Thursday, December 6, 2012

Day 6: What are you celebrating this year?



What are you celebrating?

The right answer is the birth of my son, correct?

Yes, I am celebrating that – but I think I am also celebrating how much being a foster mom and grandma to 17 year old, 3 year old, and 1 ½ year old rocked my world, how much love that children have to give, being in Chicago full time again after four years of living all over this country by plane, my imperfect yet loving church.

Celebrating how my parents become grandparents and great-grandparents to our foster family and now again to Benjamin and how much that changes people, how Jim’s family cares less about our “crazy-living-in-that-neighborhood” now that they have a little one to see, how Nikki and Mike are becoming closer to chosen friends than family, how awesome an aunt and sister Betsy is.

Celebrating a new I-own-it house, celebrating the freedom and the stability that it brings, the family which resides inside the walls – Jim, Krista and Benjamin – celebrating the friendship, the love, the fun, and the nights all snuggled together making faces at each other.

Celebrating that we have space once again to host folks for 15 minutes, a night, a meal or a year, the hospitality we have had from friends that housed us for over two months during the year.  Celebrating meaningful work, that I break down in Subway thinking about how awesome it is to be hosted by this neighborhood and now to have put down invested roots here.

And yes, pure Benjamin Michael, we celebrate his smile, his sleep, and the way he makes me feel all crazy inside.  We celebrate his appearance into the world, and the hope that he brings to us, the routine that he brings to me, and we celebrate his health, his ability to make a whole Bible study stop studying and instead look at the noise he just made, and that he is God’s child.

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