http://www.elizabethfoss.com/reallearning/2013/11/november-silence.html
I'm going to try to re-read this one, probably every day between now and Christmas. It occurred to me at some point that I do not have Christmas presents wrapped and ready to go, even though I do have a baby "wrapped" and ready to go! I'm going to have a newborn as I prepare for the Christmas season...Christmas for 8 children...it usually entails a good deal of thought and, honestly, purchasing.
But this year? I wonder what would happen if I just sort of didn't. Didn't purchase, anyway. There could be baking. The kids would love to get in on that! There will be some gifts under the tree. But, I want to protect myself from the whirlwind of endless sales and deals and, on the home front, the lists of requests. I think I will think hard about a special gift or two, go with that, and leave it at that.
The corners can be filled in with firelight and candles, song and prayer. And cookies.
But I will have a new baby to be loving, and I want my Advent to be filled in joyful anticipation of the coming of that other Baby we are called to welcome and love. I don't want to lose the joy of nativity, my own, and the one that took place 2000 years ago. Those brief and fleeting moments when a newborn is new. I don't want to miss it. Not my own baby, not that other Baby either. I think Elizabeth's post is a very important one for me during this moment in my life.
So, I share the link.
Giving testimony to the joy of motherhood, because there is so much to delight in!
"When we had our children, our ideas changed somewhat. Thenceforward we lived only for them; they made all our happiness and we would never have found it save in them. In fact, nothing any longer cost us anything; the world was no longer a burden to us. As for me, my children were my great compensation, so that I wished to have many in order to bring them up for Heaven" -- Saint Zelie Martin, mother of St. Therese of Lisieux, canonized October 18, 2015 along with her husband St. Louis Martin.
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