So you aren’t feeling the Christmas spirit. It is the eve of Christmas Eve and something isn’t right. Maybe the weather, maybe the exhaustion, maybe this year isn’t at all ending the way you were hoping it would. You started the year expectant in some way, and you are realizing that the end of the year will come with your hands still open, empty waiting.

Come Lord Jesus Come.

You have faithfully lit the candles for hope, for peace, for joy, for love. You sang the songs, or didn’t. You read the readings, or got interrupted trying. You didn’t miss a single day opening the tiny doors and pulling out the chocolates because your five year old wouldn’t let you. You wish that sweetness symbolized something you could point out this Christmas, but mostly December has just been hard. You are so tired.

You are just so tired. Come Lord Jesus Come.

In past years you have felt by now, that the waiting is almost over. But this year is different. Two days before Christmas and you just feel like you have been waiting forever.

You think on the words, hope, peace, joy, love. You realize you have been chasing them in your mini-van. There were times this season you could maybe see them.

You found hope. Your kids were invited to a live nativity, and when you chided them for getting too close and asking too many questions, they were invited to stand right next to the manger, to talk to Mary and Joseph and ask questions of the angel. To come look and see if the baby Jesus really was there after all. You got teary eyed on the sidewalk outside of an old country church your in-laws were married in. You felt, just for a fleeting second God reminding you that you were allowed to come in and ask questions too. That this was holy, but not untouchable, that you have always been invited and you weren’t going to mess it up with your honesty. Your kids and you got invited inside to have cookies and hot chocolate. Three separate church ladies listened attentively as your oldest rattled on and on. They were so sorry to see her leave. They were delighted by her and her holding forth. You were reminded that God is delighted in you too.

You found peace for just a moment on a country rode. You are trying to keep a tradition alive, even as the traditional giver has passed. You just hope it is enough. And on the way home, while the radio played melancholy Christmas songs, sung wistfully by crooners of the past, you are sure that this small thing was done with great love, and you are so sure that it is enough. That you are enough, at least in this moment.

There was joy that one night. You put the girls in their matching PJs and piled everyone in the minivan with to-go cups full of hot chocolate. Your husband remembers where all the really good lights are, and they are but it may not have mattered. The girls ooh and ahh over even the smallest light displays. They don’t even mind when we hit a cul-de-sac and they have to see it all over again. They squeal and point and tell us to slow down. They want to get a better look. They just like it so much.

And maybe it isn’t okay or popular to say, but it seems that this year you found love in the mall. A generous gift from a generous friend who just saw how hard you were struggling turned into a trip to Build-a-Bear with enough YES left over to bring an extra kiddo. You do the math and think you might have to pay extra for the sparkly shoes, but the girls just want them so bad. The stuffed animals end up coming home with their shooes and a leash and beds to sleep on, all under budget. So you say YES again to the train, and you watch as a teenage boy leaves his friends, who are sort of rolling their eyes at him, to high five a kid who is just totally starstruck by this. You watch as the people in the food-court sipping on lattes wave at your kids and make them feel like celebrities. Your heart melts a little as you choose to loosen your grip on old grudges and choose train-rides, and Build-a-Bear, and high fives instead.

It is raining on the way home and you have to put the shoes back on the stuffed animals more than once. There is yelling before there is three little girls falling asleep in the back seat. You come back home and the exhaustion sinks in. You suddenly realize there was something you forgot to pack and have it shipped where you are headed next. You accept that this year Christmas will be felt like a flame through a thick glass, dimly and a little skewed. You decide, for once, that it is enough. Maybe it won’t totally feel like Christmas, maybe every dream will not be fulfilled. But Christ has come, and you are invited to come in, to take a closer look. To ask some questions if you need to. You are invited to feel that you are enough, to find the things that delight you, to share the generous gifts. It may not always feel the way you want it to. That is okay. You can choose it anyway.

We buried my Grampy a week ago, said our final goodbyes, laid him to rest. All those other things we say when we know it is for the best but we will just miss the person so deeply. This is my last grandparent and I am feeling the grief so deeply.

