Monday, December 08, 2008

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Along with Christmas music and snow, December has brought me a sense of lightheartedness and joy. The past few months have been full. After traveling to Asia in September I went to Frankfurt, Germany in October. While I was in Germany my assistant (who was in the office, not in Germany) went into premature labor. They were able to stop the contractions and she eventually had a beautiful and healthy baby, but the early labor also meant an early departure from work leaving me to train the new assistant. Things are going well, but I was feeling pretty stressed and pressed for time for most of October and November.


This is my absolute favorite photo of Elijah right now. It captures a sense of his joyful nature better than usual. And it expresses a sense of how I am feeling these days.

I love Advent and Christmas. Our Christmas tree is up, I've been playing Christmas music since Thanksgiving and most of our gifts are purchased and wrapped. We attended a couple of Christmas parties this weekend, both of which were a lot of fun.

Michael Card sang at IVP's Christmas party this weekend. I was talking with Michael a bit and wondering if he even remembered who I was when he said, "I think of you every day." Huh? I must have looked bewildered because he explained that he keeps translations of his books behind his coffee-maker. Since I handle translation rights for IVP and helped facilitate the translations, he thinks of me each morning when he gets a cup of coffee. I'm a bit of an affirmation junkie, so that made me feel pretty good. I really enjoyed the concert, particularly a new song he played for us called "Freedom," which has been a recurring theme in my Advent ponderings this year.

I have also been enjoying Sara Groves' Christmas CD, O Holy Night. Al and I especially like the song "Toy Packaging." If you haven't heard this yet, you really need to find a copy and listen to it, especially if you are a parent! The whole CD is really nice, but this song is a lot of fun.

2 comments:

Susan said...

Ellen, I'm glad to hear that your stress level has diminished. :)

We are also preparing for Christmas. I'm loving it this year. I bought an Advent calendar for the first time. (It's a nice wooden one with little doors to open...cute) and my kids love it. We've been decorating, and we took the kids to the Live Nativity at Crossroads on Saturday.

Elijah looks like such a big boy in that picture. I just love it.

Good to see a post from you again!
Susan

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Sue!