An Advent Lesson

This post is about how we are celebrating Advent this year, sort of.  Mostly it's a lesson I learned while preparing to do Advent this year.  And by preparing I mean deciding on November 30th that we were going to have a little Advent lesson with our kids every night for 25 nights.

Yeah, right.

Years ago I started out with those intentions, and planned exceedingly and maddeningly accordingly.  Then I moved us to a weekly Advent (but that had to start by the last weekend in November), so I switched it to a "every night-ish for the four nights before Christmas" schedule which had to be modified and ultimately dropped.  I studied and researched and wrote and shared and decorated and taught it...but when it came time to actually do it at home, it never happened easily and I felt like a huge failure.  So I've been focusing on other ways to bring the true meaning of Christmas into our family the last couple of years and He's been sure (as always) to make Himself known when I look for Him.

When your life is about Jesus, 
of course your Christmas is too....

But Advent hasn't really been on my radar.  Quite honestly I'd grown a bit cynical about the whole thing.  I'd digressed to the point of eye-rolling and toddler fussing when I ran across a beautiful and involved Advent idea on a blog or on face book.  Something along the lines of "As if."

So this year, we finish Thanksgiving and my husband and I are out to lunch on the last day of November [the LAST day of November, my over-planning sisters are feeling my pain here].  We are talking about Christmas plans coming up and he says, "We should do Advent with the kids."  Insert previous paragraph running through my mind along with "yeah like we could plan an entire month of Advent lessons by tomorrow" and end with me saying, "Shuuurre, honey."  But he wasn't giving up this idea and started throwing out these fabulous ideas. So he paid the bill and we headed to Wal-mart to buy teaching props for 25 days of unplanned Advent lessons with our three children ages 4-14.  I did slow him down enough to brainstorm some ideas in the parking lot before we went in.  I grabbed an envelope that was lingering in my purse, wrote numbers down one side, and a beautiful thing happened.  We sat there and made up 25 little teaching points about real Christmas.  Not our favorite memories or reasons we love the season; 25 reasons we love Jesus and the story of His miraculous arrival to our troubled little world.  As we both threw out ideas and I jotted and scribbled, my heart filled with joy.  Not happy joy as all my little organized and researched Advent ideas went out the window, but humbly corrected joy. Joy because I was sitting in a car with a man who loves Jesus enough to know His story and creatively tell it to our children.  Seriously people, that could be The End.

As I happily drove home later, I began to plan how I would type up our ideas and add a few little things just to clarify and keep us on track, you know.  And then I was reminded of that humble joy and I knew that this was not to be messed with in any way.  I was only to follow, and I have. We've had six semi-planned, semi-spontaneous, semi-short, sometimes silly, Scripture-filled, amazing little life lessons about Jesus.

And the Mom-sized lessons keep coming.  I had decided I would just try to keep our youngest from being a distraction so the older two could really learn and participate.  On Day 4 we read the genealogy of Jesus from Matthew (I'm totally not teasing...we did that, we are such Bible nerds.)  When the kids opened the box that night there was a fishing worm and a butterfly ornament.  We shared the stories of the five women in Jesus' heritage and the truth that God takes things that are ugly and makes them beautiful.  As we hung the butterfly on the tree and asked our kids some questions to see if they understood our four year old piped up, "God takes mean things and makes them beautiful butterflies" And she said it like only a four year old girl can say the phrase beeyootiful butterflies.  Be-still my heart.

So here's an un-Advent lesson on marriage from my last couple of weeks of living:

If you love Jesus and aren't yet married; 

Marry a man that you can follow.  

One who, when he is really following God, 
is hard to keep pace with.

and will forgive you for ending a phrase with a preposition....

If you love Jesus and are already married; 

Give your husband room to lead your family.  

Don't over-plan, 

Don't smother him with expectations, 

Don't re-do his efforts.

Choose to follow.

Pistachio Christmas Trees

I'm so excited about sharing this recipe....today while I was making these little cookies my husband came into the kitchen and saw that I was blogging (camera on the kitchen counter is the give away I guess).  As I was using a cookie cutter to make little green Christmas trees he commented that he wondered if what I was doing was harder than it looked pondering what the cookies would look like if he were in charge of the project.  Our four year old answered him with, "Yes, yours would probably look like snowmen."  I would be willing to guarantee that the chances of seeing snowmen cookies on Todd's blog are, um.....well, not happening.

But, I want to assure those of you in charge of the cookie projects in your home that you can make these!  They are so yummy and not harder than they look!  I gave some cookie baking pointers in a blog post you can read here with my recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies.

