giving thanks on january 1.

Happy New Year, dear readers!

On Sunday afternoon I pulled dusty storage boxes down from the attic, and turned on our Spotify Christmas music playlist one last time while the kids and I took ornaments off the tree and unwound strings of white lights and rolled up the stockings.

I’m usually more than ready to take down decorations and reclaim our living room, but this year I found myself a bit melancholy, not quite ready to say good-bye to the Christmas season.

We made beautiful memories this year, like always, and I can’t quite put my finger on why it was so special, except maybe a new feeling of togetherness.

For so many years, with a houseful of young kids, Christmas was something David and I “put on.” But this year, the whole season was something we all did together. The kids are old enough to memorize my favorite Christmas songs with me and sing them at the top of our lungs, and help bake gingerbread cookies, and talk about the story of Jesus’ birth with greater understanding. Instead of wanting to get them tucked away in bed as soon as possible, so I could put my feet up and relish Christmas movies in peace, I wanted them to stay up with me to watch White Christmas and It’s A Wonderful Life yet again.

They love getting presents, sure, but I enjoyed seeing them pause to soak in the wonder of the whole season and the joy it brings with “big kid eyes,” rather than just anxiously counting down to Christmas morning (although they did that too).

In our family, December is a time for slowing down.

Sure we have Christmas-y activities, but it’s always a quieter month for David as a pastor, a pause to catch his breath after a very busy fall. We’ve been careful over the years not to fill the void with more programs, but just to let our church soak in the season of Advent.

There were bright, shining moments I wanted to hold onto this season: the surprise of cutting the orange netting from our Home Depot Fraser Fir on Thanksgiving weekend to find that it looked as bushy and quirky and smelled as fragrant as if it came from a tree farm. All six of us cuddled together in the living room to watch the British Baking Show. Dance parties to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Gabe pulling me aside to give me the Christmas stocking he made out of construction paper, because I didn’t have one. And finally, putting our worship leader on speaker-phone Christmas Eve night as we tucked the boys into bed so he could remind us of the chorus of our favorite new hymn.

Our kids were 11, 9, 7, and 5, and it was our favorite Christmas with them, at these particular ages.

We also enjoyed a new sense of togetherness with our church family. Several different friends invited all six of us over for dinner throughout December, and we spent nearly every day of Christmas week with our church friends, whether meeting at the movie theater to see Mary Poppins Returns, visiting a tearoom, gathering for hot chocolate and a Christmas Eve service, or celebrating a friend’s 70th birthday.

And so while David worked less, we found ourselves spending more time than ever with our church family.

It felt so very homey. Not over-busy, just people getting together because they wanted to be together, to build Christmas memories with one another. As a pastor’s wife, I gave thanks this Christmas as I unwrapped surprise gifts from my friends: a novel I’ve been wanting but hadn’t even mentioned, a book stamp with “From the Library of Julie Gentino” in script, and I thought, suddenly, I am known here. 

I can be myself in my church, and I feel loved just the way I am.

That is a gift of grace, pure and simple. It’s one I’m learning to accept.

My heart overflowed with thanksgiving all month for God’s faithfulness.

He met us in heartache and change this year and He drew near. He is not a different God, but I’ve come to know Him in a different way than I ever have before, and He’s not like I expected, not like the God I made Him to be in my head. His love for me is so much wider and deeper and more intimate than I ever knew. I can be myself with Him.

This is the best gift, one I’ve wanted to take time to sit with and treasure up as 2018 draws to a close.

Maybe that’s what I didn’t want to say good-bye to Christmas on Sunday, as I swept piles of dried pine needles and vacuumed the rugs after David carried out our tree, and made yet another trip to the attic with Christmas knickknacks we’d overlooked.

And when everything was stowed away until Thanksgiving weekend, 2019, we all six stood and surveyed our suddenly-huge living room, and realized that we like it very much after all. It’s nice to have our space feel normal again, and to realize that there’s so much about this year to look forward to.

When the house was cleaned up and the dinner dishes loaded in the dishwasher, and David and Judah playing a game at the dining table, I sat on the sofa and pulled my five-year-old into my lap for the last time. My last five-year-old. He melted into me perfectly, knees hugged close, little toes tucked under him, a hand reaching up to turn my chin and give me a kiss on the lips. “I love you, Mommy. Tomorrow’s my birthday!”

“I know, buddy. But are you sure you don’t want to stay five forever instead?”

“No way. I can’t do that!”

On New Year’s Eve, our birthday boy woke up with the same bounding exuberance with which he greets every day of his life. And my wistfulness for the Christmas season melted away as I couldn’t help getting caught up in Noah’s joy.

We celebrated his birthday with Chocolate Lucky Charms and two friends who came over to play, with grandparents, and with us taking off the training wheels from his new bike, just two days after he got it. We celebrated with hamburgers and Publix chocolate cake. And his very favorite part of his birthday, as always, was watching our Christmas tree burn in his Grandpa’s bonfire.

Thank you, Noah, for giving us a perfect way to bring in the New Year.

As I wrap this post up, the electric kettle is heating water for a cup of afternoon Earl Gray, my new Taproot calendar is hung and my Target dayplanner spread before me to do a bit of organizing. The football game is on in the next room and my kids are at peace, busy with new books and Lego’s.

I sit here on January 1st with a heart full of joy.

I pray the same for you, dear friends.

Because He bends down to listen,
I will pray as long as I have breath.

– Psalm 118.2