So This is Christmas.

It’s Christmas time. Can you believe it is already December? The last few months have been quite the blur. And now things are starting to clear up.

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Every morning this week Carly and I have been listening to Christmas music. It’s a great way to start off the day. The other day I was listening to Josh Groban’s rendition of Silent Night. I was looking at my baby girl smiling up at me and there were the tears (I think I actually cry more as a mother than I did as a pregnant lady).

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Christmas traditions are great. I love trees and decorations and fun music and the smell of the mall during the holidays and lights and presents. It is all part of the magic of Christmas. But the thing I love most of all about Christmas is the fact that it is just about a mother and her baby.

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Luke 2 is one of my favorite chapters in all of scripture, and I have been thinking a lot about Mary’s experience. She had been traveling and was surely exhausted. Then, of all the places, she has to give birth in a stable. And while I know God was with her, she still had to actually GIVE BIRTH, which I now know is no small task with modern medicine, let alone without it. Then she held her baby boy all night. And for her, if just for a little while, He was just her baby boy.

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How much she must have loved Him. There are few feelings as exquisite as holding your newborn child, and how tightly she must have held Him. I love Carly so much it is frightening. And Mary was just a mother who loved her baby more than anything.

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How grateful I am for that mother and that baby boy. He is my Savior. As the Son of God, He grew from that precious baby in His mother’s arms to work miracles, heal the sick, and die for all mankind, including me. Because of Him I have Chris forever. Because of Him we have Carly forever.

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That’s what I really love most about Christmas.