This recipe for Pistachio Christmas Trees I just adapted from my favorite Gingerbread Cookie recipe from one of my besties Amanda...(and by favorite I mean it is a gingerbread cookie recipe that you actually want to eat and not just decorate).

Anyway, I took the framework of that recipe and changed a few things to accomodate one of my favorite things, pistachio pudding mix.  I thought about doing a little research about the invention of instant pudding mixes but realized I don't really care that much.....I can love them without knowing all their history (I feel the same way about the whole family of canned biscuits). I really just can't wait to blog about these...

OK, so on to the cookies.....

I mixed real butter with my super yummy pudding mix and some sugar, added an egg and some almond extract before I tossed in the flour and baking soda. Mixed all together it is this beautiful dough that looks like ice cream.....what was I talking about? Oh yeah on to the cutting out of the cookies.

Some tips for rolling out cookies:

• Depending on how sticky your dough is (this one is great and not too sticky), flour the surface of your counter.  Add more flour if your dough is very sticky keeping in mind that adding flour makes your cookie dough tough, so you want to add as little as possible.
• Sprinkle a little bit of flour over the top of your dough and rub a little bit of flour onto your rolling pin.
• Use your rolling pin to roll out your dough, starting in the middle and going out to the edges (imagine starting in the middle of a wheel and rolling out along the spokes), spreading the dough evenly. 
• Every few rolls, turn your dough a quarter turn to make sure it isn't sticking to the counter, adding a little bit of flour if needed.
• I'm not sure how thin to tell you, it takes a little bit of practice - here's what it should look like.

Dab the edges of your cookie cutter in flour and push straight down...don't wiggle back and forth just straight down folks!

• Cut out your cookies like a puzzle, keeping the cuts close together, remember everytime you add flour to roll out you are adding toughness to your cookies (ah, that's a sad story).

Put your scraps into another little ball and roll and cut again. At my house I always end up with a little ball of cookie dough and my oldest daughter turns up to make it disappear.

• Use a flat metal spatula to lift cookie dough and put on cookie sheet.  Add a little bit of flour to your spatula if the cookies are sticking.
• Don't overbake!  The cookies should barely show some brown around the edges.

After they cooled I found this little shortcut treasure....cookie icing.  Thank you very much Betty Crocker. I love this stuff because it dries hard enough to stack the cookies but it still tastes good (ever nearly broken your tooth on royal icing?) and it's actually bright red, which is really hard to do with homemade icing.

I just cut off the tip shorter than the instructions say.  There are two rings on the tip, I cut at the first one and then just squeeze it quickly into these little zebra stripes.  Do a few at a time adding any toppings you would like and you're done!

These cookies just make me really happy and they taste really good.  I've included all the specifics below.  I think one of the reasons I love recipes with pudding mixes is because they are so versatile.  Imagine these cookies with melted chocolate drizzled over the top sprinkled with chopped salted pistachios. 

And guess what I just discovered......candy cane flavored pudding!

Imagine the possibilites! 

Pistachio Christmas Trees

1 small package pistachio pudding mix

½ cup butter, softened

½ cup white sugar

1 egg

1 ½ cups flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon almond extract

Cream together the butter, sugar, and pudding mix; add egg and almond extract and mix well.  Add flour and baking soda and mix just until dough comes together.  Roll out and cut into small Christmas trees.  Bake on ungreased cookie sheets at 350 degrees for 9-10 minutes.

Curses and Blessings in North Africa

Is there such a thing as blog neglect?  I do have a good reason for being away from my little cyberspace nook for awhile.  A little over one week ago I returned from my first international trip in nearly 20 years.  Between the preparing, traveling, ministering, and recovering I feel like my life skipped straight from Halloween to Thanksgiving…..and I am so thankful.  I’m just warning you, this post is pretty heavy and serious.  It’s my life lesson from this trip. 

On this trip I worked with a team from my church helping our friends who work in a small town in North Africa….you can read about what we did here. I have all sorts of fun stories about what we ate and played and learned while our friendships grew deep roots. Maybe I’ll save those for another post called“nowhere to file”. Because there is no place in my brain to store a memory of my girlfriends wearing traditional Berber garb singing at the top of their lungs complete with head bops to 80’s music as we traverse impossible terrain leaving a village called “The Moon”.  See what I mean?  Nowhere to file......

