Tis also the season…

Hello to you and I hope you are having a good week…

So many are hard-pressed this holiday season; so I want you to know that even as I type this, I am praying for various needs out there that I know of!

I am also aware that some are in seasons of much bounty and joy and I celebrate with you!

Whatever your season of life…we share the good and the hard times in fellowship, partaking of both with love and grace and thanksgiving to God. Be assured; you are loved and cared for and you matter much to God!

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Russ and I got to attend Grandparent’s Day at Graham’s preschool.

Let me tell you, the little guy is blessed because among all the other wonderful things he has going for him; he had four doting grandparents following him around. I do not boast in us as grandparents… I can only say that I would have loved the opportunity to have my own grandparents close by and to have known them the way this little guy and his brothers know theirs!

There is a lot of life and history with the four of us. Over the years, we have driven his mommy and daddy to dances and ball games before they had their driver’s licenses, chaperoned youth events together and now love and pray for this next generation that share our genes and fill our hearts.

So on our visit to his school, we stood huddled together beaming over every little thing he did. We took turns making hand prints for a picture, sharing the list of questions we were given to ask about his day, getting photos with him, and squeezing into tiny little chairs at all the various stations around the room.

It was an action packed hour and the room was well used by the time it was winding down.

Near the end, I went over to the craft area to help with clean up.

As I gathered glue and scissors my ears perked up as the young teacher asked a woman, that most likely was great-grandma, if she was having people in for Thanksgiving.

When I heard the older woman sigh and hesitate, I looked up and made eye contact with her.

According to our oldest daughter, this would be the reason I get drawn into people’s stories…it’s the eye contact.

Sure enough, she began to speak to both me and the teacher, explaining how she used to have everyone to her house but the mantle had been passed to her daughter.

And then her eyes started to fill with tears…and so did mine….and so there we stood amidst the scraps of construction paper….three women from three generations…one young teacher who has recently disclosed she is expecting her first child…me in the early stages of being a grandma … and one great-grandma who now looks back over it all with wistful eyes of one who has served well.

I told her I understood her sorrow and that I too love the role of preparing for family to return to their homestead.

It is a joy to prepare the food and have the house filled with loved ones. I also struggle with changes that have come with a grown up family and that I know my time doing this is really for a season. So the thought of that season coming to an end someday adds a touch of bittersweet to the holidays.

I searched for a word for how I feel as time marches on and finally I looked her in the eye and said…sometimes I feel displaced.

Yes, yes…that was it…she said as she nodded her head. “I feel displaced.”

And so the younger woman with all of it still ahead, the older woman with all of it behind and me somewhere in the middle: we had a moment.

Three generations who are painfully aware that life is a series of changes that we have to learn to adjust to.

Whoever said “The more things change, the more they stay the same” was not talking about family dynamics…because life is a constant ebb and flow of change…children grow up, people pass away, friendships are lost, relationships struggle…all the while babies are born, new friends are made, marriages add relatives….and in the midst of it all we sometimes feel our footing shift and it seems we may not make it through the current shaking.

We fear we will be so displaced that we will have been replaced when things fall into their new place.

And there are no guarantees on that.

The promises of God are not that we will be protected from the discomforts of change, but that He remains unchanged in the midst of all the great shiftings and losses and gains of life.

That He will comfort us in them.

That there is more to this life than our living day to day.

He is the same…yesterday…today….forever. This life is temporal. He is eternal.

In all the changes, He is the one thing that remains.

Steadfast.

Sure.

Strong.

Right.

True.

And that, according to Scripture, is what Christmas is all about.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, displaced Himself from glory to replace us on the cross so that we would have a place with Him in eternity.

The longer I live, the more I see that in all of the changes…He is our constant.

Wonderful Counselor

Mighty God

Everlasting Father

Prince of Peace

Wherever you are having to adjust today to the shiftings of time, I hope you are firmly standing on the eternal and unchanging love and grace of God given through the gift of His Son Jesus Christ.

God bless you and keep you today and throughout this season <3