Christmas Past

 I remember Christmas Past when my kids were little.  It was crazy…I MEAN crazy!  We always had extra services and stuff to do at church, all four kids had programs at school, and to make matters worse I was the Editor/Photographer for the county paper.  So, not only did I need to get pictures of my own kids I had to try to capture all the kids on film in the county (or as many as possible). 

The funny thing is that even though it was crazy I remember so many good things.  I remember doing Christmas baking, mostly because there are certain cookie recipes that have been passed down to me from my grandmother and my mother that are always made at Christmas time.  The kids always looked forward to Christmas cookies! 

We didn’t make a lot of money in those days and so my mom and dad would load up their van with supplies and bring us extra food.  Mother would bring large sacks of flour, sugar, powdered sugar, eggs,  yeast, and about everything else I would need.  The kids knew what that would mean!  Cookies AND homemade cinnamon rolls! They would watch for gramma and grampa to come with their little noses pressed against the front window.  

They would also hang around the kitchen just in case there were cookies that broke in half (we had a rule that if it broke you could eat it now). 

What I remember most is having them hang around the kitchen when the cinnamon rolls were baking and as soon as I pulled them out of the oven (while they were ooey gooey) they would grab a fork and scramble to the oven to get a “middle”.  They all fought for as many middles as they could get and they would stuff the hot cinnamon rolls in their mouths as fast as they could chew.  

This ritual with cinnamon rolls went on for several years, even well past high school and college.  What was interesting is that my daughter was 5’1” tall and she didn’t even weight 90 pounds in high school, so there were times I was afraid her brothers would hurt her.  As it turns out she found a way to compensate for her size and she more than held her own. She meant business when it came to hot fresh cinnamon rolls.

By the time the kids started bringing their new spouses to our house I thought the ritual would end…NOT!  I tried to warn the new spouses what was about to happen, but I don’t think they imagined it would be as brutal as it was.  The truth of the matter is, it became a tradition and a competition we all laughed about.  

There were others things that happened on holidays and vacations that were not quite so funny at the time (the white car that caught on fire in South Dakota; the flood through the tent in Colorado; a sick child in New York) but as it turns out, those are the things we remember and laugh about today.

Life is like that.  Things we thought were bad turn out to be good. At one time I was a little embarrassed about the scramble for the cinnamon rolls and I used to try to get them to “be civil”.  Eventually I gave up.  Now years later, something that seemed crazy and out of hand (I mean, really…stabbing each other with forks) turned out to be incredibly awesome memories.  Bad turned to good. 

That’s just like God.  He has a way of turning bad to good. I love it that God does that for us.  What an incredible God He is!  He can take what we are embarrassed of or ashamed about and turn it into the best memory of all. 

Today, your assignment (should you choose to accept it) is to write YOUR story (share it if you’d like) and tell how God turned things around for you in the past or even today.  

Be blessed – KNOW God loves you – talk to God and thank Him for bringing good from the most unexpected places.