Author: fullofgracedj

We are former working moms blogging about faith, family, friends and food! In between writing about our hopes, prayers and adventures, we hope to bridge the gap between working moms and stay at home moms by providing recipes and resources everyone can use to make their family healthier.

The Best Princess of Them All

Sleeping Beauty hit the big screen in 1959. Ariel swam along in 1989.

In between, there was only one princess in the world and she had cinnamon buns on the sides of her head.

I was 5 when Star Wars premiered. You know what I wanted for Christmas? A blaster. I was 12 for Return of the Jedi. It wasn’t until years later that I realized the bikini was a thing. All I knew was that she climbed up on that big bastard Jabba and sent him to hell.

Bad. Ass.

I wanted to be her with every fiber of my being. And it had not one thing to do with Han Solo. I wanted to lead a resistance, fly an X-wing fighter, rip a blaster out of my holster and defend my droids.

I SUPER wanted to ride those cool speeders through the forests of Endor, wiping troopers off on giant redwood trees while wearing a camo cape.

A camo cape. Think of all the things a camo cape can mean on the back of a bad ass princess.

I know that Carrie Fisher wasn’t Princess Leia. And I think that playing Leia cost Carrie something.

But I also think there was a lot of Carrie Fisher in Princess Leia and that if she hadn’t been such a brave young woman, my generation would have spent more time asking ourselves “Am I pretty??” instead of “How can I be an Imperial Senator when I turn 18?”

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”

Carrie Fisher

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Merry Christmas

 

 

You guys, I have shown you my very cool Advent calendar: A magnetic nativity scene where each day the kids open the door and place another character into the picture.

Do you know that in the middle of my prayerful and restful Advent, my oldest and youngest child were doing their best to block the baby Jesus spot so that the middle child would have nowhere to put him?

They are 10, 8 and 4. They know what the manger scene is supposed to look like. And they know what they are about. And yes, I did have to settle an argument between them about whether the sheep will have to make way for the baby in the hay.

And by “settle”, I mean threaten to take the calendar down and cancel Christmas.

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Do you see how they played a twisted kind of Nativity Risk?

You know me, though. And how much I like my metaphors. So here’s one for you to hold on to these last 48 hours.

What makes my Nativity scene holy is not that the main players are perfectly placed–but that they are there in that place, floating Wise Man and Fallen Star alike, celebrating the birth of the Lord (who, in our version, may float in his trough above the manger).

Same thing with the next 48 hours. Whatever you are trying to pull off, success is not what will make it holy.

Presence will make it holy.

Good luck my friends, and have yourselves a Merry Christmas.

I Know Where Jesus Is

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An hour ago, I was snuggled up on my couch in the soft glow of my Christmas tree, reveling in how ready I am for Christmas.

God has since flicked me in the forehead.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes posted this on Facebook. Then CNN. Then I started looking around.

Then I was ashamed, and here I am.

I know about Aleppo. I know about the refugees. I donated money to Together Rising, which has since sent over $2 million to help Syrian refugees. But I didn’t want to really know. I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want suffering to invade my Christmas–which in part is the story of poor refugees looking for a place to give birth to the Savior of the World.

Then this question was whispered into my heart: If you could go back in time and help Mary and Joseph bring Jesus into the world in calm and safety, would you go?

In a hot freaking second.

Well?

On the night Jesus was born, the world didn’t know he was coming. But we do. And we know where to find him, right now.

You guys, Jesus is in Aleppo.

Maybe this is not the business of our government, and maybe that’s good. You could contact your representatives anyway, to let them know you are standing on the side of the persecuted and hope they are too.

But we are people of the one true God and we know this is FOR SURE the business of our churches, temples and mosques.

This link will take you to a list of agencies who are providing relief to refugees and some who are trying to get relief into Aleppo directly.

More than the tree, more than the nativity scene, more than the advent calendar and prayers–Aleppo is Christmas.

 

Get ‘er Done

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You know we like Advent over here.

But every year we buckle down to observe the holy heck of out Advent and we notice that the crap still creeps in.

