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Gathering Around the Table for Christmas

 MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

 

It’s here! Christmas is really here!!! After weeks preparing, planning, shopping, wrapping baking and doing all the things, now it’s time to ENJOY it all!!!

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The planning and prepping is so much fun leading up to Christmas, but let’s be real…it can also be a LOT of extra work to get everything done on our list. Am I right friends?!?! The month of December can easily turn into nothing but “hurry” and “scurry” from the moment we wake to the moment we CRASH!

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All year long but especially at Christmas, I need to keep my mind focused on having a  heart full of peace and JOY! Christmas is a time for me to settle my spirit! For me to set aside more time to reflect on the gift that we have in Christ our Savior! To stop and appreciate all the little things and realize just how blessed we are to simply gather at the table with our loved ones and just be together!

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There is something so special about gathering together around the table for Christmas! No matter where we lived, or what our circumstances we always made Christmas a special time around the table. It never mattered how big or how beautiful the table was…it only mattered who we shared it with!

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When I was growing up, on Christmas Eve, we would go to our church’s candlelight service and then to my grandparent’s house (which was literally over the hill and through the woods)  for food and fellowship! On the short drive from the church to our grandparent’s house, we would take a detour through town to see all the beautiful homes all light up with Christmas lights! Those Christmas Eve nights are some of my most treasured childhood memories!

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I absolutely loved the tradition of spending our Christmas Eve meal with lots of relatives. Although we all LOVED the delicious food and desserts everyone would bring to share, what we really looked forward to is WHO we were sharing our meal with! Our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins…it was the best of times! There were so many of us that we could never have fit at one table. I remember the adults would grab a plate of food and eat at the table, in the living room or even eat while standing up and visit with each other. We kids loved to take our plates down to the basement (to hide from the grown-ups) or we’d eat sitting on grandmas stairway! I’m pretty sure we have photos of no less than a dozen of us lining the staircase with plates of food on our laps! We were as happy as could be. It was never fancy or formal but the whole house was full of love!

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After relocating many times and living across the US, being back in our hometown this time of year, feels like the best Christmas gift ever! Not just because we don’t have to travel through Chicago on Christmas Eve to see family anymore (even though that is WONDERFUL)! Living back home meant we were able to see things like our nieces and nephews church Christmas program, we got to see my sister perform her first ever Nutckracker Ballett and even made gingerbread houses with cousins! It also means we will be able to have many Christmas meals, gathered together with the ones we love!

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We are so incredibly blessed in this country! We may not all have the “perfect” family, but most of us have pretty wonderful families that we actually should appreciate a lot more than we do and complain about a lot less then we do. We may not all have the “perfect” home, but if you are reading this, chances are you have a safe, warm, comfortable home! We may not even have our dream job, but if we are employed and can provide for our families, we should thank the Lord for being so blessed! I need these kinds of reminders, they really help me keep my perspective in check. My wish for you is that no matter what you have going on in your life right now, that you would find peace this Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS FRIENDS!

XOXO

~Dena

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” Romans 15;13

 

 

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