There is something amazing about the love of a grandparent. So freely given, so utterly proud. Grampy was good at loving us well.

The thing about a funeral is the way that people from all different parts of a persons life end up using the same word to describe him. I stood next to my mother during the showing. People time after time described my Grampy as steady.

He was always there, and he was always happy to do what was needed. And his idea of what was needed was always so deeply rooted in love.

I don’t know how to talk about Grampy without talking about Grammy. I don’t know how to tell you what a great man he was without talking about how well he loved my grandmother. That love held his family together even when all of the experts suggested it was time to be splintered apart.

When it was time to bury Grammy, this time of year so many years ago, she was buried under a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses. Grampy insisted on it. They matched the yellow rose he slipped around her wrist when they were 15 and going to their first high school dance. Their pictures hang together in the town museum. He was a basketball player and she was a cheerleader and going to state is museum worthy in a small town in Indiana. When we watched Hoosiers together he would count off the gyms he too had played in. He still had his lettermans sweater.

I wasn’t only Grammy he loved well. He was simply always there when we needed him, at father daughter dances (so there would be enough dad’s to go around) and every play I have ever been in, at a few games a year when my sisters and I took our rotation in the marching band. I think he and Grammy even came to the Miss Ball State pageant when I realized I could make 75 dollars for loosing. If it was important to us, it was important to him.

And it is hard for me to remember that the things he did were extraordinary because he just did it with so little fanfare. Building us a play set in the back yard and a basketball goal for our drive way, taking us fishing, donating a piece of his heel to heal my mother’s scoliosis. He didn’t want her to walk with a limp, he’d prefer it was him.

At the funeral I was reminded that Grampy had been a Mason and a Shriner, that he had taken 150 trips back and forth to the Shriner’s hospital to make sure kids got the care they needed. I was reminded that if there was a committee at his church, he had been on it, and if there was a paper that needed signed, he very well could have been the one who signed it. Finances, choir, finding a new pastor. Grampy was more than willing to serve where he needed.

And I was reminded of the joy he took in all of this. The way he laughed with delight when he pulled out the wheel barrow for my cousin Ally, it had stickers on it, she was three. Or the stilts he made for Jill and the way he laughed when my mom took a turn in their kitchen. I remember the way he made the Christmas Ham just so and the oyster dressing he loved. I remember the candies he bought every year for Christmas since my mom was a little girl.

I think of my grandfather and I remember how he never needed to be thanked for any of this, how he did it because he wanted to. I think of my Grampy and remember how this world is changed by people doing ordinary things with great love.

I have rules about the holidays. This isn’t because I think I am morally superior to anyone who goes all out, this is simply so I won’t drive myself crazy or throw us into bankruptcy. When Juliet was an infant and wouldn’t even notice if we got her anything at all, I cried because I was worried I wasn’t “doing it right.” I was afraid that my child who just wanted to put everything in her mouth didn’t have enough presents.

That was the year I took these hilarious and perfect pictures of her in her red cloth diaper socks and a Santa hat. Then I wrote a beautiful Christmas letter, and didn’t get it in the mail until March. Ooops. I felt awful, but my friends didn’t seem to  mind. They were actually mostly delighted to get a Christmas card in March.

But really who wouldn’t love to get this chubby face at any time? I felt like a total failure. I did not get my cards on time, I did not do it right, it was not perfect.

No one cared. Really. No one cared. Not even a little bit.

That next year I had another baby. We went to visit Santa. Juliet was not pleased. Priscilla was unclear about what was happening. I felt awful. Now, I giggle. This is perfect.

(You see how we had to bribe her with the sucker? My views about consent have evolved since then.)

The next year I wanted the perfect Christmas card photo. I booked professionals. Priscilla did this to her face two days before the shoot.

Rather than putting reindeer antlers on her and declaring her the family Rudolph, I found us coordinating outfits to wear at a friends outdoor November birthday party. I WOULD have the perfect Christmas card photo. I got this instead. I have blogged about it before, but really it is the perfect card for us that year (plus my hair looks really good.) It was crazy, things were crazy. Also, they were delightful.

I have mellowed out since then, mostly, but that is mostly thanks to the gift rules I implemented. Something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read. I didn’t invent it, but it works for us.

But this year I broke my rule. I had all the presents wrapped the day after Thanksgiving and then three days later something showed up in my email that I knew the girls would love, would just completely flip over. It was well within our budget. So I chose delight. Mine, and theirs. It isn’t exactly what I was planning or expecting. It means we have one more toy in the house (which I kind of rage against) but this year, this time, I am not second guessing. I am choosing delight.

Not just in the gifts, but in the extra swing I take around the neighborhood so the girls can see the lights, in the ditching of the complicated gingerbread house for the chocolate and sprinkle covered pretzel rods my girls can actually do, in the one simple story and advent chocolate every night. None of it is perfect, but all of it is delightful.

I found Jen on Twitter and I find her voice to e consistent and solid. I am sure that if I do actually move into youth ministry she will have a lot of wisdom for me.

November has traditionally been a dangerous month for me.

It’s when people start blogging about their ideas for advent. In a single day, you can see dozens of ideas for advent devotionals and practices designed to help you anticipate Jesus’ birth. You’ll notice picture after picture of people adorning their houses with strings hung with artsy advent calendars. You’ll hear dozens of ideas for celebrating advent with kids.

And they’re all great.

So great, in fact, that I’ve traditionally wanted to do them ALL.

Every year, I’ve ordered the latest greatest advent devotional and started reading it with gusto. But then, life has gotten busy and by day two, I’ve been hopelessly unable to scrape together the 5-minutes needed to read that day’s devotion. So I’ve thrown it on a stack with all the other previously discarded advent devotionals and thought, “Some year”. I’ve allowed my good intentions to be swallowed by guilt – especially as I’ve watched my fellow bloggers and friends continue on their merry way with their advent traditions.

This November, I vowed, “Not again.”

As a new mom who also happens to be a Youth Pastor, my life is crazy enough at Christmas – without the help of the guilt that’s traditionally come from failing to practice advent the way I’d like to. So as soon as those helpful posts about what other people were doing for advent started showing up in my blog reader, I started hitting “Delete”.

Oh I know none of these practices and traditions are bad.

But trying to do them ALL is.

So I’ve stopped.

This year I’ve finally accepted the fact that I’ll probably never be the kind of mom who ties a string across her fireplace mantle and hangs a cutesy advent calendar from it.

I’ll probably never be the kind of wife who agonizes over setting the Christmas table just right.

I’ll probably never be the Youth Pastor who goes to every single Christmas concert and party she’s invited to.

Instead, I’ll be the kind of mom who says yes to building an advent practice that works for her family. To that end, this year, our little family of three is slowing down each night, cranking up the fire, turning on the Christmas tree lights, and reading one Christmasy book a night – some of which are religious and some of which aren’t.

I’ll be the kind of wife who says yes to a day spent with her family – even if it means some of what’s on her work and Christmas to-do lists go undone.

I’ll be the kind of Youth Pastor who unapologetically models the value of slowing down and saying NO to the hundredth commitment in a day to her teens and their families.

And I’ll be the kind of person who says “Enough with the craziness! I’m not just going to enjoy  Christmas day; I’m going to enjoy the entire advent and Christmas seasons.”

To do that, I’m giving myself permission to do what works for my family and I in this particular season of our lives.

I pray you’ll give yourself permission to do the same.

Jen Bradbury serves as the director of youth ministry at Faith Lutheran Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Jen is the author of The Jesus Gap: What Teens Actually Believe about Jesus and the forthcoming The Real Jesus: A Devotional for Teens. Her writing has also appeared in YouthWorker Journal, Immerse, and The Christian Century. She blogs regularly at ymjen.com.

Leanne Penny is exactly who she pretends to be on the internet, which couldn’t be higher praise. She is honest, earnest, and really and truly someone who will sit with people in the grief, the waiting, the hard places of advent. I am not quite sure how we found each other online, but I hold her friendship very close to my heart. This piece is classic Leanne, and I hope you will love it as much as I love her.

My Christmas tree is perfect, absolutely perfect.. and completely un-pinnable. I am writing this blog post in it’s light as it stands all fat and wedged in the corner between our entertainment stand and fireplace.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we loaded up our high-mileage mini-van and headed to a local tree farm, to meet Santa, drink cocoa and cut down The 2015 Penny Family Christmas Tree.

When we arrived, we got the low-down, grabbed a saw and looked over the price list/ tree farm map. The average tree on the lot ran from $30- $85 dollars, which is a lot of money for something we’ll to kick to the curb in 5 weeks. So, off we went, on the hunt for a cheap, scotch pine, sure to cover my house in needles while saving my budget.

We soon realized that we were not the only ones with this mentality and that most of the cheap trees were utter crap. It was at this moment that our 4 year old son fell in love with a Frasier Fir, a tree of the $85 variety.

He plopped down next to it, proud that he was able to spot THE PERFECT tree for his mama. When we suggested another tree his lip came out and he promptly burst into tears. So, like good parents who don’t cater to their kids… we promptly wrote a check for $85 and strapped his dream tree to the top of the mini-van.

Hey, you pick your battles, right?

So we get the Gucci Tree home and prop it up in the tree stand. I logged onto Pinterest to see what they have to say about stringing lights and garland, maybe I’ve been doing it wrong.

Then I realized something, rather profound. 2015 is not going to be the year of the Pinnable christmas tree.

In fact, I don’t know that any Christmas ever will be.

You see, my entire life has led to this year’s Christmas tree, my Christmas tree tells my story, not only of a 4 year old’s first evergreen love story, It speaks of preschool ornaments, Hallmark memories, WalMart inspirations and toddler craft projects.

My Christmas tree is perfectly imperfect, just like me and those I share a home with and the story I’ve been writing these 33 years.

Every year since I was born my Grandmother, who passed away this year, has been giving me Christmas ornaments. I was never allowed to take them out of the box, but I loved them nonetheless.

My Mom squirreled each one away in her cedar chest and now, all grown with a family of my own, I take those ornaments from their boxes, year after year, and watch my kids hang too many of them on one branch as I reminisce and remember.

My grandmother’s ornaments aren’t alone, there’s a weird, glittery plastic acorn from our first real Christmas tree as a couple, a baby’s first Christmas ornament, a little drumer boy, a key that reads “our first home.” There’s also a Winnie the Pooh on Skis for reasons I can’t really understand anymore. At the top of it all there is my favorite ornament of all, ared Santa in a silver space suit, “cosmic santa” as he is formally named. He was my Dad’s favorite ornament and I inherited him when he passed away 10 years ago.

These ornaments tell a story of a life well lived and a soul well loved, of many souls intertwined on the overpriced branches. My Christmas tree will never impress anyone on Pinterest and you know what? Good, because my tree has a story to tell, it doesn’t have time to be judged on symmetry and color schemes.

If your tree looks like mine, a hodgepodge of ornaments from here there and everywhere, know this: To have a tree that tells a good story is a blessing in the extreme. And good stories aren’t all sweet, don’t believe that for a second, that’s a lie.

Pinnable trees are easy to come by but a tree as rich as ours my friend? Priceless and profound.

This is the sort of Christmas I wish upon you, one that is so perfectly imperfect and unpinnable that your soul finds it’s worth in the mess of it all.

That the smells, family recipes and quirky decorations remind you of the thrill of hope, make your weary soul rejoice as yonder breaks a new and glorious reminder of the real, flesh and blood, soul quenching, earth shattering gift of baby Jesus, the redeemer of my story.

There was nothing pinnable, pretty or perfect about the first Christmas, it was a bloody, uncomfortable mess that changed our world forever. It was the culmination of a story eons in the making.

I’m glad that my tree ties into that, to me at least, that it speaks to mess and story, moments and years and redemption.
So this Christmas, when you feel the imposing weight of the perfect, tell it off. Remind yourself that your story has a purpose and that your imperfect Christmas with it’s random ornaments and cookie dough stickiness is the best tree your family could ever have. It tells your story as you add it to the story at large which whispers of love at the center of it all.

Leanne Penny is a writer, wife, mother and wavering hope ambassador who is passionate about partnering with God in the business of redemption. She lives with her husband and three kidlets in SouthWest Michigan where she writes, cooks, folds laundry and dreams of a day with a few less dishes. Find more of Leanne right here.

Three years ago, somewhere between the candle of hope and the candle of peace, the year I decided to blog my way through advent, my grandfather died. I remember so clearly how the grief mixed with the cheer, how the ashes mixed with the tinsel, and I remember what my friend told me as she was leaving my house and I was packing to go be with my grandmother.

“I hope you have time to grieve.”

With babies and finals and Christian finishing papers that year, there wasn’t a lot of space for me to grieve. My kids aren’t in diapers and my husband has only the dissertation deadlines and still I am longing for space to grieve in my life.

Thursday on my way from one appointment to the next I ran into the coffee shop to grab a bagel. One of my pastors was sitting at a table. He asked me how I was and he meant it. I immediately started crying.

How am I? I am tired. I am sad. I am confused. I am waiting.

I was angry the first two days of advent, just weirdly irrationally angry. I couldn’t quite figure out why, and then it hit me. The waiting.

I don’t know that I need to make space for the waiting, I am already right in the middle of it. I am waiting to finish my last year of teaching, I am waiting to see where we might be living next year, I am waiting for long held hard worked for dreams. I am waiting.

But also, I am not. I am running. I am doing. I am trying. But I am not really leaning into the waiting. I have sort of been avoiding it, like the mess in the back seat of my car. I mean, I know it is there but I don’t really deal with it. I guess I am hoping that the waiting will also take care of itself.

The waiting is such a strange mix, of grieving what will be or is no longer, the hope that something better will come, the realization that the future may not look like I imagine, the fear.

With kids and work and commuting, with dinner on the table and laundry to fold, with papers to grade and students to cajole into doing their make up work, who has time for grieving? Who has time to wait?

Why would I sit in silence when I could endlessly google possible houses in every city we have ever thought about living in?

Because I need it, this waiting, this grieving, this longing. Because the only way to not let the darkness over take you is to sit with it. Listen to it. I need the silence because the shouting I have tried isn’t working. I need to grieve so that I can make room for the joy.

I need to light the candle in the darkness, so I can see for myself how much real hope can really fill up a room if I let it.

I don’t want advent this year, I am already tired, and weary, and waiting. I don’t want advent, but I desperately need it. So I lock myself in my car during lunch, read the scriptures and breathe. I light the candle after bedtime and think about the promises in the kids book we read, how God is with you and you don’t have to be afraid are true for me too. I breathe slowly, I cry quietly, and I make room in my life for the waiting, five minutes at a time.

Amy Young sent me this one and I am a BIG FAN. I constantly feel like everything I do has to be productive. It doesn’t. This list is so, so good for me.

10 ways to be unproductive {but happy} at Christmas

Last December I was part of a Spiritual Direction Advent group and the leader cautioned us about seeking too quickly for meaning. We Westerners do like information and meaning, don’t we :). It was a timely and gentle reminder the tug culture has on us all. The tug isn’t the problem, it’s the complete buying into and not differentiating between tugs.

My soul has hit a wall with the amount of tips out there on how to be more productive. With the new year around the corner, I fear we’re only just beginning the goal setting, productivity tips, YOU CAN DO AND BE MORE, phase our liturgical productivity calendar.

Who says productivity is all it’s cracked up to be? I’m a disciplined person and like lists, don’t get me wrong. But enough, ok, enough!

Has the paradox of Christmas taught us nothing? I have a feeling how we view productivity is not how God does.

