I love a good Christmas card! Receiving cards in the mail from friends and family, old and new, near and far is so fun. I like seeing new additions to families or wedding pictures or collages, and there are some Christmas cards we keep forever because they make us smile every time we see them. (I still have one where the guy looks just like Ron Swanson–you know who you are!) I also love a good blooper reel card, and although we haven’t made one in recent years, you should really always be on the lookout for my stellar photography skills.
What I also love about Christmas cards though is creating ones to send of my family. I love seeing how the kids have grown and changed every year. I really love the whole process: choosing outfits, doing the portrait session, celebrating that we survived the portrait session, changing out of our nice outfits…you get it. Then, trying to find the perfect photo that says “This is us.”
Realistically though, these single images we send out show a happy, healthy, smiling family. These people surely don’t have problems! I hope you know, when you see our family, that we worked hard this year to get to that smiling picture on the front of the card.
I hope you can see a boy who carried a mental load far too heavy for his thin shoulders and came out on the other side, forever changed, but still smiling with his bright eyes and floppy, happy grin.
I hope you can see a boy who is learning that progress is better than perfection, mistakes are always okay, and he is always loved because of who he is and not what he does.
I hope you can see a strong-willed, confident, brave girl who advocates well for herself and her pinkest, most gold-glittered, hearing aids you ever did see, after having a very unplanned neurosurgery just four days into 2024.
I hope that you see two parents, who stayed up late or sometimes just didn’t even sleep, praying for healing for minds and bodies, for direction on what to do, where to go, how hard and when to advocate for those three kids we’ve been given the honor of raising. I hope you can see the joy in our faces and love for our kids over anything else on this earth (and okay, some slight irritation that nobody was cooperating for the family photo in the oaks because the children wanted to just get to the beach).
Most of all, I hope you can see a family who, but for the grace of God, can choose joy. We are thankful for these kids, the big wins and the small wins, for the crazy that never quite seems to disappear, and for each other. I am often repetitive, but as I have said before: I never imagined this would be our life and I am thankful for it. Without it, complacency is a dangerous place to settle and comparison is a thief. We have learned to be thankful in all circumstances, to swallow our pride of self-sufficiency, and to lean on the One who never sleeps in whom we find our rest.
We wish everyone a very happy Christmas and New Year, and pray that you too may find the peace that surpasses all understanding. Bring it, 2025. We look forward to the change and growth it may provide.
our simple life 