Day 1 of the 12 Pearls of Christmas

Pearl necklace giveaway!
Details at the end…

A Christmas of Kindness

By Suzanne Woods Fisher

“You can give without loving, but you can’t love without giving.” Amish proverb

I do it every year.

I plan for a simpler, less stressful Christmas season and, every year, by Christmas Eve I’m exhausted! After our delicious and very-time-consuming-to-make traditional Swedish meal to honor my husband¹s relatives (think: Vikings), it’s time to head to church. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but the last few Christmas Eve’s, I have sent my husband and kids head off without me. The pull to spend an hour of quiet in the house feels as strong as a magnet.

It’s odd. My children are young adults now. Wouldn’t you think that Christmas would be simpler? Instead, it’s just the opposite. Jugging schedules to share the grandbaby with the in-laws, trying to include our elderly parents at the best time of day for them, dancing carefully around recently divorced family members whose children are impacted by the shards of broken relationships.

The thing is: you can simplify your to-do list, but you can’t really simplify people. We are just a complicated bunch.

Here’s where I borrow a lesson about simplicity from the Amish. It’s easy to get distracted with the buggies and the bonnets and the beards, but there’s so much more to learn from these gentle people if you’re willing to look a little deeper.

Yes, they live with less “stuff” and that does make for a simpler, less cluttered life. But it’s the reason behind it that is so compelling to me: they seek to create margin in their life. Not just empty space but space that is available to nourish family, community, and faith. Their Christmas is far less elaborate than yours or mine, but what they do fill it with is oh so right.

Christmas comes quietly on an Amish farmhouse. There is no outward sign of the holiday as we know it: no bright decorations, no big tree in the living room corner. A few modest gifts are waiting for children at their breakfast place settings, covered by a dishtowel. Waiting first for Dad to read the story of Christ’s birth from the book of Luke. Waiting until after a special breakfast has been enjoyed. Waiting until Mom and Dad give the signal that the time has come for gifts.

Later, if Christmas doesn’t fall on a Sunday, extended family and friends will gather for another big meal. If time and weather permits, the late afternoon will be filled with ice skating or sledding. And more food! Always, always an abundance of good food. Faith, family, and community. That is the focus of an Amish Christmas.

And it’s also how the story begins for A Lancaster County Christmas, as a young family prepares for Christmas. A winter storm blows a non-Amish couple, Jaime and C.J. Fitzpatrick, off-course and into the Riehl farmhouse. An unlikely and tentative friendship develops, until the one thing Mattie and Sol hold most dear disappears and then. Ah, but you’ll just have to read the story to find out what happens next. Without giving anything away, I will say that I want to create a Mattie-inspired margin this Christmas season. Mattie knew inconveniences and interruptions that come in the form of people (big ones and little ones!) are ordained by God. And blessed by God.

Creating margin probably means that I won’t get Christmas cards out until the end of January, and my house won’t be uber-decorated. After all, something has to give. But it will mean I make time for a leisurely visit with my dad at his Alzheimer’s facility. And time to volunteer in the church nursery for a holiday-crowded event. And time to invite a new neighbor over for coffee. Hopefully, it will mean that my energy won’t get diverted by a frantic, self-imposed agenda. Only by God’s agenda the essence of true simplicity.

And that includes taking time to worship Christ’s coming at the Christmas Eve service. You can hold me accountable! This year, I will be there.

***

Suzanne Woods Fisher is the bestselling author of The Choice, The Waiting, The Search, and The Keeper, as well as nonfiction books about the Amish, including Amish Peace. Her interest in the Anabaptist cultures can be directly traced to her grandfather, W. D. Benedict, who was raised in the Old Order German Baptist Brethren Church in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Suzanne is a Christy Award nominee and is the host of an internet radio show called Amish Wisdom and her work has appeared in many magazines. She lives in California. www.suzannewoodsfisher.com.

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These 12 Pearls of Christmas…

Enjoy these Christmas “Pearls of Wisdom” from Tricia Goyer, Suzanne Woods Fisher, Shellie Rushing Tomlinson, Sibella Giorello and more! Please follow the series through Christmas day as each contributor shares heartfelt stories of how God has touched a life during this most wonderful time of the year.
AND there’s also a giveaway! Fill out this simple {form} and enter for a chance to win a beautiful pearl necklace and earring set ($450 value). Contest runs 12/14 – 12/25 and the winner will be announced on 1/1. Contest is only open to US and Canadian residents. You may enter once per day.

