched by the conversations we had waiting on Libby to be born. God will use your family to do great things.
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