Emmanuel

Parenting. New heights of evaluating your spirituality, your beliefs, what is "false doctrine" and what is just ad-libbing with your 3 year old to try and make sense of theology!! Here's what I think is a perfect example of the challenge. So Tim is the Bible reader in the family. Bedtime stories include a few from her Children's Bible. She loves them. She studies the pictures, asks hard questions, has her favorites. She talks about "big Jesus" and "baby Jesus" even when it's not Christmas. With the advent season I have embarrassingly done very little at home to promote the fact that Jesus is the reason for the season. I have a considerably large snowman/santa/christmas tree collection, and we continue to add to that with her arts and crafts countdown this year. It's easy, requires very little contemplation, just "fun". I've squeezed in a couple of Christ focused advent crafts, but too few to count as good teaching. Shame.

But today was different. Before we even opened her advent craft box, she started her own project. She was drawing a picture of Jesus. She traced her own hands for His hands (this was a completely new technique for her), and used red and green as the sole colors. Interesting.

She was talking it up how it was Jesus' Birthday, and she was getting so excited about getting Him some presents. (Every day is someone's birthday around here....Bert, Dora, Big Bird, Diego, repeat.....and it's very important to wrap their presents, find something they will like, and make it on time to their party!). So as she gathered her trinkets (I was cooking), I could hear her squeels. "Oh, Jesus is going to LOVE this!!" Finally she came to me and she said, "Mama, will you be Jesus?" Ha, that's a hard act to follow, to say the least?! I asked her to clarify, and she wanted me to pretend to be Jesus, so I could open all of her presents to Him. Ok, so do I say "Sure, I'll be Jesus", or do i say "Honey, that is sacreligious! We can't pretend to be perfect...He is God, and don't draw curses down on us for saying such things!". Well, I took the first route. We went to the tree, and in utter delight, she brought out each of her gifts for Jesus. "here you go Jesus" she'd say. She gave Him her wheely bug, a honey pot: empty....but it had "sweet smelling perfume inside". (I just consulted with Tim, and he said, yes, Lucy had asked the other day to read the story about Mary putting something on Jesus' feet...so it was fresh in her mind!! wow!), her new stuffed dog that she LOVES, some "candy", the 3 crowns we painted for Jesus earlier in the week, and some "medicine" for Jesus in case He gets sick. (empty Hello kitty pez dispensers!!). After Jesus was all done opening them, she asked "Do you love my gifts?". I replied, "Jesus loves these gifts because they came from you in love." Then she wanted to switch, and she would be Jesus and open them up. Her character totally changed, from being the eager eyed child who waited to see if you approved of her (when I was opening them), to a confident receiver. She took every gift, and hugged it, and said "I love this present, it's what I always wanted." For EACH one!! Then she wanted to switch and me be Jesus again. Thank goodness that Henry woke up right then and our spiritual journey could take a pause!!
Here are the gifts we "opened".

And the crowns we made the other day

And Lucy's "puppy love" example

I have to admit, it felt strange at first, but then it was just so beautiful. Jesus' birthday came to a close, but a little later she was dancing around, so happy and confident that Jesus loves her, and loved the gifts that she gave him. We definitely need to make him a birthday cake for Christmas. Apparently I came up with the idea when I was little, and my mom faithfully made her red and green Jesus birthday cake every year, even when we couldn't afford much in the way of presents. I'll probably change the cake recipe, but it's a good time to start/continue a new tradtion.

The other day when I was on day 3 of really struggling with parenting, struggling with Lucy's personality (adorable, but sometimes a greedy 3 year old that doesn't listen or obey), struggling with life, I just started singing outloud "Come Lord Jesus Come." I just kept repeating the line, (as the song goes), and soon Lucy was adding in her own words and outstretching her arms (I haven't taught her that!)....here we were worshipping together. And that turned the tide. We've had 2 wonderful days of hugs and smiles and thankfulness and obedience and genuine joy being together. I am just realizing that as I type; that really does seem to be when the turning point was.

Whew. That's almost too much isn't it?? And so it continues. Emmanuel HAS come, He DOES come, and he WILL come. Amen.