Yesterday I got up early to work on decorating Christmas ornaments. As in years past our friends at The Giving Tree Foundation are decorating and selling Christmas ornaments to raise money for charity. They helped us start Light The World the beginning of December 2016.
This year, they got several families involved including ours. We met back in October to prepare and receive blank pine discs to take home to decorate and sell.
Because of how crazy life is, our family started decorating pine disc ornaments in November then finally got a Facebook post up about it in December, and received a good response basically receiving orders to quickly go through all our ornaments. Thank you, friends, for the great response in helping us raise money.
So as I said, I got up early to continue decorating because we took some custom orders.
Then later of course there was the getting the kids ready for school and sending them off.
Then I was so tired and went back to bed for a very short time to catch a teeny nap until Lucky got up with a cough he's had for a few days that is making him uncomfortable. Poor little guy just wants to snuggle. Jeremy was home so he and I both gave the little guy comfort until Lucky decided he wanted to watch a movie "to distract him."
A friend of mine has been dealing with sick kids lately so I offered to bring her dinner while her husband is out of town. Because of busyness I was going to bring it to her yesterday morning then she could pop it in the oven at dinner time. One less thing she'd have to deal with. So while Lucky was "distracted," I started working on a casserole for my friend, stopping intermittently when Lucky wanted food.
I got up early to work on ornaments while Jeremy stayed up late working on them the night before. So he took a nap while I was making the casserole then I woke him up when I had to run an errand.
And here's the part where you shouldn't feel sorry for me. As I was driving the car, I was thinking how difficult it was to be doing all this stuff. Lucky's not feeling well, I agreed to make dinner for a friend, I still had to deliver the dinner, do some shopping, then get home to make cookies for our "Giving Tree" ending celebration that night. And of course, Monday is early out day for the kids.
So... I was driving along thinking about it being hard but remembering that serving others sometimes requires sacrifice. Sacrifice often is hard. Sometimes we have to get out of our comfort zone in order to bless someone else's life. I could give up, I could have told my friend that sorry, I wasn't able to make her dinner after all because of needing to take care of my own child and all the other things I had going on.
Then I thought about the Savior. The reason for the season, right? Things got hard for Him when he suffered and died for us. Harder than anything I would ever go through. He could have given up. He even wanted to if there were any possible way He didn't have to go through what He was going through. But He didn't. He didn't. He didn't because of love. He loved us and was willing to do what He did because of that love. And that's what Light The World means. Light the world. Light our community. Light our family. Light our faith. To be a little bit more like Jesus, not just thinking about His birth this December, but His life and what He did to make our lives better even when it was extremely difficult. Surely I can be a little like Him and get through these crazy days to bless the lives of others across the world or in a neighboring town or in my own family.
So I cried my way home from running my errand and finished putting together the casserole (contacting my friend to let her know I was running a little later than planned). Jeremy helped out as I was finishing up, then I put the dinner foods together and headed back out to the car... which wouldn't start. I had just driven it and now it wouldn't start. And of course I parked it behind the van because I was going to be driving it again soon. Well, looking on the bright side, it worked to get me home after running my errand.
I told my friend I was going to be even later and that if she wasn't home I'd leave the food on her doorstep. I told Jeremy about the car figuring we could at least get it into neutral and push it out to park along the street. Jeremy came out and immediately got it to start. What? Answer to prayer. He drove it out of the driveway and parked it along the street so I was able to take the van, getting a much later start than I wanted to.
When I got to my friend's house, she was just getting ready to drive away, so she got out of her car long enough for me to give her a hug and tell her she's worth it. Because she is. I'm glad I did this for her, not to brag, but because my friend is worth it. And compared to the great blessings I have been given, this was just a small sacrifice to lighten her burden a little.
I next did my shopping and got home in enough time to pick up Nichole who was already on our street after having walked from the bus stop. So I drove her past the last few houses then made her help bring in groceries.
Once we got inside I immediately got to work making cookies. Thanks to Jeremy, who took the rest of the casserole makings (the recipe makes a lot) and put it in a casserole dish when I was heading out the door earlier, we had a casserole in the fridge ready for dinner that night. So after all the kids were home and I made a bunch of cookies and put the rest of the dough in the freezer (that recipe also makes a lot), I popped that casserole in the oven and we ate before the three oldest kids and I headed out to join with other families for the closing celebration. Jeremy stayed home to get some work done and take care of Lucky.
The Giving Tree celebration went well. We sang carols (I was tempted on "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in the part that goes "You'll go down in history," to shout out, "Like Emily Dickinson" because December 10 is Emily Dickinson's birthday, but I didn't), we talked about what things we liked about this year's efforts (one of the founding family's children said he liked that it took a lot of pressure off their family alone to have so many others contributing this year to raising money for a good cause- it's true. "Many hands make light work."), we watched a slide show about the last few years and this and what has been done, we had a cookie exchange and cocoa bar, and we had a good time visiting with each other.
As a thank you, the founding family gave each of our families a pine disc ornament with our family's name on it. That was sweet.
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