A Baby Changes Everything

This is a Christmas unlike any other Christmas I've had in my 30 years of life. Normally the holiday season is packed with multiple trips to the mall, lists of what each family member has requested, travel plans being made, office Christmas parties to attend, stress about how to pay for it all, anxiety attacks from feeling trapped in long lines and occasionally a thought of the baby Jesus coming to earth and laying in a manger to save the world (almost as if a sidenote to everything else).

I'm embarassed to say that this is the FIRST Christmas in my 30 years where my thoughts are surrounded only with that baby. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I am now a mother to a precious baby boy but mostly because we have decided not to buy Christmas gifts this year and that has allowed my mind and heart to be where it should have been each and every other Christmas. We have decided to stay home this year and are not worrying about traveling to see people and the who, what and where that all that entails. I've not had to go out and kill myself to try and find the "perfect" gift for each member of our families and haven't had to stress a single moment about where the money was going to come from to pay for said perfect gifts. My thoughts have truly been able to be on what Christmas really is all about, what Mary and Joseph must have felt when given the news, how much they must have loved Jesus, not just for being the Savior of the world but because he was their son too and how much it must have torn them apart to watch Him die on the cross for the sins of the world. As a mother I can now understand these feelings in a way I could not have before. It's so easy to say that Christmas isn't or shouldn't be about the gifts or santa and that it's about family and being with the ones you love. I guess it can be about those things... but really, it is truly only about a precious baby that came to this world to save us so that we can be reconciled with Christ and spend eternity with Him. That baby changed everything!

I'm so thankful to our Heavenly Father for the gift of HIS son this holiday season and for the gift of love, mercy, grace and salvation. Jesus IS the reason for the season and I'm so thankful that this year HE is all I need to and want to focus on.