My church

Just a quick praise for my church. I feel so blessed to have Fox River as my home church. I just find so much joy at church I honestly can't think of any other place that that I almost always leave with a good feeling in my heart. I can be in the worst mood, stressed, crabby, sad, whatever, and when I leave those doors I feel better.

This morning I had two things going on at church. I had my first meeting with Diane about my eating issues and then the church was putting on womens luncheon so I also attended that.

Meeting with Diane just started my day off reminding me that I am not expected to be perfect, or to become a perfect Christian over night. Just because I have failed at things in the past doesn't mean that I will fail at them forever. That God works in our life in HIS time and his timing is the right timing. There's a reason why I fail at things and I need to just get back up and try again. I am not saying that this is a license for me to fail, or not to TRY but just not to be so hard on myself when I do fail. At the same time, Rachel (the speaker) hit my heart when she was talking about what Christmas is really about, and how she was in a shop with her sisters, a place full of ornaments and she was searching the store for a nativity scene and she couldn't find one anywhere, and the more frantically she looked, she finally found one, on a BOTTOM shelf, all dusty, and by itself. Her voice was cracking as she talked about it. She said she got teary in the store and her sisters couldn't understand why she was so sad. Jesus was the best most important gift that anyone could ever accept/receive, but people tend to put him on the bottom shelf and let him get dusty. Me included. It seems I go through stages where I am very close to my God and then times when I get busy and don't make time for him in my life, and put him on the shelf. (Then I realize that my life is pretty crummy and remember, oh yeah! I haven't been spending time with my Lord!)I don't want to do that. I'm glad she brought it to my attention because during this season it's SO easy to get so busy with shopping and cleaning and stressing about holiday meals, that we forget what we are celebrating in the first place! My husband said one day after he read my blog about not wanting to "do" Santa that we should just not do gifts at all. Just pick a different day of the year to do gifts, and on Christmas just celebrate Christ! Have a birthday party for Jesus and that's it, so our kids understand what Christmas really is. At first I thought that was absurd, how would we get away with that when everyone else is exchanging gifts and talking about Santa? But the more I think about it, I kinda think it's not such a terrible idea! But everyone else in the family and the world for that matter celebrates Christmas with presents, and get togethers and meals so how do you just change that with your own kids? On Friday Autumn came home from school and reminded me that Santa comes tonight. I thought, oh great now the teachers talk about St. Nick coming too. perfect. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Autumn's teacher, so I am not making this comment about her, it's just what if I don't want to celebrate the fat man? What if I want my kids to know if something ends up in that stocking it's from their parents not some made up man? Now I"M the one that's going to disappoint her if I tell her there is no Santa. Because everyone else tells her there is. I don't know why this all of a sudden pulls at my heart more this year then any other. Jake is now 12 and knows Santa doesn't exist, but when anyone says anything to my other kids about Santa I just feel myself cringe inside. I don't know what that feeling is? Well, I got off subject here. I've been interrupted about 15 times since I sat down here so I guess I'm just losing my concentration! This is why I try to wait till every one's in bed to write in my blog, but by then I'm so exhausted I fall asleep instead! lol.

Bottom line I wanted to blog about today was that I really love my church and my sisters in Christ, and spending time there with the people that are trying to be more like Jesus. I had a nice morning and thankful for my church. Guess I'm off to be a mom (aka, taxi driver).....