Like Tuesday I’m sitting on my yoga mat before class, meditating (aka: trying to talk myself out of bailing and going for coffee) and I can’t help but hear the conversations around me that all sound like this:

“I have SO MUCH TO DO. There are not enough hours in the day. Not enough days in the month. Every year I tell myself I’m going to start early and I never do.”

We have all felt that. I have felt that. But that’s not how we should feel this time of year.

So here’s your pep talk.

This weekend, this one starting right now—Purchase. Wrap. Use Amazon Prime and Ebates to do it from the cushy, warm comfort of your couch plus free shipping and cash back. It doesn’t have to be wrapped nicely. It just has to be wrapped. You don’t need cute gift tags. A folded over square of paper works just fine.

Get ‘er done.

Decorate. We got our tree in the parking lot at the mall and I don’t even care. Last year we did the big family haul to the woods to cut it down in the wild. It was the most giant cluster ever. This tree is shorter and skinny, which means the kids could reach it. There are lights and ornaments. The end. The tree does not have to be a work of art.

Get ‘er done.

Sit down with the remote. Search up all your favorite holiday movies and set them to record. Roll through Freeform to find the kids’ favorites. One night two weeks from now when you have reached the breaking point you will be able to yell “GO WATCH TV! And don’t come back until you’ve watched Prep and Landing and Prep and Landing Two TWICE.” Then you can open a nice bottle of wine and catch up on your favorite A Christmas Carol. May I suggest Alistair Sim, although Captain Picard will work too.

Just get ‘er done. A few days of nose to the grindstone now will help you create the sacred space you need later to be calm and present. We’ll need our wits about us for the hard parts. And there are always hard parts. For lots of reasons.

But let’s don’t let one of those reasons be because we left it all so late that we didn’t have time to breathe.

We can do this. We can get ‘er done.

 

 

The Church needs to BE CHURCH

 

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A few weeks ago, Glennon of Momastery announced that she is in a relationship with international soccer super star Abby Wambach.

Since Glennon writes from a (fairly fluid) Christian perspective, this caused somewhat of a ruckus. Glennon’s announcement follows on the heels-ish of Jen Hatmaker’s statement in support of gay marriage last Spring. The Christian right is a wee bit peeved at the Christian everyone else. Articles about false prophets and cafeteria theology abound.

Jen Hatmaker and Glennon Melton are not preachers.

They have built faith support communities online and in packed hall after packed hall, but they have never claimed to be building church.

Do some people go to church on their social media? Yes, yes they do. I agree with folks that this is a problem.

But whose problem?

We just elected a man who flies publicly and proudly in the face of Gospel values. And 90% of our church leadership either stayed silent or supported him. By “our church leadership” I mean all the churches, not just mine.

It was incredibly short-sighted. I don’t go to church at Momastery, but I regularly read the comments and so I know, there is a bloc of Christian mamas out there and we are AWAKE.

We raised $1 million dollars in 31 hours, at $25 per person—that’s 40,000 individual donations, in 31 hours—to help Syrian refugees in Europe. We didn’t care what the candidates or our preachers were saying about Muslim refugees. We saw starving children and we moved.

These same sister mamas filled arena after arena last year for Women of Faith. We brought our children to Christian concert tours, like Toby Mac’s Hits Deep tour, and sponsored other mamas’ children through charities like World Vision and Food for the Hungry.

Accuse us of cafeteria theology all you want, but we’re not overly concerned with theology. We want Gospel. We want boots-on-the-ground faith that walks the talk. We hunger for Jesus, and we bring our time, talent and treasure to the table.

Theology is important. But we’re on the move and bursting with a desire to shine a light in the dark. So if you really want us to listen to your sermon on the Ten Commandments you have to show us you know that Jesus linked them inextricably to the Beatitudes at the Sermon on the Mount, and you better be able to walk and talk.

But if you want us to sit and git your latest rant on abortion, immigration, gay marriage, liberals, etc, we’re not coming. Our babies are going to be grown-ups any second now and the world is not ready for them yet. There’s work to do.

We’ll come to church, but you have to BE CHURCH. Otherwise, the world is bleeding and we’re in charge of bandages.