Two more days to go, and I am enlisting my teenagers to help me wrap gifts. I'm still not sure what dessert I will serve and just realized I didn't buy the turkey in time to defrost before Christmas morning. I guess I'll be serving a ham.

Has your Christmas been imperfect? Well then, you are not alone.

I'm guest posting over at my beautiful friend Lori's blog today.

I'd love to hear in the comments how your Christmas has been less than perfect.

Come on over to Lori's and let's talk about it.

Because endings and new beginnings are just on the horizon: 
Ben and Ali took wedding photos in their newly purchased first home, photos that Ben recreated with his 3 year old daughter when he sold the house. He does it to commemorate a lifetime of living there that came and went. Two full of hope and promise moved in. A different two moved out, still full of hope and promise, despite the pain and loss. Heartwarming:

"This is a story about love.  The pain is nothing compared to the love that I feel for Ali and Olivia and that’s the story I want these pictures to tell to Olivia in the years to come and anyone else that sees them.  The pain will subside little by little but the love never will, no matter where we live."
Read on here.


Because Christmas is a little bit about the same old thing feeling fresh and new:
A Christmas twist on the old familiar. There is so much to love about this video, each word, every added instrument, the writing on the foggy window to the unsuspected choir.




Because this fall project has so much to offer both giver and receiver at Christmas:
Have you ever wondered what happens to those Operation Christmas Child Shoeboxes you packed long before Christmas was in full swing? My friend Lori helped process some boxes for shipping and opened Christmas morning a thousand times over. Read the whole sneak peak behind the scenes here.

I had the opportunity to tell two young ladies' first-hand stories of receiving shoeboxes on the other side of the world when life was dark and cold and lonely, where God seemed like only a fairy tale, but two girls really do happily ever after because of a shoebox. Read it all here.

Because it's a wonderful life:

"She was a soft creature." That's how he described her. "She just fit right up under my arms if we were both standing without shoes on. And she would look up at me in that way that was hers ... every day until the day she died."

Describing his wife was only part of the video, and not even the point. But his description grabbed me.

Is there a better boast from a man of his wife? "She is a soft creature."

His is the example of true marriage: a woman completing her husband, his helpmeet. A husband adoring her for what she adds to his life, fullness.

And then we stop being the picture of marriage, and are the true marriage.

Christ can be God all by his lonely self. But he wants me by his side, his companion. I make him look good and bring Him pleasure.

To say so brings rapture, bold, scandalous rapture.

He wants me by his side. Me.
His child, I make him happy. I make him happy!

Do you see yourself as his comfort and joy? You are.

"For I have redeemed you; I have called you by name: you are mine" (Isaiah 43:1).





Sharing in weekend commutities: Sandra's Still Saturday and Deidra's Sunday Community.