Tuesday With Teri

         This is week three of our advent celebration.  Each week, four prior to Christmas Eve, we gather to light a candle and consider the coming of our savior.    This week we light the candle of love.

          Our niece is getting married this weekend!  We are excited for her and our family.  We are busy preparing to join them for celebration in Pensacola Florida.  Yep, Florida…a whopping 16 hour drive.  Don’t get me wrong, we are glad to have such a wonderful reason to make such a trip, but it has some complexity to it. 

          My husband has a business trip this week.  He will need to fly to Canada then straight to Florida and meet us there by Thursday.   This requires him to pack for two different trips simultaneously.  The kids are taking final exams this week.  Since we need to leave by Thursday morning, they had to arrange to take a few of them early.  All of our Christmas shopping needs to be done.  Presents for the Florida families will be wrapped and packed into the car with us. 

          In addition to getting everything done for Christmas prior to our trip, we are also busy getting our daughter, and her car, ready to go off to college a week after we return.  After taking hubby to the airport, my day will be full of auto mechanic appointments, wrapping gifts, doing laundry and packing.  Our poor porkie little yorkie, Hughie, has seen the suitcases and has started his fretting, which includes pitiful whining, pacing, crawling into any open suitcase and sticking so close to me you’d think he was attached by Velcro. 

          At  O’dark hundred Thursday morning our son will drag himself home from his 12 hour night shift and slide into the car, which will already be packed and running.   We intend to drive straight through so we can maximize our time with our family.  Although the kids are grown up now, and less inclined to bicker endlessly while underway, I can still see a few tense moments in our journey.   When three adults with very diverse personalities spend 16 hours in a packed vehicle…well, let’s just say the group dynamics may require a bit of adjustment.   

          When we get there it will be great.   It will feel good to hug loved ones we can usually only hear on the phone. We are looking forward to seeing and experiencing the love of our family.  Nieces and nephews are growing too fast and most are young adults now.  We may see them less often in years to come as they go their separate ways, so each visit is more treasured than before.  Stories will be shared and new memories made.  A little chaos, loud laughter, quiet conversations and just “being there” will be the best gifts of all.

Traveling to see loved ones is not always easy, but it is ALWAYS worth the trip!  

          This season we celebrate the amazing trip our savior made for us.   Christ left the comfort of Heaven, the company of angels and the space of eternity.  He experienced life and all its complexity…happiness, sorrow, hunger, friendship and adversity.  He took on the confines of the flesh and journeyed with man, for all mankind.  In death He took on our sin that we could know forgiveness.  

This is LOVE…that He would make such journey because He considers us worth the trip! 

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father…for of His fullness we have all received grace upon grace…grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ”  John 1:14-17