People First

"Can you take a picture of me WITH my gingerbread men?"

At one of our MOPs meeting this fall, we had a couple of women speak and answer questions about maintaining peace during the holiday season -- life can get so crazy this time of year that we start focusing on the wrong things and miss the good stuff.

And a lot of our conversation kept coming back to holiday traditions; what ours are, where they came from, why we love them. And someone made the point that we create and maintain traditions to make and foster memories, yes, but more importantly, we do it to create and maintain relationships. To build and foster relationships with the people most important to us. The traditions are almost always built around people, and so we should be careful when we are willing to sacrifice relationships, to sacrifice people, for the sake of maintaining the tradition.

And that struck me, that way we always seem to manage to take something good and let our stress and our expectations and our selfishness taint it. Make it about something else. And so in that moment I made a mental note to check myself this year -- to put relationships first and sacrifice my need for control and perfection and, well, MY way.

And yet there we were, my sweet girl and I, surrounded by flour and sugar and eggs, trying our hand at Christmas cookies to pass out to people who love our family well, and I just couldn't stop myself.

"No, not like that, pay attention."
"Just let Mommy put the buttons on."
"If you are going to mess around, Mommy can do this by herself."
(And sadly, many more.)

And then, because Grace, I heard myself. I heard myself like she might hear me -- and I was really saying that having these cookies look and taste good (because I let myself momentarily believe these shiny tins might reflect our family in some significant way) was more important than her. Than she and I making memories and spending time together.

So I exhaled, and I let little hands press out stars and trees and gingerbread men. I let little hands dump sugar and measure vanilla and slide the knob of the mixer. I let myself ignore the mess around me and focus on that little soul, making her own batch of "cookies" with sticks and leaves and dirt (and mama's gritted teeth). And I didn't lose my mind. Hallelujah. But still, I worried she'd remember the first part, the not-best-me part.

But then she asked me, eyes shiny and smile proud, "Can you take a picture of me WITH my gingerbread men?"

Kids are way more forgiving than we deserve...always ready to give a second chance, to see the best in the people they love. Thankful to my girl for the reminder and the lesson that Christmas is about --

making mistakes and accepting forgiveness,

seeing beauty in the things you already have,

sacrificing yourself for the joy of others,

and most importantly, Christmas is, and has always been, about people.

The love, pursuit, and redemption
of people.

May you find joy in others this holiday season, and when you're tempted to honor a tradition at the cost of a relationship, remember me in the kitchen, being a jerk to a 5-yr-old --

and do better.