Creation Care Mom

Heads up! We’re traveling over the next 2 weeks, like so many others, for the holidays. So see you in 2025!

The joy of Christmas brings on a completely new feeling as a parent watching your kid experience it. James was born on Dec 21st so, technically, this is his 3rd Christmas, but he was too young for the last two to really even notice there was something different about this time of year. I doubt he remembers much from Christmas last year. About the only special things we did with him were going to ZooLights and buying him a bucket of indestructible silver balls (of which we did somehow break one!).

This year is different. He is fascinated with lights, the lights on the tree, around the windows, and hanging outside. ZooLights this year was spent saying “lights” 500 times or more! You can see the wonder. The sense that its magic. The how does this work? We have to plug in the lights every morning and leave them on until bedtime. He also thinks snowmen are the best, even though he hasn’t yet actually made one. But he finds and calls them out every time. The ones hanging on our tree, the ones on my socks, the ones inflated in the yard across from daycare. He even finds them hiding in his Christmas picture books. Maybe as we travel to colder places during the holidays he’ll actually have a chance to make one.

His joy is palpable. His smiles infectious.

I know that next year he will remember this year so I want to stoke the joy. But I also want to capture it and fill my heart with it. This year has been hard, and I am still struggling emotionally and spiritually with the outcome of the USA elections. I has been harder for me to come by my own joy during this season. So I’m letting his joy pour into me. His laughter and his smiles. As adults, sometimes we hold back from sharing all the good filling our cups. Sometimes we just build a bigger cup rather than let it overflow into others. The beauty of children is they don’t. There is no reluctance no hesitation. See me happy mom? Be happy with me! What a special gift.

Christmas joy will always have more meaning to me now than it ever did before. Being pregnant during advent, knowing your due date was close to Christmas, allowed me to relate to Mary in ways I hadn’t before. The fear and the anticipation was much more real, as was the joy following his arrival. I had always known that becoming a mother would change and grow my understanding of God no matter when my child was born, but there was something deeper about the shift occurring at Christmas. I sat and wondered how Mary could remember and treasure anything the shepherds said, when Jesus was surly up every two hours.

James’s birth felt like its own miracle to us. We had been trying for over two years with no success. I found out I was pregnant just 2 days before I was scheduled for an infertility consult. When we told Matt’s grandparents, we learned that his Grandma Vi had finished a baby blanket just the day before for a one day great-grandchild. So to have our own miracle arrive at Christmastime was certainly something extra special.

I anticipate he will continue to bring us the joy of Christmas every year, and we will continue to nurture the joy within him.