So, my post is late. I admit to being a work in progress almost daily, but I do hope that the New Year will bring me a schedule or a virtual assistant, so that I am able to get posts like this done when I’d like to rather than when I finally find time. Time has been a big focus this year and when it came to Christmas, my sense of time and it’s value really hit hard.

See, we are BIG TIME WASTERS. I work A LOT. Despite that, I also have a bazillion (only a slight exaggeration) things pulling me away from work, distracting me from my most important work and derailing my days, hours, minutes. I truly am not a HUGE time waster, but I do waste some of my time on games on my phone, Hallmark movies, Youtube videos, and the occasional craft project which to be fair is cathartic and sanity saving more than time wasting. Still time gets away from me. I’ll be at my desk at 7:30 a.m. working and next thing I know it is 3 p.m. and I have no concept of where all those hours went. I feel defeated in my lack of work to show for the time gone. Mind you, lots of things get done and while I’m beating myself up for the sluish of time pasting and my feelings of inadequacy, my wonderful husband will count off the dozens of things I accomplished to make me feel better.

So, this year at Christmas I made some decisions about use of my time. As I age, I realize time is our most valuable commodity as humans, because it is limited. We have NO idea how much or how little of it we have during our lifetime and while I’m not given to regret – although like Frank Sinatra, I do have a few – I’d like to move forward avoiding adding anymore regrets to the list of things I wish I had done better, more or at all. This shifted my focus from the chaos of Christmas to the meaning of Christmas. Which proved a really lovely journey. One I want to explore even more deeply next year.

First, I contacted my two adult children. The eldest has a birthday very close to Christmas which adds to the scheduling shenanigans between my house and his in-laws. We have worked together well over the last several years to divide and conquer most holiday dinners and events, but with December being chock full of plans the birthday dinners, lunches, and celebrations are like playing Jenga with our calendars. Once, the schedules of church activities – my eldest is also a pastor -birthday plans, and work schedules were set, I set up dates with my son, daughter, daughter-in-law, and my daughter’s boyfriend to spend a day with them Christmas shopping, having lunch or brunch, and just hanging out. Each got time with me, by themselves and we just talked and hung out. So, while I got them gifts and they picked out a few things they needed or wanted, I got time with them and they got time with me and time, as I said, is that precious thing we all have, but seems to get away from us.

Each year, we girls have had a cookie baking day. The reality of this day is 8 hours of being on your feet in a hot kitchen all day and sharing a lunch of Chinese food in the midst of it. While fun, and time well spent and many cookies are baked which we divide between all of us, I knew being on my feet all day was going to be hard. My back is not always joyful. Also, it is just my husband and I so dozens and dozens of cookies are not my scales favorite thing either, because I am not really well controlled in the presence of freshly baked cookies. I know my limitations. LOL. So, I suggested we all bake 2 kinds of cookies and then get together for Chinese food, cocoa and a movie. My daughter-in-law upped the ante to Hallmark Movie Bingo. This worked so great. We had a blast. Funniest movie watching experience ever. My DIL and her mom are uber competitive so every scene someone was shouting. Is that an elf? Is that cookie baking? Is that a coffee shop? And we each had several dozen cookies which we divvied up. Also, we spent time together relaxing and laughing and talking, not up to our armpits in flour and butter. I still was on my feet a bit to bake. My daughter came over the day before and we kicked out cookies for the exchange so I got bonus time with her too.

In the midst of normal Christmas things, I also was tagged to be the director of our Children’s Christmas Play which is debuting at church this Sunday. I wrote this play for our kids about five years ago. It’s called Little Lamb Leroy because our lead was a boy back then. This year, our kids are younger and Leroy is now, Leiloo, and my little cast who barely can read the script, has taken me on quite the adventure. Our Leroy, is now 15 and helping with props and scenery – which mostly involves gluing cotton balls back onto the dozens of paper sheep we put all over the sanctuary. Some hang on the wall with funny signs, like “Jesus loves Ewe.” Yes, I am that silly.

Like most Christmas stories, we are doing the play starting with the angel, named “Glory” and the shepherds who get to see Jesus first and a little ornery lamb who is destined to be wolf food because he isn’t very well behaved. He, well she this year, is also very upset about what it means to be a sacrificial lamb and has a dirt bath planned once she is done checking out this baby the angel talked about. Good news for her Mary decides Jesus needs a pet and so lamb and Jesus have quite the journey together. Unlike most Christmas stories ours quickly recounts Jesus’ life leading up to his crucifixion culminating with a scene where Jesus explains to Leroy/Leiloo about how He is a sacrificial lamb who is going to give up his life, so the whole world will be saved.

As we worked through this play over the past few weeks, I realized how so much of all the Christmas hubbub is just that – hubbub. So, little has to do with Jesus at all. He too had limited time on earth. We are His family here on earth and I realized He deserved my time too. So, while we celebrated his birth, I was happy that some conversations had were about Jesus. And, the rekindling of our play, inspired our old Leroy to request a new play where Leroy and Leiloo are sent back to earth to help more people learn about Jesus cause the world is a big mess. I began working on this play a few weeks ago. Did I mention the first one is a musical, so this one is too.

Go Godly has been a prophetic journey for me and most days are spent talking to God, working on scriptural lessons and putting it altogether so a programmer and game designer can bring it to life. Pray over that for us please, we need funding this year to bring this to fruition. Ironically, all this time spent and I go on “vacation” for a couple weeks over Christmas. I realized though, we all do it. We get so caught up in Santa, decorations, baking, and presents that we somehow overlook the greatest gift of all.

Jesus’ life was spent teaching people about God’s profound love and His capacity to forgive sin and why this is so very important. Sin separates us from God – God is Love. Which means we are seperated from love – pure love like we really will struggle to understand as human love is formed of many things that have little or nothing to do with love – that is for another post, but if we could grasp how amazing perfect love is, we would do anything and everything to assure we aren’t kept from it. Jesus knows that love and exhibited that love in the most profound way, by sacrificing himself to atone for all the sins of the world and then defeating death by rising from the grave. This little baby born in a manger conquered death for all of us so we get to live eternally with perfect love that is God. FOREVER!

This year I hope you will find the time to unwrap this precious gift. Time is the most precious commodity and we should use it to bless others with the same love that Christ blessed us with. Share the gospel. Learn the gospel. Pray for your community, government, and enemies. Exhibit love. And like Leroy and Leiloo be a sacrificial lamb with your life and give of yourself and spread hope, joy and love.

We here at Go Godly hope all of you had a Merry Christmas and that your New Year is full of love, joy, faith, and blessings galore.