Celebrating Jesus, Born to Live

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Last year I didn't give much thought to Christmas ahead of time, and it just kind of happened to me.

But this year, I am LOVING the build-up to Christmas. We were given a beautiful Christmas tree and we have decorated it and the whole house. I've already done our Christmas cards, sent off a couple of presents, bought stuff for the children's stockings and for Dan's stocking. We've invited people for a carol-singing evening next Saturday... I've even bought most of the food for Christmas lunch. Now what shall I do?!!

OK I haven't actually done all that much reflecting and repenting yet... maybe I should make some time for that.

We have been given the most lovely gift this year. On 1st December, Alex opened the door to go out and said, "Mum, why's there a chicken outside the door?" "A chicken? A live one?" "No, a plucked one." Sure enough, there was an oven-ready chicken on the doorstep, along with a branch on which were hanging two pears. And a note that said, "On the 1st day of Christmas, my true love gave to me..."

Then every day after that we have been given another gift in keeping with the song. Day two - two bottles of Dove handsoap with turtle pictures stuck on them. Day three - three packs of chicken kiev. Day four - a CD of a four girl band, Little Mix. Day five - a bag with five bars of chocolate in, and the olympic rings stuck on it in gold paper. Day six - six eggs. Day seven - seven boxes of Swan Vesta matches on a blue tissue "pond". Day eight - 8 bars of milk chocolate called "Milka". Day nine - nine narrow white candles with holders. Day ten - ten chocolate frogs. Day eleven - a set of piping nozzles for decorating a cake. Day twelve - we left out a card to say Thank You and Happy Christmas and some cookies in a box - and nothing came!!! Oh no!! Not sure what has happened...!

But the gifts have been so fun, creative, and generous. We have loved it. And, we have no idea who it is all from. We have asked various suspects, but everyone denies it. To me, as well as being so fun, it has been a sign to me of God's love - somebody being so kind and generous to us and not telling us even who they are, just wanting us to feel loved, I guess - and it has done exactly that for me. Whoever you are... Thank You So Much!!!

Missing Uganda...

I don't know whether it was seeing the Africa Children's Choir last week, which didn't make me cry but it did make me feel very nostalgic... or whether it was eating chapatis last night at our neighbour John Itumu's induction as vicar at St Catherines church... or because at the service, we sat with two Ugandan students and several African ladies, who ululated and clapped and carried on like Ugandans do at all the exciting points of the service (while the Brits sat formally and politely)...

But late in the evening, Alex came down looking very sad, and actually cried, for the first time since we left Uganda, saying that he missed Uganda and when could we go back?

And then, I dreamed a long dream about being in Mukono... I dreamed that Abby bartels was showing me round all the new buildings that had gone up since we left, and strangely there was an inlet from the sea at one part of the campus, and huge wild waves were crashing in and splashing high up against the cliffs. It was scary watching them.

And in the dream I clearly, truly felt the hot Ugandan sunshine pouring onto my arms and face, and I stopped and held out my arms and soaked it in, telling Abby that this was what I felt the lack of the most in England... Maybe the duvet was covering my face!

And when I woke up I felt a bit sad and confused for a while, until the new day took over.

This, after a year and a half.

Rescued

I had a Uganda moment yesterday.

Late morning, I parked outside a small supermarket, the Co-op, went in to buy a few necessaries, came out - and found my car leaning ominously down on its back haunch. Flat tyre.

My immediate thought was, "Oh bother, I'm not in Uganda any more!" Because the numerous times I had punctures in Uganda (and in Zimbabwe), somebody always appeared at the roadside, walked over and offered to help, fixed it in very short shrift, accepted some small amount of money and disappeared again. In fact, once, I phoned Dan from beside the Kampala Road at 7.45 am, because I had had a puncture and I had two small children in the back of the car, and even though I know HOW to change a wheel, I couldn't even lift a Prado wheel off the ground. Dan's reply - "Don't worry-  somebody will show up and help you soon." Shocking as this show of unspousely lack of concern might well seem... and much as your husbands would probably have jumped in a neighbour's car and rushed to the scene to rescue you... of course he was right, and the minute I hung up the phone, two men sloped up and offered to help me.

