`Twas the Night Before Christmas...
I (Jeremy) have just taken a late Christmas eve break to put the final touches on our annual end of the year letter. A break from what you ask? A break from a Christmas eve ritual that resonates with just about every parent in America. A trial of faith that unites me with men across the globe and in generations past. A trial that is known by just three little words that resonate in the soul:
Some assembly required.
As I look at the foreboding pile of wood and bolts and washers and doo-hickeys and funny shaped little things that must somehow be melded together coherently before morning, I was drawn to think about a recurring theme that we have reflected on this advent season. We've been amazed at just how sanitized and squeaky clean and nice the Christmas story has become, and just how shallow our glances at it can be. The Christmas story can be a lot like the instruction sheet that I've been looking at for the past few minutes. Not many words, a few cute pictures, a lot of things left out, and a few puzzling things that I'm not quite sure are English.
The Christmas reality is far from the niceness of plastic nativity, lowing cattle, and grinning angels. The Christmas reality is more about a dank and smelly stable in a backwater bit of Israel during the reign of a deadly king who had a thirst for the blood of all who would oppose him. In God's sovereignty, the Light of the World--the very son of God--the one from whose very utterances sprang the whole of creation--entered into this world at this time. In this place. To earthly parents who were bearing the brunt of a neurotic Roman emperor's tax scheme, and who were so utterly rejected by their own family that the only place they could find in their ancestral home to give birth was a cave used to stable livestock.
Jesus entered into a dark world and encountered dark times. His first trip was a hasty departure for Egypt as an infant to escape the wrath of a jealous pseudo-king who sent a slaughter squad to murder Him, by way of the murder of hundreds of innocent toddlers. His father's providential hand brought strange men with gifts, one of which provided the financial means for the flight to Egypt, and another a gift fit for only a burial and forshadowing the death that He would face in due time. The world was dark indeed, and Jesus was indeed the light.
The hope of this season is not sentimental feelings or seasons greetings, but that these events that occurred so long ago are an arrow that point straight to the single most important, most horrible, and most hope giving event of all time. Jesus entered in to this dark, sinful world to deal the deathblow to sin and to pay a price that only Emmanuel, God with us, could pay. Jesus entered this sinful world to be our sin bearer. He came to take upon himself the due penalty for sin--both yours and mine. That penalty is death. And on the cross at Calvary, that penalty was paid.
We have been given much grace this Christmas season to consider the gravity of these events. The result in my own heart has been a much greater understanding of the depth of my own sin and just what price my Savior paid for it. We want our family traditions around this season to be an arrow pointing to the cross, and not mere sentiment. We want our kids to grow up and think of these years with warmth and fondness, but we want that warmth and fondness to have weight to it that will anchor their souls. And we want that anchor dangling from heaven.
May you all have a wonderful Christmas, and may your fondness for the season be weighty indeed.
In Christ,
Jeremy, Mindy, Nate, Lela, Justin, and Baby #4
The Year in Review
Here is our second year to try out this online newsletter format. Let us know what you think!
Now for the bi-partisan, insurgent-free, hurricane force, pro-marriage,
Bambino un-cursed, steroid free, FDA approved nutshell review of the Mayhew's 2004:
A Fabulous Foursome: Baby #4 on the Way We are expecting our next precious gift from the Lord next year! In February we are expecting the arrival of a baby boy. And in typical Mayhew fashion, he's already raising eyebrows on the sonogram size-o-meter.
Nate the Great
Nate is six this year and is in first grade. He lost his first two teeth this year,
and is expecting to say "good-bye" to a few more pretty
soon. He is reading very well, and will get to dig into his first "chapter
books" next year. He has been taking an art class and learning the finer
points of Lego engineering from his dad. He is ravenous for the
Chronicles of Narnia and we have a hard time satisfying him with
one chapter a night. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
really made the Gospel come alive for him.
Princess Lela
Lela is four this year and trying her best to keep up with Nate in school.
She is writing all of her letters and she is eagerly tackling a pre-K phonics
program. She enjoys drawing pictures and filling
envelopes to mail to people. She loves playing mommy with her baby
dolls (often to Nate's chagrin) and she is really looking forward to
helping Mommy care for the new baby.
Justin Bustin'
Justin seems to be shaping up to be the linebacker of the family. At 2 years, he is within
a few pounds of big brother. He is our more musically inclined child right now, and loves
singing and dancing. He is absorbing his older siblings vocabulary and seems to like
whispering far better than talking. I think he knows it attracts undivided attention!
When the others are doing school he enjoys playing with playdoh and cutting with
scissors...oh, and did I mention he loves glue sticks!
Mayhew Independent School District
We have had a very busy homeschool year this year. We switched our curriculum
around for Nate's first grade year, and Lela is joining in with him and doing
some pre-K curriculum too. Nate participated in two "Adventure Hour" co-op
classes at church. One was about art around the
world and the other was about animals. There were some special visits
from a few animals (a python, a rabbit and BUGS). We've also done some
field trips, including a trip to the Kennedy Center for a musical lesson,
the local recycling center and the Rain Forest Cafe.
Our new curriculum (Sonlight) gives us ample
opportunity to read great books to the kids, and we have all been enjoying these.
Lela's favorites were Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. Nate has
enjoyed the Little House on the Prairie books and a series called
Dolphin Adventure. We are currently reading the Chronicles of Narnia
and Nate did his first book report on The Magician's Nephew.
The Dearest Place on Earth
We have had a very eventful first year of membership at
Covenant Life Church this year. We became
members in January and were blessed with the opportunity to share our testimony
on a Sunday morning. We have been part of a growing small group where we have
been able to build deep and meaningful relationships and we have really grown
spiritually in that context. The group also grew numerically, and our pastors
have
reorganized
the groups so that we will be participating in a much smaller
group beginning in January.
We have had opportunities to serve in many capacities through the year and have
been richly blessed. The whole family has served on our new members class
greeting team, where we get to greet and care for all the new people who are
wanting to join the church. Jeremy served in
Alpha
(one of our evangelistic
outreaches), and we have "adopted" a family from Brazil who are attending
the Pastor's College.
A Much Shorter Distance This Time We moved and upgraded from an apartment to a town house in October. God has blessed us with a yard again! We are still renting, so you can expect another address update in a year or two. We will pass our new address along to you by e-mail with all of our updated contact info.
Getting the Lay of the Land We've been exploring our new home this year, and there is alot to explore around here. We have paid a visit to the Udvar-Hazy Center (home of the Space Shuttle Enterprise), the National Zoo, Annapolis Harbor, the Naval Academy, Intercourse Pennsylvania (Amish country), the Holocaust Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Maryland Science Center, and the Maryland Maple Syrup festival. We've made several trips to downtown Washington DC, including the Cherry Blossom festival and Ronald Reagan's funeral. We have many more places to explore and look forward to all the day trips in the spring.
Frequent Fliers... We have made no less than five trips to Texas this year. Three of these were family trips in February, June, and November and Mindy also made two weekend trips by herself to see friends. We also took a short vacation to the North Carolina outer banks in May with the Herceg family. We attended the Desiring God Annual Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota in September. The conference, entitled Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, was excellent! John Piper's final message was one of the best we've ever heard. For our anniversary this year we took a weekend trip to Luray, Virginia and enjoyed the Skyline Drive and Luray Caverns. Next year will probably see much less travel for us. Baby #4 will take care of that!
Blue State Blues Our new home state voted in a very un-Texan-like fashion this year. Looking at that electoral map was an odd experience for us. Mindy's mom asked what it felt like to be living in a blue state! We've decided that we will just have to shift those numbers by having more kids!
