GPS to a Joyful Marriage

As we enter into a new year, may God bless you with a new season of hope, joy and peace.  May He fulfill the desires of your heart and see you through to the purpose He has prepared for you. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Mary Did You Know?, my favorite Christmas song focuses on the life of Jesus more than just His birth.  Check out this link to a wonderful video of this beautiful song:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifCWN5pJGIE Mary did you know, that your baby boy would one day walk on water Mary did you know, that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters Did you know, that your baby boy has come to make you new This Child that you delivered will soon deliver you Mary did you know, that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man Mary did you know, that your baby boy would calm the storm with His hand Did you know, that your baby boy has walked where angels trod When you kiss your little baby then you kissed the face of God The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again The lame will leap, the dumb will speak the praises of the Lamb Mary did you know, that your baby boy is Lord of all creation Mary did you know, that your baby boy would one day r

(This is a post I wrote in 2011.) I’ve been thinking about expectations of a different nature this week – the expectations we have of the holidays.  We all have our own ideas of how the Christmas season should play out, and I believe most of us try to duplicate that scenario as closely as possible. I fondly remember spending Thanksgiving with my mother’s family, Christmas Eve with my father’s, and on Christmas Day, we would stay home, and my grandparents would visit us.  Often, we would also have Christmas parties with my mother’s family.  New Year’s Eve involved a huge party with my dad’s family and friends where children were included – always the highlight of my year. After my parents divorced when I was sixteen, it all ended.  I’ve finally realized, in the past few years, that I spent most of my adult years trying to recapture those memories of my childhood. I loved Christmas when my children lived at home but still struggled, as an Air Force family, with living a

‘Tis the season to be jolly’.   Hmmm.  The older I get, the less jolly I feel at Christmas time.  It seems the real reason for the season, the birth of Jesus, is slowly being pushed aside to make room for all the commercialism that now dominates this holiday.  I don’t like it. There has also been a lot of skepticism over the past few years about the roots of the celebration of Christmas, and so I decided to investigate it myself.  It seems that Christmas, initially called the Saturnalia Festival, started as a pagan holiday.  Romans adopted it with hopes of turning people to Christianity. From “Christmas, the Real Story”            In the 4 th  century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it.  Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians. [2]            The problem was that there was nothing intrins