New Year's Day

I know it's time to look ahead--and I have begun to think about goals for the new year--but I'm still sorting through Christmas memories. There were twenty-three of us, altogether, counting children, grandchildren, grandparents, and in-laws for a full week. Split between three houses. Mine, Cliff's mom's next door, and my mother's up the street. Every spare bed was taken. We had air mattresses on the floors, pull-out sofas pulled out, and pallets and porta-cribs filled with little ones. Here are some of my favorite memories.

1. Greeting each of my four precious children and their families as they arrived from Oregon, Minnesota, Texas, and Mississippi.

2. Rolling in the kitchen floor with my two three-year-old grandsons (cousins, not twins). One of them informed me that since the pudge in my belly wasn't a baby (like his mother's) then it was just fat.

3. Mochas with my two oldest grands (ages 9 and 6) at Starbucks. They sat in the big stuffed chairs while I sat at a table next to them. A sticker on the table instructed us to offer this table to handicapped customers. They concluded that there were no handicapped customers in the store at the moment, so it was fine for me to sit there, even though I wasn't handicapped, just old, like a grandma.

4. Walking to church for the Christmas Eve service, arm in arm with my two daughters.

5. Two great-grandpas swapping stories over a bottle of wine.

6. Reading from Luke 1 on Christmas morning. Zacharias is one of my favorite characters in the Christmas story, though he is peripheral. Struck dumb for not believing he was going to be a father, Zachariah nearly burst with praise at the birth of John. I have prayed parts of his prophetic song for my children for many years. That they might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all their days. It's a good prayer.

7. A few quiet conversations in the midst of the chaos.

8. The silence when the door closed for the last time.

Ah, now I can look ahead.