Joy::Third Sunday:Advent

Circle of Faith::a Florida Christmas...

We buy our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving and the six grandlittles (ages 3, 3, almost 5, 6, almost 9, 9) are the first to decorate it. We set out all the unbreakable ornaments and let them decorate however they want to, which means only the bottom of the tree is decorated when they are finished, and as you can tell by the photo in the bottom right, many of the branches droop under the weight of multiple ornaments. I kept the tree just as they decorated it for almost a week before I did a little rearranging and added the breakable ornaments. It's a family tree, with lots of handmade ornaments, and I love it just the way it is.

I can count my experiences with snow on one hand.

It snowed enough one night--when we lived in north Florida almost forty years ago--for a few flakes to accumulate on top of Louis' motorcycle helmet. I could see it from the window of our second floor apartment.

That might have been the same year Louis and I camped in the Blue Ridge Mountains after an early spring snowfall. Unable to find dry wood for a fire, we put on every layer of clothing we could and went to bed before dark--huddling together in our sleeping bags. The wind howled throughout the night and we woke up in the morning to find that our pup tent had collapsed on top of us. After only one night, we packed up our gear and headed home. Naïve and ill-equipped native Floridians that we were, it's grace we survived.

In January 2005, Emily and I were gifted with a trip to Washington, D.C. for Bush's Inauguration. We stared in awe and delight through the hotel window as snow fell throughout the first night we were in D.C. It was so pretty to watch, but navigating the slippery sidewalks and standing outside in the wet snow all day Inauguration day tempered any enthusiasm I might have had for snow.

Snow at Christmas was never my experience, but I grew up believing that it should be. My mother played Bing Crosby's "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas," and Nat King Cole's "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" for weeks while we decorated our home with snowflakes cut out of folded paper and hung them from the windows she had sprayed with fake snow from a can. It was often warm enough to go swimming, but we still decorated the Christmas tree--set up next to the fake fireplace--with snowmen, snowflakes and icicles Clearly a cheap imitation of the Hallmark Christmases we apparently tried to emulate.   

      

Somewhere between growing up, growing older and growing in Christ, I decided to boycott anything to do with snow at Christmas and began to appreciate what makes Christmas in Florida different from much of North America. Like many places throughout the world, including Bethlehem and most of the Southern Hemisphere, Florida's warm, snowless Christmas is as real as the cold, snowy Christmases I grew up thinking were more authentic. Over the years I replaced my snow-themed decorations and ornaments (except for those with sentimental value) with those with a more tropical flavor, like poinsettias, pine cones and shells. 

More importantly, I embraced the truth that it's not the weather outside or the adornments we hang on our tree and use to decorate our home, but the One we adore in our hearts that makes Christmas authentic and gives us real joy. Everything else is the cheap imitation.

This post is my contribution to a monthly blog circle "Circle of Faith in Words and Image." The theme this month is Christmas. Please visit the blogs of my sweet friends in the circle linked below:

Julie at Captured Bits of Beauty
Marty at What Marty Sees
Connie at Live, Laugh, Love and Hope

Seeing angels {and a glance back at "The Worst Christmas Ever"}...

We lose our ability to see angels as we grow older, and that is a tragic loss.

~ Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water, p.10

* * *

Can a sixty-something wannabe psalmist with a camera be an artist? I consider the question often - my nose buried in a growing stack of books for artistic encouragement and enlightenment. 

Most kindergartners have drawing and painting skills more advanced than mine, my family begs me not to sing, and though I once dreamed of being a concert pianist, I never possessed the skills to play beyond my living room.

Yet, there's something about how I see through the lens of a camera that captures wonder and frames beauty - or so I'm told, even if my adult children do roll their eyes. So I keep asking the question, looking for answers, for light in the words of honest-to-goodness artists, like Madeleine L'Engle. 

That's when I read the L'Engle's quote above about angels. She's right, I think - or so my experiences tell me. Experiences like the one that begins with these excerpts from an award-winning *short story I wrote two years ago:

We found Daddy asleep, slumped to one side of his wheelchair in the hall outside his room. He was a mess. In desperate need of a haircut and shave, his rumpled clothes hung loosely on his tall, bony frame. Both arms were covered with bruises and a bandage was wrapped around his right forearm. He’d bitten into one of his medications and the reddish-brown remains mixed with drool ran down the creases of his chin.

Waking him gently, I wheeled him back to his room, washed his face and showed him the bag of Christmas decorations we brought to decorate his side of the room. I removed the decorations from the bag and placed them on Daddy’s bed. His bed, a bedside table, a small closet of drab, baggy clothes, and his wheelchair were all he had to show for the years he had worked—long past retirement age—to provide for his family. 

I’d never known Daddy to be anything but gentle except for the time he punched mother’s roommate when she wouldn’t let him through the door to see his wife. It was totally out of character for him to destroy the Christmas tree I put it on the table next to him. 

“Daddy! Why did you do that?” I cried, prying his fingers off the now ruined centerpiece, but he only groaned and stared over my shoulder. 

I called for the nurses. Though they didn’t want to, I convinced them to put Daddy back in bed. “Maybe he just needs to rest,” I told them as they removed his shoes and tucked the covers around his frail, lanky frame. 

* * * 

It was the worst Christmas ever. Without waking up again, Daddy died two days after we left him that day, and mother forgot how to brush her teeth. 

