Another snow day!

So this is the second time in three days we've had snow, and I did some shoveling outside this afternoon. Ironically, I didn't feel like cooking a big meal today, so we decided to make our own dinner on whatever we felt like nibbling on in the refrigerator. Normally, I have a menu planned down to a science, including sides to go with the main dish and sometimes a dessert if I think it will be a good addition to it. I even blog about it on my food blog and have people drooling over the photos asking me if I deliver or do take-out. And many times I would do a take-out order if I had enough for someone that I could share with them, too.

But today for some reason, I just wasn't feeling up to it to cook today. Was it because I'm still dealing with some sinus pressure after having a cold this past weekend? Was it because I just really wanted a lazy day to myself without any pressure? Was it because I just couldn't think of anything in particular I really wanted to make? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it was just because I didn't even want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen chopping onions, stirring the sauce, baking cookies, and scrubbing the dishes clean at the end of it all.

Maybe, just maybe, the devotional a friend of mine wrote for our Advent devotions booklet at church that was placed under today's date really hit home with me. She had written her devotion based on Luke 10:38-41 where Jesus and his disciples eat at the home of siblings Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Mary decides to listen to Jesus as he is teaching others in the home, but Martha is so busy making all the food and setting the table that she scolds Mary and begs Jesus to convince Mary to help her. But Martha ends up getting a reminder that Jesus wants her to have the same opportunity to listen to him teaching and that dinner can wait awhile until he's done teaching. We don't see how Martha, Mary, or Lazarus react to this, but my friend had written she often felt like Martha and has to slow down each Christmas so she can see God in the midst of the decorations, baking, cleaning, and shopping that gets tacked onto her to-do list (and probably onto her family's "honey-do" list.)

So today, instead of cooking and stressing out about how it will taste, I slowed down, shoveled snow, and silently listened to Mary Chapin Carpenter's Come Darkness, Come Light: Twelve Songs of Christmas on MySpace. As I am unwinding for the night, I'm grateful for the reminder today that gifts come in unlikely ways. If most schools had not been closed due to the weather, I would have taken my friend's ten-year-old son to school as she had asked me to do so last week, and Josh's funny comments and antics would have kept me laughing all morning long. To me, that's a Christmas gift I treasure. And I treasure the finest gifts of a holiday card I got in the mail from another friend of mine today, being able to enjoy a nice hot shower and clean pajamas and a day at home without anywhere to rush off to, and a God who loves me enough to remind me that Christmas is about the gift of Jesus Christ to save me and make me new. 

Click here to listen to the music I wrote about 
Mary Chapin Carpenter Come Light, Come Darkness: Twelve Songs of Christmas