My Cute Kids

July

so I am walking around in a total apethitic fog as far as christmas goes. It doesn't feel at all like the season to me. I see evidence all around me that it is, but I don't feel it. I am not shopping for gifts, because my kids are too young to know the difference, and because I am watching every pesos that leaves my pocket. I am not decorating my house, I need furniture, before I need christmas decorations I don't have any room to store the rest of the year. Mostly I think the real topper is that it is 90 degrees. I am a Utah girl. No snow equals July.

I have been thinking about what I want holidays to mean for our family. We went over to some friends house the othe night and she shared a story about Christmas with us. It was all about serving her fellowmen, and loving and giving and all the things that Chistmas should mean. Nothing about gifts or bows or trees, or an of the bu-ya that is everywhere.

I don't want to be a humbug and I don't really feel like I am, I just want this season to be about what it is about. A baby in a manger who was born with the cows and the pigs and the sheep. Not in some perfectly decortated palace. There were gifts, but they were few and meaningful, instead of trite because they were given because everyboy else was doing it, or because there were so many that nothing seemed special. The big deal was not about how beautiful the manger was or the party the shepherds had over the whole thing, but really about the life that the child grew to have. A life of loving and giving and serving and saving others from there hurts and their fears and their sins.

And that is a big deal to me, because I hurt a little every day, and I am afraid a little everyday. I am sure I hurt my children a little everyday, because everyday I feel less and less capable as a mother every day. And I know that I am not a perfect wife, or friend or daughter or sister. And everyday I look inside my own soul and see my flaws and feel my weaknesses, and feel such a deep need for some help. And when I think about a person who was born just to offer me that help and someone who has the power over the things I am so powerless over, I truly want to celebrate His birth and His life.

And as I write this, it occurs to me that the way he helps me and lifts me and is a part of my life is so sacred and private and personal to me, that it seems obvious why all the hoop-la that comes with the season doesn't reflect that relationship. And it makes me realize that the way I need to celebrate this season is going to be just as personal and individual to me as my realtionship to Him is.

And as for the pomp and the majesty all around, I can enjoy it. Lots of it is really fun. And the peace of my season will come in my own quiet moments. Hopefully I will be able to fill my own spiritual resovoir, so that when it really is July it will feel like Christmas in my heart.

Merry Christmas Everyone. I love you

I don't know what to call this

So while I have glimpses of this peaceful paradoxical zen like feeling about living in the realxed tranquil paradise I find myself in, I am struggling to be motivated. I am thinking, and hoping that it is due in large part to the extreme pain shooting down my left leg I keep thinking that I am getting better, but I'm not, or it seems that I am not. If my lack of verve is due to this pain then that is good news because I will eventually be free from this pain, I am some what confindent that all be it slow as tar, I am healing. So maybe someday I will be pain free and eager to wash dishes and mop floors, and dust cielings fans and do laundry and hang up laundry and fold laundry and then do it all again. I might want to make the bed once in a while or scrub the tub or the toilet. I don't want to do ANYTHING. I just want to lay down until this pain goes away, but I have these rotten children that keep looking at me wanting to eat and play and i supose eva needs her hair combed once in a while and sam is still king vomiter of all the United States and Mexico, so I just keep changing his bib, and then his clothes.

Justino had a similar injury with his back and leg before we had children. Of couse he just got to lay down for months until it was better ( and in his defense, his problem was way more severe than mine) But I said to him this morning, Isnt there anything we can do for this leg, and he said. Don't worry mija, you will just be miserable for a few months and then it will be better. Thanks, Justino, Thanks alot.