Dear Reader,

Christmas is three days away! Are you ready? Me, neither.

Do you wonder about the real meaning of Christmas? I like to remind people that the main reason for Christmas is Easter!

Without Easter, we have no reason for Christmas. But without Christmas, we can’t have Easter. I wrote a blog about it last week. Click Easter in December to read it.

My goal for each Christmas season is to enjoy it more than the year before. Sometimes it’s easy because the previous year was awful. Other years are hard to beat. As each Christmas season looms before me, I start to notice different things that could steal my joy. Not because they are designed to steal joy, but because I let them affect me in ways that take my attention away from the importance of Jesus’ birth and the traditions our family practices to observe it.

Our Self-induced Christmas Stress

One Christmas season, my talented wife spent long, late hours sewing fancy dresses for my daughters for Christmas gifts. The hard-set deadline and artistic concentration required made us both grumpy from lack of sleep. While the girls were thrilled with the dresses, our enjoyment of the holiday was lessened by sleep deprivation.

Another year, I built hope chests for my older daughters for Christmas. It was my first attempt at furniture building, and also included long hours in the basement and a late Christmas Eve wrapping-hauling-covering-decorating process that made the next morning arrive way too early.

This year, Lynn decided early to attempt another major project for the grandchildren’s Christmas gifts. To her credit, she had the majority of the work completed by Thanksgiving. Her plan was to be done early enough to enjoy this Christmas. Then “the kitchen” happened.

The Kitchen

Over a year ago, Lynn decided to paint the kitchen. It looks lovely, and she gets full credit (I don 't like to paint). However, new paint on the walls tends to make other elements of the room appear less than adequate. We were due for a new kitchen floor, anyway, and it was complete last spring. Then we had the opportunity to get a new furnace and have it installed in the basement instead of in the closet in the kitchen like the old furnace. So now the old closet is a new alcove with a base cabinet and an upper cabinet with a microwave mounted under it.

The mistake I made was agreeing to have the new kitchen counter tops delivered eight days before Christmas. That meant all the cabinets had to be cleaned, sanded, primed, and painted. Most of the cabinet doors are still sitting in our basement, ready to be re-installed. They should be in place by Christmas Eve. The new tile should be installed by then, but it won’t be grouted. After that, the newly-painted trim needs to be re-installed.

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Plans

Along with all the holiday preparations and kitchen work, I was also trying to publish The Story Farm. My plan is to publish it independently. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing makes it pretty easy, and that is how we published Families from the Beginning. I have spoken to a couple publishing companies, but their risk-averse pricing structures made them less attainable options.

Goals

Plans and goals often change. Sometimes because of something we do, sometimes because of something we cannot control, and sometimes because God has better plans than we do.

A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps. Proverbs 16:9

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11

My original goal was to publish The Story Farm by Thanksgiving so the book could be a great Christmas gift. Then I hoped to have it done last week, but I had the opportunity to have another editor go over it, and good editing takes time. So now I am probably looking at mid-January, both for the book and the kitchen.

They are both going to be great when they are finished, and I can’t wait to share them with you.

The new year will be exciting, so make your plans and set your goals, but expect them to change to line up with God's. Have a Blessed New Year!

By His calling, in His strength,

Dean

P.S. Don’t forget to check the website for The Story Farm to see when it’s ready for you to purchase. Here’s a link to an excerpt from the chapter about planning ahead: Boar Names.

P.S.S. Remember to read last Friday's blog about how the Resurrection should influence our Christmas celebrations and to get a link to a list of Easter scriptures that relate to the Christmas accounts.

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