Making My List and Checking It Twice

In the midst of the busy holiday season, I find myself always creating a plan:  a plan for shopping, a plan for holiday events on the calendar, a plan for who gets what for Christmas, a plan for how we spend the holidays with family, a plan for....well you get the picture.  I have a plan for my plans!  It's ridiculous!

Here's the thing though...I got a pretty big wakeup call from my "planning" during Thanksgiving.  A few hours after I wrote about being thankful for my family's health, my sweet mother ended up in emergency surgery on Thanksgiving day for a bowel obstruction.  How's that for irony?  Thankfully, after a week in the hospital, she has recovered and is resting at home now.  During that holiday week, I kept readjusting my plans due to emergency situations...and they kept changing by the hour!  After a day of planning and re-planning, I finally just prayerfully submitted and admitted I was going to take things one day at a time and roll with the flow and hand the reins over to the ONE who was actually in control all along.  I was finally tired of planning, if you can believe that!  Because guess what?  My plans just kept failing...over and over and over again.

Does anyone, other than me, see the lesson in all of this?  I think the Lord was gently reminding me that He's the ultimate plan maker...not me.  Because let's face it, our plans fail a good portion of the time.  When hectic schedules come, the answer is not more plans.  The answer is trusting in Him, laying down the frustrations at His feet, and just taking it one day at a time, because that's all we have been promised anyways. 

Since that prayer of submittal, I've been tested more than once.  Our family Christmas plans, on both sides, have changed yet again.  That normally would have frustrated me to no end, but this year, I just had to laugh and almost expect it in some ways.  I'm reminded, especially this time of the year, of what is truly important.  Not the gifts, not the plans nor the food (although I really do love the food), but the real celebration of the miracle birth of my Lord and Savior.  If I concentrate on THAT...then everything else lines up and my  perspective shifts, my heart changes, and all that planning really doesn't mean a thing anymore.

This Christmas, my wish for each of you is to enjoy each moment and celebrate what you do have and focus on the here and now.  Cherish the time with your loved ones!  Don't get lost in the hustle and bustle and commercialism of this season...choose to get lost in the love of our Savior who was born so each of us can find rest in Him every day of the year for now and forever more.

Merry CHRISTmas!

JOY

Matthew 6:25-34

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."