Trying to keep it between the ditches

I love and hate this time of year.  I love the fall with all the colors and the cooler weather.  Having grown up in Utah and winter being snow, ice and endless cloudy days, I have really adjusted to a TN winter.  All in all the weather is milder, it rarely snows, which is a good thing because people out here completely freak out. I love how I can spend most of the winter wearing cute coats with scarfs and wraps and be warm and comfortable.  I also love Thanksgiving because it is a time where we purposefully give thanks for all the Lord does for us.  My favorite part of this time of year is putting up Christmas decorations, because I love Christmas.  I love putting lights on my house, however there have been years where they did not come down til February or March...oops.

All that said...there are things about this time of year I don't like.  I don't like how commercialism starts to run like a freight train out of control.  I don't like how if you are not careful you can loose sight of your contentment and the joy of Thanksgiving can be lost in 2 min of commercials or a 5 min trip into Walmart.  I don't like how we do not live near any family so as people are preparing for family dinners, traditions, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles...you know the drill.  It is just our little family.  My a hubby who is a LEO working on holidays is a regular occurrence for us, so holidays with extended family are very hard to come by.  We have been blessed to have many years where family has traveled to us but this year will be one where it will just be the 4 of us.  It is  years like think that I think I tend to over compensate.

It is not even Thanksgiving yet and I am feeling like our schedule some weeks is a run away freight train or a week of seeing the faces of my girls as I tell them "no" that is not in the budget.  This week I unintentionally triple booked my girls on Saturday and realized that something had to give...deciding what to give up is not as easy as you think.  At the same time we got to meet and spend time with new LEO friends who I know will continue to become members of our inner circle.  So I have found myself awake at 3:30 AM, writing this blog post and when I tried to sum up how I feel all I could come up with is that I am just trying to keep it between the ditches.

It is important to me that my girls learn to experience God's love not just in their own lives but in the lives of all kinds of people.  Whether through church, our homeschool play group, our inner circle, or through programs like Operation Christmas Child or donating at a local food pantry.  You see I realized that in my desire to make family/spiritual memories I got a little ahead of myself this week.  I have found myself asking the Lord to help me choose, give me wisdom and discernment to know that things He wants our family to experience.  I also know that my Lord does not want us to go through the holidays or life feeling like all we are doing is keeping it between the ditches.  That is where I am realizing that keeping our life slow, steady and allowing the Lord to direct us is vital.

I want to encourage you as the holiday freight train continues to gain speed, it is OK to decide to get off the train.  Do something different.  Create a new memory, tradition or experience that is not your normal pattern.  I also want to encourage you not to let the "keeping up with the Jones's" syndrome drive your holiday season. Find a focus/theme and strive to plan your families holidays around that.  This year I want our families theme to be a look into the lives of children around the world.  Lately my girls are so caught up in what they want us to buy them, or listing out all their needs that they are missing all that the Lord has put right in front of them.  So I want them to step out of their lives and into the lives of some other children.  Tomorrow we are going to what is called a Compassion Experience and they will get to see what it is like in the life of a boy/girl who is sponsored my Compassion International.  Sunday they are turning in their Operation Christmas Child boxes.  You see my girls just gave their hearts to Jesus and asked His Holy Spirit to come live in their hearts.  It is important to me that we begin to teach them to see through the eyes of Jesus and not the eyes of this world.  I want them to step back and realized how crazy blessed we are, instead of always focusing on all the things they don't have.  Most of all I want them to grow up striving to make sure Jesus is always the most important thing in their lives and not just someone celebrated a couple times a year and talked about on Sundays.  I want them to live daily with Him.  So don't let your life go at such a pace that you miss what the Lord is placing right in front of you.  Don't just keep it between the ditches but slow down, check out the scenery, explore new things and most of all treasure each day/moment with your family.  Trust me if you have not realized it yet but life moves at break neck speed and sometimes you just have to get off the beaten path.