Daddy was admitted to the hospital the night after I left him to rest. I was by his side, with my nephew Michael, as he took his last breath. When Michael told the rest of the family in the waiting room, his 4 year old daughter Kari asked, "Did you see the angels?"


Mason and Gavin were only 3 years old the day I took this photo while they played outside. All week, Gavin talked about seeing angels. "Lots of them, Mimi. Everywhere." And he was serious. "See the angels?" he asked Mason, pointing up into the cloudless blue sky. "They are all over!"

Maybe I am an artist. Gavin and Kari, too. I'm pretty sure we've seen angel wings in flowers, clouds, and hospital waiting rooms, too. 

{*The Worst Christmas Ever was published in the anthology Show Off, compiled and edited by Joe Bunting, writer and creator of the award-winning The Write Practice.}

For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.

Psalm 91.11

After the battle::looking up {a December photo essay}

December 4







December 5 {Day before surgery}









December 12 {First day to sit outside with my camera since surgery December 6th}







December 14





December 18










December 27 {First day to walk around outside with a camera since surgery}



















December 30

Two major surgeries in two months just before Christmas might have been more than this not-as-strong-and-young-as-she-thought-she-is me should have considered.

I was prepared for pain, but not the brittle emotions and the darkness that steals joy and veils the beauty of Christmas. My throat would burn as I choked back tears and counted more griefs than gifts.

But that battle with the blues has waned, and as I knew He would - for He withholds no good thing, God showed me where I'm weak and where He wants me to grow, and how He will be my strength.

How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise! Selah
Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
As they go through the Valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.
O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah
Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed!
For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
O Lord of hosts,
blessed is the one who trusts in you! Psalm 84 ESV

To you I lift up my eyes,
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
Psalm 123:1

Advent Day 25::Christmas Day::at the name of JESUS...

December 25

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
Luke 2:11 ESV

“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
Luke 2:14 ESV

...at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth
Philippians 2:10 ESV

The following resources were used to create one of my most popular series of posts and photographs here on Pollywog Creek. Through Advent 2013, I will be posting them again, with occasional rare commentary. They speak for themselves.

In addition to the resources listed below, I'm adding Ann Voskamp's The Greatest Gift - Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas to my daily readings this year.

The Cradle to the Cross Wreath by Caleb Voskamp { The empty "manger" at the end of the spiral in some of the photographs is not part of Caleb's wreath, but from a creche made of olive wood that was a gift from my parents many years ago.}

Advent Scriptures and Readings
The Handel's Messiah Family Advent Reader by Donna W. Payne and Fran Lenzo

Children's Bible
The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones

Advent Day 24::Christmas Eve::forever and ever, Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

December 24

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,
“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Revelation 19:6 ESV

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying,
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ,
and he shall reign forever and ever.”
Revelation 11:15 ESV

On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written,
King of kings and Lord of lords.
Revelation 19:16 ESV

The following resources were used to create one of my most popular series of posts and photographs here on Pollywog Creek. Through Advent 2013, I will be posting them again, with occasional rare commentary. They speak for themselves.

In addition to the resources listed below, I'm adding Ann Voskamp's The Greatest Gift - Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas to my daily readings this year.

The Cradle to the Cross Wreath by Caleb Voskamp { The empty "manger" at the end of the spiral in some of the photographs is not part of Caleb's wreath, but from a creche made of olive wood that was a gift from my parents many years ago.}

Advent Scriptures and Readings
The Handel's Messiah Family Advent Reader by Donna W. Payne and Fran Lenzo

Children's Bible
The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones

Advent Day 23::a new song...

December 23

saying with a loud voice,
“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!
Revelation 5:12 ESV

And they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
Revelation 5:9 ESV

And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying,
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” Revelation 5:13 ESV

The following resources were used to create one of my most popular series of posts and photographs here on Pollywog Creek. Through Advent 2013, I will be posting them again, with occasional rare commentary. They speak for themselves.

In addition to the resources listed below, I'm adding Ann Voskamp'sThe Greatest Gift - Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas to my daily readings this year.

The Cradle to the Cross Wreath by Caleb Voskamp { The empty "manger" at the end of the spiral in some of the photographs is not part of Caleb's wreath, but from a creche made of olive wood that was a gift from my parents many years ago.}

Advent Scriptures and Readings
The Handel's Messiah Family Advent Reader by Donna W. Payne and Fran Lenzo

Children's Bible
The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones

I {LOVE} Sundays in Advent::to declare: my Redeemer lives...

December 22

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
Job 19:25-26 ESV

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
1 Corinthians 15:20 ESV

The following resources were used to create one of my most popular series of posts and photographs here on Pollywog Creek. Through Advent 2013, I will be posting them again, with occasional rare commentary. They speak for themselves.

In addition to the resources listed below, I'm adding Ann Voskamp's The Greatest Gift - Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas to my daily readings this year.

The Cradle to the Cross Wreath by Caleb Voskamp { The empty "manger" at the end of the spiral in some of the photographs is not part of Caleb's wreath, but from a creche made of olive wood that was a gift from my parents many years ago.}

Advent Scriptures and Readings
The Handel's Messiah Family Advent Reader by Donna W. Payne and Fran Lenzo

Children's Bible
The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones