I hope you all had a very, very Merry Christmas! Filled with tons of family, friends, and love! I pray you were able to focus on the true meaning of Christmas this season, and not get too caught up in the hustle and bustle, allowing yourself a few moments to relax and enjoy. As a mom the holidays are filled with so much craziness. Whether it's a baby's first Christmas, trying to prepare the perfect meal for your family and friends, making sure decorations are top notch, buying and wrapping all those gifts, or the craziness that comes with holiday travels, there are a ton of things that can just get in the way isn't there. I know that after celebrations like these I feel like I've missed out on most of the fun and I'm just beyond exhausted! Luckily for me this Christmas I had a little help remembering the true reason of the season (wrapped up in strange packages).

With my recent bought with ongoing migraines the Christmas celebrations were moved from my home to my mom's this year. I'm not going to lie, it was disappointing not to do it at my home, not to cook the meal, to have to pack everything up in the car and travel for the festivities. It meant my in-laws stayed home (since we had already celebrated with them anyway) and that meant we never gave them their gift since we were saving it for when they came. And because I sang in church for both our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day service it was a weird schedule for me. I had to leave my kids after opening presents to head off to sing since we already attended the Christmas Eve service together. It was really hard to kiss them goodbye and not just stay home and cuddle up in front of the fire while they played with their toys. Not to mention my little present snafu where I completely mixed up what I bought our son for his "big" gift and it was missing the major component. He ended up with a useless camera attachment to a system he doesn't even have rather than an actual camera like I intended. I actually shed a few tears over the last one, even though he didn't even notice and was too busy playing boats with his daddy. I felt useless and like a Christmas failure.

Insert a big piece of "practice what you preach" pie here. As I was singing for the service this morning I realized something, my family was happy and together, we are blessed and loved, and, even if we didn't have any of those things, Jesus came to Earth all those years ago. He was born in a stable, surrounded by dirty animals and filth. Wrapped in strips of cloth and placed in a feeding trough. He humbly came and brought salvation, and that is more than enough blessing than I ever deserved. All the other blessings that we were given this year were beyond many will ever even imagine. These things that were driving me crazy, and even driving me to tears, meant nothing. And they honestly didn't even effect how wonderful our holidays were. Despite the "failures" we had a wonderful, blessed day. And now, as the day ends, I will curl up in bed and dream of all the wonderful memories we made this year. My newest son's first Christmas, the excitement of my other babies who are now old enough to really enjoy getting and giving gifts, and having my family together. Yes, I'd say we had a very, very merry Christmas indeed!