First of all, I had a week where my family came to visit me!!! This was so exciting and fun and we made lots of memories and had lots of laughs. Seriously. It was healing to my soul to have my family here at the Hive. So while they were on the drive down I made a commitment to myself to put away my phone and laptop so that those things would not be a distraction during the time family was visiting. So there it was...a planned week long break from blogging. This felt strange at first, as I had been blogging nearly everyday for quite sometime, but after the initial strangeness wore off it was so pleasant to just enjoy every little thing. My one week hiatus turned into a week and a half and then quickly two weeks. I started to feel convicted, but not convicted about not blogging. I started feeling convicted about how much I had been missing out on...on all those days spent blogging (and on my phone) how much had I missed? Truth is...there was no way for me to even know how much I had missed. So I made another conscience decision to be "unplugged" for a bit longer. Especially during this precious time of Advent that we celebrate every year, things can already be so busy and rushed and full of activities. I wanted to make sure that I focused on the things that truly mattered and not have any guilt hanging over me for not answering every text or email right away or even blogging each nap time. I had originally had these big, BIG plans of blogging our Advent readings and activities for y'all to follow along with us, but I quickly realized that in my big plans I was actually failing entirely. I was failing to miss the real point. I was stealing the glory of the Advent season.
In the time I've been away from the blog (and my phone too), we have had more time to fully enjoy the Advent season. We have enjoyed our usual nightly Bible readings, lighting the Advent candles, and family discussions of the gift of Christ. We have enjoyed many activities...some that went over well and some that were flops...some planned and some spur of the moment ideas too. We have sung Christmas songs, danced to Christmas music, made gifts, wrapped presents, baked cookies, painted, colored, glittered, glued, crafted, had an indoor snowball fight more than once, cleaned out toys and donated them, watched Christmas movies, drank and ate a lot of Starbuck's treats, and gotten lost driving to look at Christmas lights. It truly has been a wonderful and precious time of anticipation here at the Hive. I can't help but think that my not so unexpected break from being plugged in all the time...came at just the time. Just when I needed a reminder to slow down and enjoy the things that truly matter in life so that my heart could be fully prepared, and I could then prepare my children's hearts, to experience the Advent season and the celebration of the birth of Christ.
Often we get ourselves wrapped up in all these ideas of what we should be reading, doing, experiencing that we miss what's truly important. We need to remember to not focus on all the "things" so that we don't miss focusing on THE thing that matters. We will forget to read one night, light the wrong candle, have an activity that turns into a disaster and isn't fun for anyone. If we are not careful to keep our focus right, we will end up serving our activity calendar, instead of serving Christ. You see...we don't need to plan big because we will fail.
The good news is that God has already planned big for us. We just have to enjoy the ride.
I encourage you, in this week(!) before Christmas, to take some time to enjoy the ride. Maybe you need to unplug from a few things too? Phone? Computer? Planned activities even? Take time to refocus your heart on the meaning of this season. Prepare for the celebration to come. Let Jesus be your big plan.