If you are unfamiliar with Pearl Girls, please visit www.pearlgirls.info and see what they’re all about. In short, Pearl Girls exists to support the work of charities that help women and children in the US and around the globe. Consider purchasing a copy of Pearl Girls: Encountering Grit, Experiencing Grace or one of the Pearl Girls products (all GREAT gifts!) to help support Pearl Girls.

Starting tomorrow

Dear Edgewise Readers: Several of your favorite authors and dear friends of mine have gathered to share their Christmas “Pearls of Wisdom” and Edgewise is a great place to read them over the next twelve days. Please follow along beginning tomorrow (Wednesday, Dec. 14th) through Christmas day as Tricia Goyer, Suzanne Woods Fisher, Rachel Hauck, Sandy Ralya, Sibella Giorello, Susan May Warren and more, share their heartfelt stories of how God has touched their life during this most wonderful time of the year.

If you’d like to share the 12 Pearls of Christmas with your blog readers too, just email Christen and she’ll send you the series.

And there is a giveaway! Beginning tomorrow you and your friends can enter to win a pearl necklace and earrings valued at $450! The winner will be announced on New Year’s Day!

Just a quick note from Margaret McSweeney before the series begins:

As I write this, I imagine that we are sitting at my kitchen table and chatting over a cup of coffee while familiar Christmas carols celebrate the Season. My twelve year old Chihuahua, Pongo, barks for a pinch of pound cake while my Shih Tzu, Lilly, patiently sits by the chair and waits for a crumb to fall.

My name is not Martha Stewart, and I will never receive a neighborhood beautification award. Just look at my front stoop. Yes, my never-had-time-to-carve-the-pumpkin-that-now-suffers-from-frostbite slouches next to the front door which is decorated with a Christmas wreath. I plan to roll this large orange ornament to the garbage pile tomorrow. For now, however, I will pretend that my front stoop is a contemplative modern art exhibit capturing the essence of contrast.

Actually, I love the concept of juxtaposition – placing things together that don’t seem to belong together, yet somehow ultimately make sense being paired. A personal example for me this season is the phrase: “comfort and joy.” Having just completed my manuscript for New Hope Publishers about the aftermath of grief, I fully understand the contrast of those two words. How can comfort bring joy? How can one find joy in loss?

Perhaps, dear reader, you have experienced loss this year – loss of a loved one, loss of friendship, loss of health, loss of financial security, loss of trust, loss of love, or loss of direction. Even with the best intent, words of encouragement shared by others can somehow seem insufficient to address an inconsolable loss. A spoken word cannot fully restore joy to a broken heart; however the Word can. And that’s the bottom line message of Christmas! God gave us the most amazing gift: His Son – the Word of God, the Holy Comforter.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but shall have everlasting life.” (John 3:16).

You are not alone this Christmas, dear friend. Juxtaposed to the unexpected grit in life is the gift of God’s grace wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. This year I purposely placed a pearl in the Nativity scene as a metaphoric reminder. When we place our grit into the hands of the Lord, His grace transforms our pain into a pearl.

“Joy to the world!”

Thank you so very much for sharing the JOY of the Season with us this year.

God Bless,

Margaret

Margaret McSweeney lives with her husband, David and two teenage daughters in the Chicago suburbs. She is the founder and director of Pearl Girls. For more information please visit www.pearlgirls.info. Margaret is fast at work on several fiction manuscripts. Her book Pearl Girls: Encountering Grit, Experiencing Grace was written to help fund the Pearl Girl Charities. She is also the host of weekly radio show, Kitchen Chat. Connect with Margaret on Facebook or Twitter.

Easy isn’t always better

Last week I sent out the Christmas cards with the tiniest newsletter I’ve ever sent. Barely four lines of update per family member. (Apologies to my Meissners. I know you are worthy of so much more.) I included a photo card of the six of us lounging around giant clay pots of impatiens and skinny palm trees, and that was imprinted with a cheerful greeting in a cool font, and I sent them out with address labels I printed on my home printer. At nearly 50 cents per stamp, I did send less than in years previous. It was probably the least personal Christmas card I’ve ever sent; good thing maybe that I sent so few of them. And I admit I do feel a little guilty about that.