Once when I hit a huge pothole and got a flat tyre literally in the middle of nowhere, when we hadn't seen a mud hut nor a village for miles and miles and miles, when we had been driving along a dirt road passing nothing but dried brown grass and tall red anthills for hours, not even seeing a person on a bike for ever - even then, three men appeared from the bush and changed the wheel for us.

But in England, that does not happen. Here you have to change your own tyre... I opened the back and poked around under the flooring thing, and managed to locate the spare and the jack. I pulled out the jack a bit pathetically, thinking, "Oh dear, it's a long time since I did this..." (twenty years?)

But then, up came a cheery-looking chap with a beanie on. "You look like you're struggling with that!"
It was one of our Redcliffe students, Graham, who is even in Dan's tutor group! I felt like an angel had just appeared! I could have kissed him!

In ten minutes he had changed the wheel and I was back on the road...

Another one for my list!! A big one.

Eucharisteo, tatenda, sankyo, webale nyo, thank you

Since I read One Thousand Gifts and started writing a list of a thousand thank yous, I keep coming across other people mentioning or elaborating on the art of gratitude. It is always true that when you come upon something once, you hear it mentioned again three times soon after. Your ears are more open to hear it, maybe. Obviously Ann Voskamp's theme of gratitude changing everything and being the key to joy, is not a new one, although her book is amazing and does seem to have triggered a new "movement of gratitude" among many. (She was listed recently in Christianity Today as one of the fifty most influential women presently in North America.)

But the theme goes back all the way to... Jesus himself.

You can always of course go back to the ancient chorus, "Count your blessings, name them one by one..."

More personally, my friend Abby mentioned in a recent post entitled "Grateful", a quote from George Herbert:

“Thou that hast given so much to me give me one thing more, a grateful heart: not thankful when it pleaseth me, as if Thy blessings had spare days, but such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.”
A heart whose pulse may be Thy praise. Am I getting there?? I would love to be there.

I read in Maryjane's blog that the Women's Fellowship in Mukono recently had an evening on gratitude.

Another friend put this quote on facebook:
"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."-- Melody Beattie

Then someone else whose blog I read, Simon Guillebaud, who works in Burundi, blogged recently on "Grateful to be Hungry" - explaining that he was thankful to be well enough to make a fast, which he hasn't been able to do for a while. He went on to list eleven things he is also grateful for and ended with the words, 

"Oh, the list could go on, but just writing those few ones down makes me feel even more grateful. Give it a go!"

I am on number 173 of my list, and I enjoy writing it and also looking back at what I've written. Abby and Alex keep wanting to look at it, and today Alex asked if he could make his own list!

These are a couple of the things I have listed recently: 

- SO thankful that our house in Longford narrowly escaped flooding last week - the water lapped on the other side of the road...

- Playing Scrabble tonight with Alex! (He was really good and didn't need help. Help!)

- A fun evening making chilli jam with friends

- Our warm winter duvet

- Abby and Alex having friends who invite them to fun things like football matches and the ski slope.

Well, you probably don't want to read all 173!! But, I am grateful for all the good things in our lives.....

Movember

One of the fun, weird, English things we (by "we" I mean Dan) have been able to join in with this year is "Movember". Men from every walk of life grow moustaches in November, and get sponsored for it, and the money goes to a couple of cancer charities, specifically research into and care for prostate cancer patients. Redcliffe staff together raised about 600 pounds which is great.

Some men looked more or less normal, while others purposely grew silly moustaches, and one Redcliffe guy dyed his pink for the last day. One female student wore a stick-on moustache for some of the month because she felt left out...

Dan grew his biker moustache which I find quite cute...

(better than the Tom Selleck one from his past... )

Storm and sun

Abigail took this picture. It speaks to me of how we live in our small houses in this big world, where storm clouds roll and pile overhead and overwhelm, but the sun still rises, it finds a way, and shines through, eventually, every time. And for that I am thankful.

I don't know if this is a very good poem, but, it helped me in the past and I thought of it when I saw Abby's pictures today:

God has not promised
sun without rain
joy without sorrow
peace without pain.

But God has promised

strength for the day,
rest for the labour,
light for the way,
grace for the trials,
help from above,
unfailing sympathy,
undying love.

by Kevin Mayhew.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. A seasonal thought!