Christmas new

For many years, Geddy's parents and brother joined us for Christmas. That changed in 2006, when Mama Lois was too sick from late-stage cancer to make the trip. We kept our date last year, though Mama Lois celebrated Christmas in heaven without us.

This year, Pop will be traveling and we will be on our own. We've never attended a candelight Christmas Eve service or midnight Mass at a Catholic church, and those are two things I've always wanted to experience. Maybe that will be on our list this year. Maybe we'll stay at home and cook a big dinner together with everyone's favorites. Maybe we'll have pizza and watch "It's a Wonderful Life" and "White Christmas" and "Elf."

Change isn't easy but inherent in new circumstances is tremendous potential for new growth and abundant blessing.

One of the conscious changes we've made is to volunteer in the children's department at church, where Curly Sue and Moe learn each Wednesday and Sunday. At the Lord's prodding, I left a fun, all-adult fellowship ministry to serve with the children, helping with fifth-grade girls. Geddy and Larry help with AV. For the first few weeks I was sure I was completely in the wrong place, overwhelmed by the...well, the fifth-graderiness of the girls.

Little by little, without my even noticing, I fell fiercely in love with my girls. Tonight, the other leader and I are sponsoring a slumber/Christmas party with them and I am absurdly excited to participate, as opposed to being horrified at the very thought back in September.

That's what I mean about change. I was sad to leave behind my sweet friends in the kitchen to immerse myself in children's ministry, especially when my main "job" is to educate my own three children, all day every day. God definitely had a lesson to teach me, suprising me with a capacity to love and serve that I had greatly underestimated in myself.

I will look at our first Christmas without company with wistful nostalgia but also with some anticipation of the abundant joy promised to us. After all, the few precious years we have with our children is something to be celebrated, and what better way to build great Christmas memories than to create traditions that bring out our unique family traits and interests?

It's definitely a season for growth. How incredible it is that we get to combine it with this Christmas season!