Recently at a meeting a young mom was kind of beat up over the fact that her family celebrated Christmas with Santa. An older woman was concerned this young mom may never come back; although she thought the young mom was really thinking about what was shared. This older woman was going to call this young mom just to make sure she was ok.
Adding my two cents, I encouraged her to remind the young mom that it was up to her husband how the family celebrated. As a wife, we can bring new ideas and challenge old ways, but in the end our husband gets to make the call.
That was easy for me to say and to see until I hit my own bump in the road.
It was a beautiful blog entry that sent me whirling. The family I read about did devotions every night, read the prophecies of Jesus’ coming and sang songs together. Instead of presents for Christmas they gave to the needy. They bought chickens and goats.
Another family told us of how they spend Christmas Eve in their barn as a reminder of Jesus humble beginning.
That was all it took to stir discontent and perhaps even a little disrespect for my husband. Amidst feeling extremely unspiritual, I also started disliking “our” way of doing Christmas. We sat down as a family to watch a silly Christmas movie and I couldn’t even giggle, it felt so wrong.
After the evening was over I laid in bed crying out to the Lord to help me find joy and balance.
His answer…“To obey is better than sacrifice.” (I Samuel 15:22b)
Being a grumpy, stuffy, sacrificing martyr was not what God called me to. To obey my husband and promote joy and unity in our house was definitely part of my role in life. I needed to stop comparing and embrace our traditions. It would require thinking on that which is good, right and pleasing in every situation.
Our Christmas was great! There were still a couple of times I had to remind myself to promote joy and unity when I would have preferred to be doing something differently. There is no doubt that Momma can dampen the mood with just a little bit of discontent, so I chose to jump in with both feet, with a smile on my face and love in my heart.
Obeying my husband by making Christmas what he wanted created warm memories for the whole family and extended family too. The only real sacrifice that was needed was to lay down the inferiority I was feeling from comparing our family to others.