Here are 10 ways to be unproductive in the traditional sense:

1. Sit in the dark and look at Christmas lights. Better yet, lay on the floor and look up at them.

2. Eat a cookie or some other holiday treat guilt free.

3. Look at the world through the eyes of a three-year-old. Can you imagine how much more fun we’d have if we got excited about the little things of life? Family coming?! SO EXCITING. Hot chocolate? Is there anything more delicious to drink?

4. Read a children’s Christmas book, complete with voices. Fun with a child, true. But children are not required for this to be unproductively productive. I wrote about nine children’s books I love. Last Thursday I was with a small group of visiting scholars from China hanging out at a Wendy’s and I read Wombat Divine by Mem Fox to them. It was a blast.

5. Light a candle and watch the flame flicker. Let your mind and soul rest.

6. Conjure up a happy childhood Christmas memory. Sit and enjoy it. Maybe share it with someone.

7. Ask an elderly relative about Christmas when they were a kid.

8. Read Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memoryor Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. This year my in-person book club decided to read short stories for December and we chose four from this list and recommend them all.

• A Letter from Santa Claus– Mark Twain
• How the Captain made Christmas– Thomas Nelson Page
• A College Santa Claus– Ralph Henry Barbour
• A Burglar’s Christmas– Willa Cather

9. Sing Christmas carols out loud.

10. Recall getting one of your Christmas trees and call to reminisce with someone who was there.

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Which of these will you do today? Anyone else a little gagged at productivity talk?

photo credit:  Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton

My name is Amy and I live in the messy middle of life. The tag line for this blog is “where grace and truth reside.” I find people tend to be drawn to grace, grace, grace OR truth, truth, truth. Neither side  requires much discipline, do they? Instead they foster autopilot living. But real life happens … in the messy middle, with both. Read more of Amy’s work here.

I tried to not do Santa with my kids. I did. Not really out of any  super spiritual reason, or because I am trying to keep Jesus centered or whatever. I just….I don’t know, I found the whole thing exhausting. It is the same reason we don’t do Elf on the Shelf. It just feels like a lot of work.

But a few years ago when Juliet asked me if Santa was real, and I told her no, she looked me dead in the face and said “Well, lets just pretend? Okay?” And then proceeded to pick up something I had gotten her not even for Christmas and shout “Santa came! Santa came!” And that has been the Norman house rule ever since. Santa, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, these are games we play because they are fun.

So, imagine my surprise when we were lighting the advent candles this past Sunday, and we were explaining about the birth of Jesus, how Christmas is Jesus’s birthday and Priscilla looked up surprised, “YOU MEAN JESUS IS REAL!” Apparently she thought it was all pretend.

Oh. Total Christian blogger fail. My four-year-old was not totally clear on whether or not Jesus was like Santa, a game we just pretend (regardless of the fact that I wrote the children’s advent book at our last church). I guess we have some advent work to do.

Advent. Does just the word make you sweat a little? Like what the heck am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to move an Elf around the house for twenty four days? Or do a fun activity every day for twenty-four days? Or something spiritual? Or BOTH? What the HECK December? I can’t even get dinner on the table before 7 pm for twenty four days, okay? Let alone do something holiday related. It just isn’t going to happen without me totally losing my mind.

And I am not doing that. This year the goal is Sane for the Holidays. If it makes me sweat just thinking about it, it is off the table. I am hoping to light the candle 5 of the 7 days of the week and have a very simple conversation about How Jesus is REAL and his birthday is Christmas. That is it. There is a story book someone gifted me two years ago with 24 stories. We will see if we get to them. No pressure, just because we like stories.

For me, I am trying for five minutes of silent reflection a day. Two days ago I got that by shutting myself in my car during my planning period. Yesterday I tried after I put the kids to bed, but they weren’t silent and I fell asleep at the dining room table. I took that as a sign from God that I should go to bed before 8. So I blew out the candle and headed upstairs. God met me there.

This season comes with so much expectation. It is okay. We are doing okay. You are enough. I promise. Throughout December I will be featuring stories about staying sane for the Holidays. If you want to contribute, please let me know!