But, I rationalized, the two jobs are crazy busy, the husband is deployed, the yard is big. I had to make the sending easy or not send. That’s what I told myself.

Easy is a soulless adjective. It really is. Lovely is lovely. Nasty is nasty. Dreamy is dreamy. Scary is scary. But easy has no soul. It doesn’t describe the thing you are doing, only if you can do it without much pain or effort. And conventional wisdom tells me that whatever I’ve accomplished that cost me next to nothing is not much of an accomplishment.

When I was growing up, before the personal computer or home copier, no one sent newsletters in their Christmas cards. And back then, cards were cards. Mass-produced photos were not cards. A card was folded and had heft. Glitter, maybe. Texture. And the people who sent my parents those Christmas cards signed them by hand, jotted a personal note, they even licked the stamp with their own spit. The envelopes alone were amazing when they arrived, with the personal script of each sender right there in all its uniquey uniqueness. My mom would put the cards in the little wooden sleigh on the coffee table, still in their opened envelopes of course, for meaningful browsing.

I miss those days. They were never mine as an adult, only as a kid. I concede maybe that’s why the Christmas cards of my childhood seem magical, because they were from my childhood. But you can’t convince me that’s why they were more personal. That equation won’t work. They weren’t even my cards; they were sent to my parents.

I think – and I know I am not the first person to think this – that ease has replaced personal effort and involvement. The very innovations that have allowed us to stay in touch while expending less energy and time have actually made it easy to be personally disconnected – all within the very act of connecting. Sounds convoluted, but I think you know what I mean.

Some future Christmas, maybe next, I will attempt to send cards that open and close, that bear my personal script, that include a note that is personal and meaningful, a photo that is actually a photo and not a throw-away card, and I will address them myself. I probably won’t be able to lick the stamp – do they make those anymore? – but I can get cards where you have to lick the envelopes. I know they still make those. My DNA will be all over those cards. It won’t be easy, but by golly it will be personal.

Somebody remind me of this worthy goal sometime in late summer, wouldja? If I put it off until November, the ease of my technologically-advanced life will preclude any hope of actually pulling it off. . .

A little goes a long way

Oasis Haven staff had known Bryan and Leza for about a year. Newly married, they were one of four couples in their Journey to Adoption course at the beginning of the year.

Leza began volunteering her time in the office a few days a week and Bryan became a regular visitor to the Oasis Haven offices. Through their involvement, Bryan and Leza had heard about a little girl named Khanya. They knew that the Oasis team was praying very hard for an adoptive family for her. They also knew that with her age – seven – and being declared mentally retarded with no clear diagnosis, Khanya had little chance of being adopted and also little chance of realizing her full potential without an adoptive family.

When they came forward and told Oasis Haven that they knew that Khanya was their daughter and that they wanted to adopt her, the Oasis team was overjoyed. Since that day in July, Bryan and Leza steadily prepared for Khanya to come home—sharing with their family and friends, meeting with social workers, preparing her room—creating a home and a new life for Khanya. One step in this preparation was to make a special book for Khanya with photos of Bryan and Leza, their house and Khanya’s room, grandparents and extended family members, and special details about themselves. This book would help Khanya to get to know them and to a know little bit of what to expect. The book was beautifully handcrafted with loads of photos and activities for Khanya. On the very last page, Bryan and Leza made a special puzzle so Khanya could count the days until she met her new mommy and daddy.

When “Auntie” Bev gave Khanya the book, she took one look at it and said, “My new family.” As she looked through the pages, she literally glowed with joy and anticipation. This was her family, the one she had been praying for, the one she would be going home to.

These are the kinds of life events that are made possible by the amazing ministry of Oasis Haven. I’ve just one month left in my Jubilee year, one month left for my Jubilee for Joburg celebration. As the year draws to a close, would you consider one of your year-end giving destinations be the Oasis Haven kids in South Africa? Just look at what can happen when you do! Donate US dollars here:

Oasis Haven US

PO Box 28362

San Diego, CA 92198

WRITE JUBILEE FOR JOBURG in the check memo line. Gifts are tax deductible.

Thanks for making the dreams of little ones of a forever family come true. . .

Archive: December 14, 2011

Day 1 of the 12 Pearls of Christmas

Starting tomorrow

Easy isn’t always better

A little goes a long way