"The Nativity Story" is playing out on the television. Chris sleeps nearby.
I feel like I dash into many of my weekends short of breath, just making it across the finish line in time.
Tonight I feel blessed and content, as content as can be on this imperfect earth.
Even though it's been a wonderful year, a rough year, an exciting year, a painstaking year, I'll take it all, happy to have it, grateful to have it with the people in my life.
I remember the reason for this season: the plight of a young new mother as she brought our Savior into this world and the pain that came with having to say goodbye to that Son; God giving His only Son so that we may live.
I am grateful for this year, however it has come, and equally thankful for the next.
Have a wonderful, merry, blessed Christmas. Remember why we celebrate: love.
This has, as you can imagine, been a crazy year at Team Loesch. I've pulled back from delving too deep into certain areas of my kids' lives because they're getting older and because with Liam, well, I would have DIED had my mother blogged about my sensitive, growing up issues and I can imagine that Liam would feel the same way.
(He can thank me later and also, if he misbehaves? ON THE BLOG. I kid. But not unless that threat actually works, you know.)
My way isn't The Only Way, the Right Way, but it works for me.
I'm thankful that I have these two little souls in my life. They give me so much love and sharpen my perspective. (Liam really, really wanted his photo taken in this tree.) It's so easy to rush through life and allow everything to become as blurry, just like looking at the side of the road through the window of a moving car.
These boys are my reason to brake.
I'm thankful for a husband that supports my endeavors and loves me even though my hair stands a foot off my head sometimes when I wake up. This morning he made me an egg mcmuffin.
I'm thankful to come home to these people every night, eat with them around the same table every day, and share my life with them. I would not pick anyone different with whom to share this journey.
I'm thankful for our parents. I'm thankful for their instruction when we were young. I'm thankful for the humor and wonder that comes with seeing their upbringing manifest in the choices we make in life.
Did I mention these two already?
I'm thankful for all the opportunities with which I've been blessed. I have ambition yes, but ambition is second to the need I have to make sure I'm helping to put a roof over my boys' head and easing the burden on my husband.
I'm very glad and lucky to work with amazing people and I'm thankful that Jamie took this silly girl under his wing.
I'm so very thankful for some amazing men and women I've met over the past year.
I'm thankful that we had friends who stood up, voluntarily - out of the kindness of their hearts - to help us when we went through a rough time with the security of our family during this past August. For a bit there I felt a little lost at sea and I'm not going to forget how our friends towed us safely to shore.
My friends! I'm so thankful for them. Friends of all backgrounds; people who think like us, people who aren't afraid to desegregate politically, people who love and accept us just as we are.
My girlfriends, my oasis, right after my family, when the work part of my life gets too heavy.
I'm thankful for the fabulous ladies who run our homeschool group. They do full-time work for free. If gratitude was gold they'd be the richest people in the country.
I'm thankful for my faith and freedom.
I'm thankful for the men and women who protect that freedom.
I'm thankful to have more things than I can enumerate for which to be thankful.
I'm especially thankful that my not-little-anymore cousin, B, had her life spared a couple months ago. On her way home in the wee hours of the morning she had a wreck and laid by the side of a lonely country road for four hours, her neck broken in four places plus severe spinal damage, until a conservation worker found her on his way to work.
Her life has not been easy, some of that is by her own choosing, and the people who were supposed to be her safety net failed her early on. She's one of the first people I saw grow from a baby - and I'd visit my grandparents' house and sit on the sofa in my Easter dress to hold her - until now, in her early 20s. Now she's lying in a hospital bed. Her birthday was la few weeks ago. She spent it staring at the ceiling.
Doctors weren't sure that she'd live, much less breathe on her own again yet here she is. She's paraplegic now, but she's eating a bit of food and has some use of one of her arms. Considering that she almost lost her second chance, I consider this wonderful progress, wonderful news.
A lot of people ask me why I believe in God. Why I sought Him out when I was a kid growing up in an quasi-apathetic household. I had one father truly forsake me and the search for that brought me home. My only exposure to Christ came from my maternal grandma who'd take us to her fire and brimstone church in the south. I've been given chances that I should not have had and at times I've seen the tangles of my life flipped - and that's when I caught a glimpse of the beautiful tapestry those knots were creating.
It's so hard to see the beauty when you're in the middle of a tangle.
I am watching Him right now at work in my cousin. The doctors are baffled as to why she did not die on that dark country road deep in the Ozark wood. She wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was thrown far from the vehicle. She laid, unconscious, bleeding and mangled on the side of the road for four hours; her lungs stiffened because she was without care for so long. I think she's here only by the grace of God. He saved her. Again.
It wasn't her time to go. She's made so many mistakes. Haven't we all, though?
I want to hug her and tell her that she has family here for her, people who love her because of blood, not because of drugs, and that we will always be here for her because THAT is what family does.
I want to thank God for saving her and then pray that this is the extent of wake up calls she is to receive because she is awakened.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And thanks to you all, who've been on this wild ride of parenting and life with me these past years.
Have a wonderful, happy Thanksgiving.
What are you thankful for? You can leave it in the comments. You don't need to register; you can fill in your name/link after selecting to comment anonymously.
P.S. This song ran through my head while writing this:
"Dear God thank you for this day and for our food and for the animals, we really like them they're very nice and stuff oh except for the man-eating catfish. Amen."
When I was a kid my entire family would pile into Grandma and Grandpa's tiny house in the Ozarks for every single holiday. The kids would run and holler up and down the small hallway and scream while running through the woods. After Christmas, Easter was my favorite holiday because it was the only day on which I had a divine right to eat an obscene amount of candy without fear of punishment from my parents. Chocolate rabbits are the childhood meth rock and after we all got tweaked up we'd trample Grandma's front yard, her daffodils, and every living thing in sight as we searched for eggs.
After they passed away we stopped going to the Ozarks. The family unit split apart due to infighting and betrayal, and it's all just a very depressing story. Besides a good character and virtues and all of that, I wanted to raise up my children to know the same sort of large, loud family with which I grew up. They got a little bit of that this past Sunday and for the first time in six years I had a holiday (aside from last Christmas at my aunt's house) that felt a little bit more like "home."
After the boys decorated their plastic eggs with stickers, I stayed up late the night before and filled them with candy and loose change. I ran out about a third of the way through and left the rest of them empty. The next day the kids littered Chris's mom's front yard with the empty eggs and I was all "What about the THRILL OF THE HUNT? Back in MY day ..." and then I realized how incredibly old I sounded. So, eggs = FAIL.
My mother enjoys the tradition she created of buying the boys' Easter outfits each year; this year Paw-Paw bought them and Ewan did not want to take his dress shoes off. He kept talking about how fancy they were except he said fancy with three syllables and somewhere up in Heaven my Grandma smiled.
The grandparental units insist on getting the kids chocolate rabbits and Chris's mother surprised them with an actual pirate's chest she made herself filled with chocolate coins, costume jewelry, a parrot puppet, and tons of other things. "I love pirates and Easter!" Liam exclaimed.
Just as I trampled all over my grandmother's yard, so did the boys trample all over their grandmother's yard. They had the best time climbing the hills, chasing each other, sharing candy, and trying to bust our ear drums. I watched them run around, remembering how much fun it used to be and I realized that I wasn't one of "the grandkids" anymore; I was one of "the kids." We're all slowly marching up a giant, generational staircase towards the only thing certain besides taxes. In the spirit of Easter, we'll all be together again after, someday.
