Confident in Him We Keep Watch

Merry Christmas, blog-reading friends and family!! ❤

(I'm starting this at 11pm, so assuming I get it posted within the hour, that still applies.)

This Christmas season has been busy, but good.  As per usual, it is A LOT of anticipation and decorating and fun parties and lead-up, and then the actual Christmas day is pretty low-key since we exchange gifts and do most of our celebrating beforehand.

Here's a family pic by the tree last night - I love it!!  I gotta remember to bring my tripod to Mom and Dad's soon, but for now, we've made it work with camera timers and selfies.

Kyndal Faith's Wish List Presentation for the win! lol  She got most of what she asked for, so kudos to her for making a handy shopping list for us!

T-man helping Dad with his iPad!  It's been good to see Triston more in the past week than I have all year since our NYC trip!

Mom carried on Babah's tradition by getting Rach and I some random things like toothbrushes and Kleenex and floss... then she improved on it by throwing in lip glosses and perfumes and such, and putting it all in a trash can, which she knew I needed for my new office room! lol

Jace Michael got a fun punching bag and some awesome LeBron shoes (quite the unboxing extravaganza)!  He is currently very into boxing and "Iron Mike" Tyson, so that was a repeated subject this week!

Mini Miss K also got some cute new pink and purple volleyball shoes, something she's appreciated from a very young age! ;-)

T-man got her the Starbucks Bearista cup she'd asked for - adorable!

Rachael's cards were super creative and entertaining, as per usual!!

Mine were plain and simple, as were my $$ gifts!

Kyndal Faith made a Christmas movie trivia game for us to play.  She's the very best, and I just adore it that she takes the initiative to do fun stuff like this!

Rach put everything in for the online order from Dominoes - when it wouldn't go through, we realized they were closed for Christmas Eve.  We decided to call Saltgrass since we would be in that area for Christmas lights - they had a 90-minute wait, but after playing the trivia game and driving through Gaillardia, that worked out pretty perfectly!  We had excellent service, and their potato soup did not disappoint!

J&K being thrilled to take more photos. lol

Rach got her Kraft mac n' cheese classic Christmas dinner! lol  (The pic of her is from Paul's Place, what I used for ChatGPT. lol)

Our car pic makes me happy - it was fun to sit back there with T-man and Kyndal Faith, and we fought through a bit of traffic congestion to see lots of pretty homes in Nichols Hills!

Including the well-protected home of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (SGA on the OKC Thunder team).

We got back to Mom and Dad's around 10pm, then came over again at 10am this morning for Christmas brunch!  (Triston went to JoBug's for breakfast with Blake and Wendy and co.)

Rach made pancakes and Mom and Kyndal made scrambled eggs and bacon... Jace showed us boxing videos, and I snacked on the cinnamon churro crackers Mom made yesterady - yum!

Mom asked me to bring our Senior year autobiographies, a CHA assignment Triston will do this year!  It was fun to look back through them and interesting to think about how differently we might write certain things now!

I took a sunny Christmas day walk at The Station around 3:30... it was really nice weather, and I listened to Rachel McAdams reading me Anne of Green Gables - so enjoying that again - right up there with Little Women for me!

I went to see David at the Moore Warren and ended up by one of my former CHA classmates and her entire extended family, so having to explain repeatedly that I was there on my own was not my favorite thing, in spite of solo movie nights being one of my favorite things. lol  The movie was really good, though - I love David's heart and story and thought the songs were all well done!

❤

And I ended the night in cozy Christmas PJs with T-Swift and blogging, which feels appropriate on every level.  It's been a very rich and busy Christmas season, and I appreciated a quiet and cozy Christmas night!

I saw a short Christmas video from Amy Groeschel on the Bible App this morning.  She talked about how people in the early Bible days were waiting on the promised Messiah to come, then she said, "But our wait is over - Jesus is here with us, Immanuel!"  On one level, I get what she is saying - God is with us and for us in spirit, but not in the fully tangible way our hearts long for Him to be.  The idea that the wait is over implies that life here and now is all it was meant to be, which is asinine.  My mind cut right to John Eldredge talking about how we do not spend enough time talking about the second coming - how our hearts should be tethered to that hope and eagerly anticipating and awaiting the return of Jesus.  So on that level, our wait is NOT over... Jesus is not tangibly in front of any of us right now.  We miss our loved ones in Heaven, and our lives are far from perfect or complete or whole... but Jesus will be physically before us someday, and things will no longer be partial and incomplete... 

For the final time this year, Merry Christmas.

If you had a rich and fantastic Christmas full of fun memories and great food and music and surrounded by people you love, hold it loosely and remind your heart that that the joy you experienced was a wonderful preview of what life will feel like in the coming Kingdom!  And if you've wrestled with quiet disappointment, loneliness, grief, anger, or broken hopes this holiday season, take courage in the ultimate hope that Jesus is coming again.  Full victory, healing, connection, and restoration are truly on the way!  Happiness is fragile, but hope is freaking resilient.  After the heavy disappointment and confusion I've experienced this year, the promise of a risen and victorious Jesus coming back to claim His bride and His place on the throne as King does a lot more for my heart right now than reflecting on the over-familiar baby in a manger season.  It's all connected, of course, and much like the people in early Bible times, we are now called to wait with hope and expectancy for something we've heard about but not yet seen, and confident in Him we keep watch (Micah 7:7-8)!  ...The God of our salvation will fulfill His promises! ❤

Joy to the World - the Lord IS COMING AGAIN.

Let earth receive her King.

Let every heart prepare Him room,

And Heaven and nature sing!

❤ ❤ ❤