Tag: Grace

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You Will Always Get My Christmas Card

Excerpt from Southern Living, “The Etiquette of Taking Someone Off Your Christmas Card List”, October 31, 2023

{“Most people, out of habit, stick to the same ‘holiday card list’ they have used for years and sometimes decades, which is often outdated for one reason or another,” said Diane Gottsman, international etiquette expert, author, and founder of the Protocol School of Texas. “Relationships change, friendships wane, and people (physically and literally) move on.”

If your list hasn’t been updated in several years, it may be time to reexamine it—and perhaps make a few cuts. Read on for the etiquette on how to remove someone from your Christmas card list.}

I’m not here to judge. The cost of Christmas cards can really add up. Price per card, paper quality, foil lined envelopes, postage; I understand.

Some of you don’t do Christmas cards and I understand that too. It’s not your thing and I totally get it.

But it’s my thing. I love to send Christmas cards for many reasons. One being that I’m proud of my family. Not proud in a “keeping up with the joneses” type of way but proud in a “damn, we made it” type of way.

Another reason I love to send Christmas cards is because for many on my list it will be the only point of contact I’ll have with you this year. And if you are on my list then you are someone from my past who impacted me in such a way as to carve yourself onto my heart. Old co-workers who felt like family, friends I laughed with in church 15 years ago, people I hardly know who sent meals and gift cards when my baby was in the hospital, teachers who have selflessly embraced my most difficult child …… just to name a few.

I’ve thought only a few times about reducing my Christmas card list; usually when money has felt especially tight. But I just can’t seem to hit delete without feeling as though I’m in turn deleting the memories. Every name on my list is a person who has provided counsel, friendship, care, love, service, laughter, a place to lean or some combination of those things and I want you to know that …… I can’t delete you.

My Christmas card list is the unexpected reminder each year of how beautiful this world is. How filled with goodness this world is. How good the people of this world are. Even on the darkest of holiday seasons when I don’t even want to try and see the good things, I look at my list and am reminded of how many people have decided to show up for me over the years. And quite frankly, I don’t want to ‘move on’ from you.

If you receive a card from me and feel as though you need to send one back, you don’t. Please don’t trouble yourself. If you don’t send cards and feel guilty when you receive one from me; please don’t. If you are someone who does in fact weed out people from their card list and think I’m shaming you; I’m not.

I send Christmas cards because I want you to know that I still like thinking about you. That I still cherish our quiet, distant and otherwise obsolete friendship.

You will always get my Christmas card.

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What To Do When The Shower Curtain Falls On Your Head

I didn’t do a great job today.  Everything seemed fine at first, normal Saturday morning at home.  First nice day outside.  In fact, we were playing outside when Jason left to go get a haircut.  During the hour he was gone, the dog got out because Maria was playing with the front door.  {She knows not to play with that door – I’ve told her 6,000 times.  In fact, I had JUST told her not to play with the door.}.  So I ran frazzled down the driveway after the dog wondering if I had a recent enough picture of him on my phone to make flyers with {Also I wondered, has running always been this hard?}.

Got the dog back and was, you know, a little annoyed.  Carmelo of course just HAD to fall off his bike and get an incredibly minor red mark on his knee that prompted him to scream as if I had personally assaulted him.  {Does he not understand that I just chased the dog down the street and have not recovered emotionally OR physically from that?}.

Brelynn was, wait.  What was Brelynn doing?  I didn’t have time to check because Maria walked up to me and said she had to poop.  The problem was that she had her hand holding her rear.  A clear indicator that by “needed to” she meant “I already started to….”.  We rushed inside with the barely caught dog slung under my arm.  I was mad.  Really mad.  This was the 3rd time this week she pooped herself.  She is almost 5 and has been potty-trained since I’ve known her and I know this wasn’t an accident because she looked me clear in the face to tell me she just didn’t want to stop playing.  She willingly decided to poop herself. {What is she, 4?!}  My ability to clearly think was breaking down.  Angrier by the second.  I told her she was putting a pull-up on.  She started to scream in my face {not crying scream – angry scream}.  “Go to your room Maria, just get away from me right now.” I stormed {yes, stormed} past my other 2 kids rolling my eyes and shaking my head walking into the office where I often go to quietly curse.

The remaining 40 minutes was a power struggle of wills between myself and an almost 5-year-old.  Fits of rage from such a tiny body.  40 minutes of trying to be firm about the pull-up but not angry.  Not mean.  40 minutes of having to leave her room because her yelling and hitting were out of control {and so was I}.  When Jason got home she was sleeping.  Wore herself out.  I gave what I could of an exhausted run down of events and excused myself to take a quick shower.

It was a short shower.  Just enough to wash my hair, soap my pits and recklessly swipe a razor across my legs.  I pulled the shower curtain back when it happened.  The tension rod slipped and fell hard on my head.  It was loud.  Jason came rushing in to see me standing in the shower, naked, hurt, flawed and teary eyed.

So what DO you do when the shower curtain falls on your head?  You ugly cry.  Silently.  Into your towel.  And when it stops being quite so ugly and you can finally see through your sadness, you seek the Lord…..and ask him: What the heck?

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Far From Beautiful

I’m not going to tell the story.  It’s not beautiful.

It’s actually been ugly.  Ugly pieces of my heart that I hadn’t even known existed have surfaced since becoming a parent.  And so, it’s hard for me to respond to people’s questions about “our story”.  I guess that’s mostly because I know what they are expecting to hear.  They are expecting for me to tell them a beautiful story. A story that shines a light on the good in the world that so often seems hidden.  A story that reminds them there’s hope and beauty and redemption.  A story that points to all the ways God has rained down glory on our family and the enormous ways we’ve seen God move.  But I don’t have that story.

In fact, when people ask us about our journey, my mind spins into chaotic memories of yelling, crying and anger.  The long season of feeling alone and angry and privately regretting the choice I had made.  The ugly feelings that I tried to reason with as I desperately tried to remember the feelings of certainty I had when God spoke adoption into our lives.  I questioned if I had got the calling wrong.  The experience was traumatic and I am a changed person because of it.  Those memories hurt.  They feel ugly.

The story is far from beautiful.  But it also isn’t over.

I’ve been hearing God whisper to me since the dust has settled; reminding me that my work is important. That although I’ve failed in moments, I haven’t failed in life.  I haven’t sacrificed as gracefully as I had hoped but my sacrifice is still valid.  My favorite theme of the bible isn’t grace alone but the progress grace allows. His grace is sufficient, but for what? Sufficient grace so we can stand still or sufficient grace so we can progress? If God’s blessing to my family came immediately after the adoption papers were signed, what story would we have to tell?  That God is simple?  That we systematically receive when we give? There are no stories like that in the bible. Why did I think my story would be the first?