I still can’t quite believe it’s over.  All that thought and time and energy and money put into one of the most wonderful days of every year, and now . . . it’s already two days past Christmas.  The good news, of course, is that Christmas is really just the beginning of the celebration.  It’s the day Jesus was born – the day God became man so we could begin to grasp the depth of his love for us.  The rest of his short life was equally as amazing and, don’t worry, there are even more donkeys and angels.  YAY!

Christmas this year was a whirlwind for me, as I imagine it might have been for many of you.  There were family gatherings and parties mixed in with all the decorating, shopping, wrapping, and cooking in a way that makes me wonder exactly where the month of December went.  Honestly, I think I spent most of it trying to come up with elf tricks. 

And now that Christmas Day has come and gone, and I’ve had a full day to reflect on the most magical time of the year . . . I’ve come up with two moments that defined my holiday season. 

The first came on Christmas Eve, smack in the middle of a beautiful candlelight service.  My nine-year-old was sitting to my left, my dad on the right.  Everyone was dressed up and the air was full of excitement and the joy could clearly be heard in the voices of the congregation, our voices lifted to the heavens in praise of the One who came to save.  My eyes filled with tears, as they often seem to do when thousands of people are singing together about Jesus, and I could actually feel the magic of Christmas flow through me.  And then, my precious son, dressed in his holiday best and bubbling over with anticipation about the hours ahead, leaned over to me, and with wide eyes and a very serious demeanor, asked the one question I’ve happily avoided for all of his nine Christmases so far.

“Mom, what exactly is a virgin anyway?”

I probably shouldn’t cuss on a blog about Jesus, but man, I sure wanted to at that moment.  In church.  On Christmas Eve.  

Not to worry.  I simply told my son we’d talk about it later.  The problem, of course, is that now it IS later, and because my son has the best memory of anyone I know, I feel quite certain the chat I’ve never wanted to have is going to happen any minute now.  Awesome.  Next Christmas, he’ll probably lean over and want to know exactly what those “band-aids for Mommies” are that sit in a box on the back of the potty for a few days every month, and I’ll be trying to figure out how to explain tampons while everyone else is belting out Joy to the World.

The second monumental moment of Christmas 2012 occurred at precisely 12:07 on Christmas Day.  The reason I know the exact time of this disturbing event?  It was the time on the clock when all of my Christmas decorations, minus the tree, were officially down and packed into tubs in the storage room, not to be seen again until next December.  An entire year of therapy and THAT’S how much my OCD has improved?  You’ve got to be kidding. I’d like to blame my insanity on the fact that we were leaving the house at 12:30 and not planning to return for over a week.  But really, I’m not sure that fact offers much of an excuse.  The scariest part of the whole deal is the way I felt when I looked at the clock at seven minutes past noon and realized the only thing left to do to “undecorate” was to take down the tree (which won’t happen until after our trip). 

I was ecstatic. 

And that, my friends, is why I need Christmas.  Because despite all my efforts . . . despite all my plans and intentions and prayers and dollars spent trying to work through my mess . . . I need Jesus. I will always need Jesus.   

And He is here.

Emmanuel.

God with us. 

May he bring peace into your lives as 2012 comes to a close, and my he bring peace into mine as well.  The kind of peace that settles my heart when I know I'm on the cusp of an important conversation.  The kind of peace that allows me to find calm in the midst of clutter.  The kind of peace only the Prince of Peace can offer.