I’m done with Christmas shopping, for the most part anyway.  Marty got his present in October.  (Thank you apple for always introducing a new phone/gadget/idevice) The kids were done in pretty much one fell swoop.  My parents and siblings are not doing gifts, (praise the Lord!)  David and Marylin, Marty’s parents have been bought for, the kids friends also down in one fell swoop (you’re all getting the same thing!)  I do have to buy for our Sunday School party but I have an idea for that.

I love Christmas, I love the lights, the music, the food, the smells, the attitude of cheer and goodwill.  I love the cold weather and the hopes of a white Christmas.  (Isaac was convinced that it was Christmas the other day when it snowed, “we should open presents mom!”) I love the Christmas specials, Charlie Brown, Frosty, the one with the heat miser, Rudolph, ELF, It’s a wonderful life. I love the message of hope, in the baby born to live a perfect life, show us the right path, and die so that we may live.

But, I hate the gifts.  I know, I know, I’m a spoilsport.  I just hate shopping, trying to find something they will like, seeing the disappointment if they don’t.  I hate the idea of a list, and this is what we must have to have a good Christmas.  I’m not a gifts person.  I don’t need stuff.  We do Santa.  I don’t have a problem with the guy in red, I have a problem with the fact that he takes the place (and the characteristics) of Jesus for the month of December for a lot of people.  I never felt lied to growing up, I don’t have trouble believing in God because I found out my parents were Santa.  And, I totally respect you if you don’t do Santa.  It takes all kinds.

It’s something we talked about, still talk about at our house.  Santa, gifts, the meaning of Christmas.

At our house, Christmas was a big deal, we didn’t get a lot of toys except Christmas and birthdays, and then what we got was limited.  One big Santa gift, and a few things from our parents-usually there were some clothes thrown in there.  And of course I think that’s how things should be done, because that’s my experience.  Marty was raised completely different.  He got toys all the time and Christmas was just that times 10 (I’m totally going by the way he describes it, I don’t really know).  It’s been a struggle.

Last year with our kids, they got 3 gifts plus a stocking.  I really liked that.  They get way more from grandparents than from us, plus aunts and uncle, plus friends, plus goodie bags, teacher gifts…..and the list goes on.  And they are at the age that every gift is of equal value: the pencil in their goodie bag is equal to the Santa present.  But, it’s just too much.

I struggle with the fact that we are the richest country in the world.  That because I have food, clothes, a home to sleep in, and running water I am among the richest 8% in the world.  And my daughter is getting $50 worth of plastic ponies. My husband has every iDevice out. My son has more Mario’s that we can count.  I can watch pretty much any movie I want any time I want with Netflix and cable tv.  We give, we tithe, we make donations to world hunger, we give to Lottie Moon Christmas offering, we bought gifts for the angel tree and made shoe boxes of Operation Christmas Child.  We live pretty frugally, I buy my clothes at goodwill (only on the first saturday of the month), we try to only eat out once a week, I shop with coupons.  But my daughter has a full belly and a room full of ponies and there are children in Romania who are digging in the trash, babies in China who need parents, and kids in America who won’t eat this Christmas because there’s no school open to feed them.  I need to remember that what I claim is mine, isn’t really.

So back to gifts, I think next year, I want to only buy gifts that do good.  Gifts that when you buy them they allow teenage girls in Romania to go to high school and give them a reason not to have a baby at 15.  Gifts that provide an income for men and women rescued from the sex trade. Gifts that support a local business in your hometown. Gifts that feed hungry mouths in Africa for a month.

What’s going to last, a life or a plastic pony?

If you’re still shopping check out:

http://beliefinmotion.org/Cherechiu.aspx  - these are the missionaries in Romania that our church partnered with in 2010 and Lacey Hampton (one of our college students) spent a month with last summer.

http://hello-somebody.com/

http://www.worldcraftsvillage.com/

https://secure1.heifer.org/gift-catalog

http://freesetglobal.com/
(we’ve bought these bags before for our graduating seniors – love them!)

Sometime between Friday and Monday morning, this site was hacked.  It wasn’t a malicious hack, I guess.  The only thing that happened was a redirect in the script that pointed this site to a page that said “Nouse was here!!!”.  It happens to tons of other sites, as you can see by a Google search, but even that fact wasn’t enough to make me feel better.  I was pretty ticked.