The Berbers who live in this place in North Africa are hospitable and friendly.  They definitely were on their best behavior while we were there, but to us they were truly beautiful and generous people.  Their belief system is a strange combo of animism and Islam.  Our worker friend described it this way; in their mind God is detached and far away but real and demanding (parts of Islam) and determines many of their rules and traditions.  Their everyday living though, is dominated by a superstitious belief that spirits/God can be offended easily (animism).  They work very hard to avoid what we call “bad juju” (totally our own description of their belief system-but I’m betting it communicates).  The blend of these two belief systems is the fear that dominates their days and nights and obliterates their hope.  Our friends work and live among these precious people, respecting their culture and sharing their language and friendship so that when the opportunity comes, they can share about Hope.  When we come for a week, we just provide a little bit of credibility to their work and Story.

Our Oklahoma team (plus a few of our friends' kiddos).

One of the interesting perspectives that our worker friends face regularly is the assumption of the curse.  In their language it is called “tagat” and is their explanation for the bad things that happen.  Physical deformities and illnesses, divorce and death, infertility, losses, accidents and struggles are as shameful as they are common and are believed to come into lives because of the curse. The people determine acceptability of friends and family members based on how cursed they might be.  We might see a family there who believes they are cursed because their child was born with a cleft palate as silly and superstitious because we could easily fix his sweet mouth where we live.  We have a true, scientific, physical explanation that has nothing to do with evil spirits.  For them, the curse explains the bad things, but also holds them hostage because they have no way to control these circumstances.

This little one has something we think is similar to cerebral palsy.
We loved holding and smooching and loving on him.....no curses here baby, only loving!

These people have mistakenly believed that the curse is the root of everything bad that happens. The problem isn’t that they recognize their need for Someone greater than themselves to lift the curse, the problem is that they don’t yet know Who.

So here is where the curse comes into my story.  One of the most amazing parts of this trip for me was the surprise blessing that some of my past struggles can be….still now, years after their usefulness seems to be used up.  I had brought a little photo album with pictures of my kids and husband and family.  These were great conversation starters and opened the door to some amazing things.  As our new friends looked at the pictures and asked our worker friend questions lost to me in translation, my friend shared my story.  She told about the loss of my babies to miscarriage and infertility (Total Curse Material), something very shameful in their lives.  Then she pointed to the picture of my four year old daughter, adopted into our family after our painful “curse-ish” years of loss.  She was able to share the amazing truth that sometimes what seems to be a curse is made into a blessing by God (Total Romans 8:28 Material).   At one point a dear lady who knows the Truth said to her mother,

“They don’t love like we do”. 

Even in another language I heard the spiritual door swing open and my friend stepped right through, sharing that we only love differently because we (like they)  are loved by God and love back like He does.  It’s Jesus. Mercy.

Sharing my little photo album....my story of curses to blessings.

“For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written:

“Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”  

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us….

He redeemed us in order that the blessing…might come…through Christ Jesus.” 

Galatians 3:10, 13-14

 The Message says it this way,

“That is what happened when Jesus was nailed to the cross:

He became a curse, and at the same time dissolved the curse.

And now, because of that, the air is cleared…

We are all able to receive God's life, his Spirit, in and with us by believing….”

 The word for curse in Greek is katara. It comes from two original words meaning “against” and “to curse”.  “The opposite of blessing, it means rejection and surrender to punishment.  It is equivalent to judgment without mercy (James 2:13). The word involves both the sentence of the divine judgment and the ruin therein inflicted, the manifested curse.” Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary New Testament, p. 926.

So this is the truth about the curse.  It exists and we all live under it every single second we try to please God with our own efforts or ignore Him with our imagined indifference. It is only broken by Jesus, who became the curse (did you get that? He BECAME the curse) for us paying the unimaginable ransom to free us from its grip, surrendering to our punishment.  He endured judgment without mercy so that we wouldn’t have to; He stood up under our ruin becoming sin for us, so that we could escape the curse and live with hope and relationship with God free from fear.  

For those of you who have taken the blessing of a curse-free life for granted….listen up.  It’s a gift to live in a grace-filled relationship with God through Jesus.  It was free to you, but COSTLY to Him, so live up to it.  That’s what you were created for…..

For those of you who are living under the curse of working to gain God’s approval….stop.  It’s beyond you.  When you presume to be able to take Jesus’ place you make His sacrifice meaningless.

For those of you who are continuing to assume that you are walking in the shoes of the cursed because you can’t understand the pain of your current circumstances….look up and meet the affectionate eyes of Jesus who turns curses into blessings.  Let Him change your perspective.

And please, pray for the dear ones in North Africa that they would choose a grace-filled life of blessing.

 

“I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

Therefore choose life….”

Deuteronomy 30:19

This is the picture of God's Blessings I shared in North Africa.