Fading Sunday Evening

I'm going to have to leap out of bed early to haul my little dog to the vet for a shot. He's going to be so shocked and unhappy. And then I'll dump him home and run back out for Christmas Crackers, Cornish hens and chocolate. I'm spreading my Christmas dinner shopping all over town so as to be sure of the best deals. I don't normally do this, but well, I'm going to this year. I've made a color coded schedule for the week. Every day it's own task. It's a possible sign that I'm a real homeschooler. When you start color coding, you're probably done for. Actually, its just because I figured out how to make tables with color coding and so I'm sort of obsessed. There are so many things to do, and I'm sure to forget a lot of them. I'm trusting the little colored boxes with their separate and distinct fonts to keep me on track.

But already many nice things have been ticked off my other lists. This year, in the new children's department, there's a nice little ornamentation (you can thank Anna. I stood around and watched her work and offered helpful advice.)

Plus a Santa, waiting calmly to distribute toys to neighborhood children.

And over the weekend, Matt and I hid out in the church and wrapped everything, absolutely every last thing. Thanks Steph! for watching the children and feeding them. We ate Indian food and got really really desperately tired wrapping and wrapping.

Strangely enough, this Advent has been really honestly very nice. Rather than my usual time of dread and anxiety and overwhelmedness, for whatever reason, maybe God and grace, cough, I've kind of floated along doing things in a regular orderly way. We did school. We did the horrible day of painting. We went to the library once. We threw away some more bags of junk. I kept pausing to panic but never actually did. I don't know, maybe God is nice and he likes me. Or maybe I've been worn down by stress enough to be able to finally give up and trust God, which is what I should have done in the first place. Matt helpfully pointed out, again, that God doesn't pick people he thinks are good to follow him. He picks evil broken people to love and slowly makes them good and puts them together. Well, he didn't say it like that, but that's how I remember whatever it is that he said. I don't have to live up to some standard. I have already failed the standard. But God choses what is failed, what is nothing, the weak, the broken, to bring to nothing the things that are. That's me, I'm the nothing. I'm the failure. And that's as it should be. It's his glory, covering over all of it.

So I'm pretty sure this week is going to be a true feast. I'm going to fuss the usual amount. The children are going to be their usual incorrigible selves. We won't win awards for faithfulness and piety. And all the time, God will continue to over turn death and eradicate sin. The great triumph will be seeing what he did and is doing. There, that's all the Christmas sentimental cheer you're getting out of me. Tomorrow, why children should go to church and how you get martyr points if you take them. And the next day, a short paragraph about how much I love Lessons and Carols. Or, none of that. Who knows. Happy Advent Four!