I spent the better part of yesterday trying to fix it.

This involved me logging into my accounts on both GoDaddy and Bluehost, trying to figure out what I could do to make it work.  10 hours later and a lot of fussing, my site was back up, and I was worn out with it.  But still, something bothered me.

See, this site is mine.  Well, actually, it’s now mine and Erin’s.  This is a place we come to talk about our life; to share, vent, console, encourage.  In the last few days, someone thought it would be a good idea to take down a blog that gets just about 100 hits per day (on a good day).  What’s the sense in that?  Why even bother?  Because you get your jollies from bothering other people?  Pathetic.

I really hope that one day your “work” leaves a trail right back to you that gets you taken down and arrested.  I know there are more people like you out there, but just because they are out there doesn’t mean it’s right, or that you have to be like them.  Because of this intrusion I felt violated and unsafe, and I would never wish that on my worst enemy.  It’s a very unsettling feeling.

So, things are back to normal….for now.  Erin will post something tomorrow.  Thanks for sticking with us during the downtime.

In 9 and a half years of ministry in one church we’ve said goodbye a lot of times to a lot of people.  And that’s a hard thing to do, whatever the situation.  When you’ve poured yourself into people, loved them, called them family, anytime they’re no longer with you it’s hard.

Sometimes people leave for good reasons, situations that bring joy along with the sadness. Every time a group leaves for college, a piece of me mourns for them as I am rejoicing that they are following God’s plan for their life.  We’ve had 2 families leave because God has called them into ministry, celebrating mixed in with the sadness.  We’ve had people leave to join our Father in their eternal home, unbearable loss it feels but also ultimate joy that they are with their creator and there is no more pain, cancer, age, sickness, sadness……

Sometimes people leave because they get mad, hurt, frustrated, scared, and the list goes on.  I’m not gonna lie and say that I haven’t been all those things.

We sing a song at our church, I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God.  And yes, we’re singing about being in the universal family of God, we’re also singing about being in the local body God has placed us in.  The family of God.

We don’t abandon our family when the going gets tough.  We pull together and fight for our family.  You don’t get a divorce over burnt toast or the color of the carpet, you talk it out and let the Lord bring you together in unity.

When a family member leaves because God told them to, there is sadness, but God fills that emptiness.  When they leave and there is emptiness that’s not filled, it feels like a divorce.  You know that feeling when you see somebody in town and you’re not sure if you should talk to them or not so you just try to avoid eye contact, you drive by their house and cry. Yeah, these things should not happen in the family of God.

So what do we do?  We try to work it out, with God in the lead.  We follow the example of scripture.  If it’s sin, we go to them and confront them, pray with them, encourage them on the right path and hope that they will turn back to God.  If it is a disagreement, then go to that person, speak to them in love, they may not realize they’ve done anything wrong.  Give them a chance to apologize and make amends.  If they do, then we have to forgive them.  Do you know scripture says that our own sins will not be forgiven? (Mk 11:25, Matt. 6:14-15)  I don’t know about you but I need my sins forgiven!  Jesus also said we forgive them 70 x 7 times, which is basically saying infinitely.   How many times do we forgive our children? our spouses? our parents? siblings?  Should the same not be with our church families?

I’m not perfect, I’m gonna screw up, I need grace.  I’m part of a family that’s not perfect, that’s gonna screw up, that needs grace.  And I bet the same could be said for each one of you.

Let’s be faithful to our families.  To bear with, to forgive, to forget, to encourage one another for righteousness sake, to be unified with.  It’s never going to get better unless we work together.  And I’m pointing all 5 fingers at myself.  I’m guilty.

And I’m not even going to get into leaving the church because another one is better.  That’s just wrong.  It’s not a competition, we should be working together to bring those who don’t know Christ into the body, not competing to get saints to switch sides.  And I am speaking to myself here, I have such a competitive nature, I want to be the best, doing the most, and attracting everyone.  And I’m wrong in that.  Will you forgive me?

I know, I know, it’s my day and I’m an hour and a half late.

I honestly had no clue what I was going to write about.

Then something happened last night, and it stirred emotions in me.

Emotions that quite frankly I can’t put into words right now.

I went to bed with my feelings last night because I don’t know what to do.

I don’t want to make the situation worse, but I don’t know what better is.

I’m going to ruminate a little more and I’m sure you’ll see a post later, possibly even later today.

