A Heart Check for the Holidays

It's already begun at the Patrick household!  I'm making my crazy lists in my head for the holidays.  It won't do me any good to write them down.  I'll just lose them!  I can keep better track of the lists in my head.  But there are lists for decorations; first Thanksgiving, then Christmas.  There are lists for what food will be prepared for each celebration.  My oldest son's birthday is on Thanksgiving this year!  My birthday is just five days later, so, another feast!  Then, there are the lists of guests and visitors for parties, for meals, for sleepovers.  I even have a mental list of what old Christmas albums I will play on my mom's stereo.  Oh yes, I have this down to a real production.

It's pandemonium in my mind, already!  So, I've decided to do a heart check.  Not the cardiologist kind of heart check.  But the kind of heart check where I sit down and get honest with myself and the Lord, about what's really going on under all the activity.  Am I remembering what all of this celebration, friends and family gathering, is all about?  My passion since my earliest memories, is for people to know that they are loved and valued.  My deepest desire is for others to know that they were created for a reason and that they are God's answer to something.

But somewhere in life's hustle and bustle, in the planning and conforming to the world's idea of what celebration looks like, we stuff our passions down, tuck them away in our hearts and offer up something that looks great but is empty and void of our first love.  John Eldredge says, "For what shall we do when we wake one day and find that we have lost touch with our hearts and with it the very refuge where God's presence resides.?"

I don't want to get lost in a bunch of activity for God and in the meantime, forget to spend time with God, talking with Him, receiving grace to carry out my passions.  So I'm doing a heart check for the holidays.  I'm making sure that I'm remembering all that my heart yearns for, all the desires that he placed in my heart; and I'm going to incorporate those things into my lists and my plans for the holidays.  As I celebrate what I'm thankful for and remember the birth of a Saviour who came here for me, I will look inward and be true to who I am.  I am someone who desires people to know how valued and precious they are and when they visit my home for the holidays, I want them to leave knowing that God created them as the answer to something!

How will you incorporate your heart's passions and longings into your Thanksgiving and Chrismas celebrations?  Will you do a heart check with me to make sure that we remember why we are thankful for so much?

From His Lap,