Merry Christmas

Christmas was fabulous. I know you haven’t been there yet, but in case you are worried at how it’s going to be: it’s going to be just great. We saw Christmas on Saturday. It is beautiful.

A long time ago, when Christmas in Canada felt hard and I was missing not being surrounded by my own extended family, my friend Jen said “Kim, if you don’t have family here, get some.”

“We are right here and we are asking you to let us be your family. We are asking you to come to our family gatherings and let us come to yours.”

It was the wisest advice. So a few weeks ago we went to a The Bethlehem Walk and then the Christmas Tree farm with a group of family.

And because Tim and his one lovely sister both married Australians and his parents were visiting them for Christmas this year, on our surrogate Christmas day, we had a group of adopted  family  come over for the whole turkey Christmas dinner and presents and games.We asked Santa if he would mind coming early and said not to worry about many gifts – we have so very much. He kindly obliged and brought the kids backpacks and walkie talkies and they haven’t stopped playing with both of them since.

Molly is completely confident with the walkie talkies, but when push comes to shove, all she can think of to say is “that’s clear enough.”

And today we are leaving, on a jet plane.

The house is a disaster, we have yet to find ourselves a hotel for  one night in France, and Jesse actually has no idea how you do the races he is signed up for in the Transplant Games. But we are going, and we’ll work it all out along the way.

We are so grateful to be going on this adventure. Our friends gave us this “conversation starter” pot for Christmas, and last night at the dinner table we tried it. The question was “If you could time travel, would you rather go 50 years into the future or 50 years into the past?”.

Tim and I looked at each other and said “the past”. Explaining that to the kids was tricky. We both just realized that if we had known what our lives would hold, if we had known the heart-ache of watching our son suffer, if we had known …..  if we had know it all in advance, we would have lived our lives scared, waiting for the axe to fall, missing the joys that are in every single day.

The Lord is our Shepherd, and he has provided what we have needed every single day. We trust him for our futures. I don’t need to go there to know He has it under control.

He has your life in his hands too. We pray you will all know his holy closeness this sacred, Christmas season. We’ll be praying over you from the plane above. Thank you for being our family and our friends. We love you.