(I originally posted this blog last year around Christmastime, and actually the year before that,  but I thought it was still pretty relevant, so I decided to share it again.  I hope it makes you think.  Merry Christmas!)

I’m probably going to make some folks mad with this post.

I realize this early on, and I take full responsibility for it. But, part of doing what I do is calling it like I see it, even when the truth isn’t sexy (thank you, Derek Webb). By now, if you’re like me, most of your Christmas shopping is done, presents are wrapped underneath the tree, and you’re just ready for the whole thing to be over with. Well, except for that last part. Part of why I feel the way about what I want to write about today is the fundamental shift that has occurred in my life over the last few years regarding Christmas, and what it really means. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of our Savior, my Savior, Jesus Christ. It is about how God came to earth in the flesh to ransom the souls of men by breaking the power of sin. Over the last few years, the full gravity of this has come to bear on me, and I have wrestled with it, trying to justify selfishness over the message of the tiny baby in a manger. Guess what? I lost.

Yesterday, as I was leaving the house to go to church, I noticed a sign in my neighbors yard which simply says “We say Merry CHRISTmas.” I shook my head at it and continued on, but later I learned the origin of those signs. Our local high school is selling them to fund their Project Graduation. This bothers me on so many levels. Not just because the name of Christ is being used as a commodity to pay for inflatable games and pizza, but because it also fans the flames of those who loudly declare “CHRISTmas” instead of “Xmas” or “Happy Holidays”. This is wrong, and I want to explain why.

A few years ago, I first noticed the hubbub in the news because some national chain stores had stopped using “Merry Christmas” in their advertising and were instead using “Happy Holidays”. The opponents of this used, “It takes Christ out of Christmas!”, as their main argument. That’s an understandable argument. But, to assume that Christ has been taken out of Christmas just because one department store or another chooses to say “Happy Holidays” or “Xmas” is a huge leap into false logic. In fact, a better argument might be that these corporations, and us to a larger extent, have taken Christ out of Christmas by the way we’ve turned the celebration of the birth of  the Christchild into a consumeristic bloodbath to get the best deals on the most stuff so we can all fake happiness a few more days. If anyone, ANYONE, is to blame for taking Christ out of Christmas, it’s anyone who chases stuff more than Jesus during this time of year. People lined up at our local Walmart at 11:00 p.m. the night before Black Friday……when is the last time you saw someone line up outside the doors of the church on Saturday night because they couldn’t wait to worship?

It bothers me so much that some people want to hold the name of Jesus high during the holidays, screaming “It’s CHRISTmas!”, but the rest of the year everything else seems to be more important. I think the best way Christmas is declared is by a life that is thankful for Jesus year round, not just one month, or one day. Let me break it down even further….

The symbol that I used at the top of this post is called a labarum, or the Chi-Rho. It is a symbol that is used in churches, and represents Christ. Chi is the pronunciation for the Greek letter “X”. The “X” in Xmas is from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of Χριστός, Christ in Greek. So, the first letter of Christ, when used in Xmas, is actually correct! Now, we can argue that there is some kind of agenda against Christmas, but the agenda isn’t with the church! It’s outside, in the consumer-driven holiday that we’ve allowed ourselves to create! I don’t understand why we think that corporations like Target, Walmart, Best Buy, or whoever, have to say “Christmas” when the rest of the year they don’t exhibit qualities of being a so-called “Christian” business. We can’t expect non-believers to act like believers. That only comes from a renewed mind and a regenerated heart.

As for the signs, we’ve turned Christ into a nothing more than a material thing. A name that’s bought and sold. And in doing so, we continue the feed the consumerist monster, only this time we give him the Messiah to snack on. In the long run, does it really matter, what we say? We can say Christmas/Xmas/Merry/Happy/whatever, but do our lives reflect that the child in the manger has changed anything about us? Do we only celebrate CHRIST in this month, or is he capital letters in our life all the time? I want to leave you with this except from an article on the secularization of Christmas, and the wisdom of C. S. Lewis:

In the early 20th century, Christian writers such as C. S. Lewis had already noted a distinct split between the religious and secular observance of Christmas. In Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus, Lewis gives a satire of the observance of two simultaneous holidays in “Niatirb” (Britain backwards) from the supposed view of the Greek historian and traveller. One, “Exmas”, is observed by a flurry of compulsory commercial activity and expensive indulgence in alcoholic beverages. The other, “Crissmas,” is observed in Niatirb’s temples. Lewis’s narrator asks a priest why they kept Crissmas on the same day as Exmas. He receives the reply:

“It is not lawful, O Stranger, for us to change the date of Crissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not to keep it at all. For Exmas and the Rush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left.” And when I asked him why they endured the Rush, he replied, “It is, O Stranger, a racket… “[64]

Merry Christmas everyone….let it be in our hearts as it is in our words.

