Fear Not - Your Savior is Born!

The Sunday before Christmas John was in a play at our church. It was called "Fear Not - Your Savior is Born!" You can watch it here. It is just under 6 minutes long. (the only way I could make the video play was to make a Youtube video of it and include it here. Unfortunately, being Youtube it will then show you some other random video it thinks you might want to see next. It won't play it unless you click on it. If you want to see the play again you have to hit the refresh button.) Anyway here it is:

Like the angel said to Mary, Joseph and the shepherds we don’t need to fear because our Savior, Jesus, has been born. He is Immanuel, "God with us," the Prince of Peace.

As a Christian I believe that. He is my Savior. That's why I celebrate Christmas.

I do sometimes struggle, though, to banish fear, worry and anxiety.

We are told over and over in scripture not to fear. Just like when the angel, Gabriel, said "fear not" in the play it is an imperative. We have to choose to obey. That means it is possible. But it also means it is not automatic.

My fears don't just "wash away" in God's presence like a chorus we sang Sunday morning said they do. Not in this life anyway. In heaven they will. But in this life it is a choice and a battle. It's like exercising a muscle. It takes effort.

God is with us. He promised to be with us always and he said whenever two or more are gathered in His name He is there. He is there whether or not we sing songs about it first. If we are believers in Him he is with us. We need to believe it because he said it.

Believing that God is with me is not enough, though. I also need to trust that what the Bible says about God is true. He is good, and loving and compassionate. He is wise and powerful and faithful. In other words he is trustworthy! And by his grace I am accepted by him because of Jesus's death on the cross. He truly is my Savior!

Some Christmas Hi-Lights

We took down our Christmas tree last night (better late than never!). I was delighted that John also sorted through our old lights and get rid of some of the ones I don't like. We donated some old decorations we didn't want before Christmas too. This morning I've been packing away the other decorations and trying to fit everything in so it takes as little space as possible. There are still some things we are each undecided about. Maybe I'll put them in a separate box and see if we want them next year.

It seems like ages since Christmas. But I still want to post a recap:

It's my blog so I can! :-)

Christmas Day we got my Mom from her residential care home and my brother came over.

We had a semi-non-traditional Christmas dinner. I couldn’t bring myself to do a turkey and all the usual fixings when we just did all that only a month before for Thanksgiving and still have leftovers from it in the freezer! I also didn’t want the mess of a large ham like we had last Christmas. So, we had pork tenderloin instead--a small special (read expensive) thing that I have never made, or eaten, before-—maybe experiments aren’t a great idea, but I do seem to do that a lot.

John and I enjoyed it and it was easier to cook and not much mess. It seemed tender and easily chew-able to us. Unfortunately, my Mom’s Parkinson’s made it difficult for her to eat it. I guess it is a little less soft than poultry.  Maybe next year we will have chicken.

We had non-traditional versions of some other things too: roast potatoes, carrots and turnips in place of the usual mashed potatoes and gravy. We had gravy, just not mashed potatoes. For the sweet potatoes we used a recipe we have made before that is not as sweet as the usual desert-like American sweet potato casserole. It calls for grainy Dijon mustard, black pepper, cranberries and a little maple syrup. It may sound weird but it’s really quite tasty and not very sweet.

We also had steamed broccoli, cranberry sauce, and rolls--at least John and Paul did. I didn’t eat the rolls as they were not gluten free. I had enough other things that I didn’t need them anyway. In case you are wondering the drink is sparkling grape juice.

Desert was gluten free blueberry cobbler and vanilla ice cream. It was so much easier to make than pie! And it was still yummy. John found some (non-gluten free) miniature single serve pies from the grocery store that he and Paul also enjoyed.

I feel badly that so much of what we had was not something my Mom could eat easily. She didn’t complain much, but she didn’t eat a lot of it either. Some years I have made special pureed things just for her but she doesn’t seem to need it all the time so I was hoping she could cope with what we ate. But some of it didn’t turn out as soft as I expected it to. Hopefully I will have more energy next year to make sure we have some special things that are soft enough for her. This year fibromyalgia or hormones or both have been hitting me hard and I just didn’t feel up to doing all that this time.

I’m glad we could at least all be together and enjoy the time.

Here my Mom is opening a gift from a friend. We gave her our gifts a few days before Christmas.

For the last two years we "kids" have gone on an outing a few days before Christmas in lieu of gifts to each other. Our presence together is our gift to each other. At least that is how I see it and the guys are more or less willing to go along with it. 

We started at Nordstrom's Ebar, a coffee shop next to Nordstrom in NorthPark Mall. Next we visited "Gingertown" which is a miniature town made entirely of gingerbread and candy on display near Nordstrom during the Christmas season. The buildings are all designed and created by local design, engineering and construction firms. The money raised benefits the Children's Craniofacial Association. I just discovered a few other major cities have Gingertowns as well. Each one benefits a different charity. 

The next stop was the Trains at Northpark. It is a display of model trains that raises money for the Ronald McDonald House of Dallas and is open each year over Christmas and a little way into January. It "includes 1600 feet of track rolling from coast to coast on a whimsical rail journey across America." They even have "some interplanetary visitors from Outer Space!" 

We finished the day by going to dinner at one of Paul's favorite restaurants, Yama Sushi, on Forest Lane just a few miles from NorthPark Mall.

Here we are in front of Gingertown. 

The theme of Gingertown this year was Venice, Italy.

John and Paul enjoying the trains. In the background is a section of the Golden Gate bridge in the California section.

There is a section that replicates a few iconic buildings in Dallas. On the right is Reunion Tower. The low gray building on the left is the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. I wonder if the one in the middle is meant to represent what feels to me like the crazy number of construction projects, both road and building, we have here.

I love all the fun little figures and scenes. They hold still better too so it is easier to photograph them! Here are some characters from the Pixar movies Toy Story and Cars.

There is a scene from the North Pole. Santa and his reindeer are just taking off. His elves are gathered to see him off.

Another flying object has just landed bringing visitors from outer space. 

Some regular sized earthlings ;-) --ready to go eat dinner.

Painting the Hallway - Phase Two

Last week after Christmas John tackled the biggest job on my “John’s time off projects” list, Phase Two of Painting the Hallway.

This phase was the most challenging. There wasn’t as much wall space as the first phase but there were a lot of doors. Six in all and all dark brown with dark brown trim. Three room doors, two closet doors and the front door. Five of the doors we painted bright white. Even with primer it takes a lot of white paint to cover all that brown. We decided to leave the front door as it was because it is pretty, but we painted its trim. The walls we painted ivory.

It’s taken longer than we expected to finish the job. We hope to finish the last little bit tomorrow.

It used to be like a dismal cave but now, even with some of the tarps and blue tape still around, it’s pretty and bright. It feels like a different house. It’s amazing what paint can do.

In process. The linen closet after John sanded it. The little gizmo on the floor is an air filter to help keep the dust down. We still found dust at the other end of the house! The door way on the left is the hall bathroom.

The linen closet is behind John

Looking into the hallway from where I am sitting in my office. That white door really brightens up my view.

The hall closet across from the linen closet with my office and guest rooms on the left. Even with the mess on the floor it looks like a different place.

The linen closet. The pink tags are things that need a little more work. At least that was the idea. They keep falling off or getting moved as we work on things and then find more runs to fix or patches we missed. The place was riddled with them for a little bit.