I hate the word “no”.  Who doesn’t?  I hate hearing it, I hate having to say it 20 million times a day.  I hate that it means I can’t do what I want to do when I want to do it.  But I’ve heard it a lot, from my parents, from Marty, from my kids, my church, my friends, and my God and it hurts my pride when I hear it.

But deep down I know it’s good for me.

I know that often, no means yes.  No to what is good, yes to what is best.  No to what is momentarily important, yes to the future.

If everything had been a yes that I’d prayed for my life would have been so different.  I would have been married to specifically 2 different people that I know now would have been totally wrong for me.  I don’t even like to think about that road, but I was so sure that was what was best.  I wouldn’t have married a man who still makes me laugh, that I don’t want to go anywhere without.   I wouldn’t have my 2 amazing children, who are patiently waiting for me to finish so we can have “B” day and do a worksheet.  Oh, they are my children.

Starting out, Marty and I interviewed at FBC Medina, and they rejected us, hard.  10 years later, I still feel the pangs.  But we wouldn’t be here, we  wouldn’t have seen God use us in amazing ways.  Mission trips, Frontline, Romania, 10 youth surrendered to ministry, we would have seen none of that.  None.  We have traded the good for the best.

There have been times I’ve prayed to leave this church, I know I’m probably not supposed to admit that, but ministry is hard.  It’s frustrating, not everyone is nice to you all the time.  But if we’d gone, we wouldn’t have seen the 5 youth join the church in the past month.

We went to see a gospel band Sunday night, The Red Roots.  Not my cuppa normally, but very talented teenage triplets.  They had a song called “What if God says No” which sparked this whole post.  It made me think.  It made me remember the scene in Bruce Almighty when he said, “yes” to everyone and the chaos it caused.  Anyway the lyrics have been stuck in my head, so I leave you with the chorus.

What if God says no
It don’t mean He loves us less
It just means He knows what’s best
What if God says no
It’s enough we have His grace
So don’t let go of your faith
What if God says no

Wow.  Let me blow the dust off this page and try to assemble some coherent thoughts.  It’s been awhile since we last saw each other, and a lot has happened  Here’s a rundown of what’s been going on with the Estes’ lately:

1.  Thanksgiving – We have Thanksgiving in two places, Marty’s parents and Erin’s parents.  So, that means double the tryptophan, double the noisy dinner tables, and double the calories.  It also means lots of awkward family moments and plenty of rest.  So, all in all it was great.

One year at Thanksgiving, when I was about 8, I was having a particularly hard time with my asthma.  I was coughing hard, and often, and didn’t feel like eating.  So, when time came to get in line and get my food, I just put a roll on my plate and went to the table.  My Aunt Betty thinks this is hilarious, and in almost 23 years since then, not one Thanksgiving has passed where she has not brought it up in conversation.  This year was no different.

“Do you all remember that time all Marty ate was a roll for Thanksgiving?!”

Yes, Betty.  We ALL remember.  You’ve made it clear.

But, hey, there was chocolate pie, fried turkey, dressing, mac and cheese, and all other kinds of good stuff, so it’s hard to be upset when your penance for eating all that good stuff is that you have to hear the roll story again.

2.  Christmas decorations – We put them up early so that we could enjoy them.  We are pretty busy during December so if we waited it would never get done.  I like decorating for Christmas, just not outside.  So, we have two trees, and some knick knacks spread around.  By spread around, I mean that the kids will not leave them alone and we find all kinds of Christmas-y goodies left all over the house.  Thanks, kids.

3.  Important video games came out – Zelda: Skyward Sword and Mario Kart 7 came out within the past 3 weeks.  That should sufficiently explain my lack of blogging time.

These are just a few things that we’ve been dealing with.  All good things.  All family things.  And really, I’d much rather spend family time than spend blog time.  Check back tomorrow for a new post from Erin.