FAITH. HOPE. LOVE. Home for the Holidays...

When I was in HS my best friend's house burned down. His precious family lost everything. I will never forget him telling me through tears that he had realized that the only things he had left in the world were the things he had given away.

This Christmas I was reminded of that because of another great loss suffered by a different friend this year. This last Spring my precious friend Selina lost her husband unexpectedly to cancer. She had been a TP here on our campus serving alongside him in ministry for over 10 years. After he was gone she made the difficult decision to leave her home and the children she had grown to love as her own and to move back to FL with her family to try to heal.

Selina is a collector and I think Christmas items might be her favorite obsession! She always had the best-dressed house each year on our campus when it was time for the annual Tour of Lights, no matter if she was doing a playful penguin theme, a glitzy gold wonderland or a patriotic tribute to America, her house was always decked out!

When she left she had to downsize and one of the things she purged was her much loved Christmas collection. But she didn’t just get rid of it, she gave it away in love.

This year as I walked through our annual Tour of Lights, I saw glimpses of that love and devotion for a place she holds dear on display throughout the campus: 

Cottage 2 lit up in Red, White, and Blue in a tribute to our soldiers dressed up with some of Selina’s patriotic bows and crosses, 

Cottage 8’s Frozen Cafe lit up with many of her snowflakes and her Snow White Christmas tree, and a beautiful collection of sparkly silver poinsettias, 

Pool cottage with their 50s party theme aglow with some of her colored lights, 

C11 with its Candy Lane theme adorned with many of her candy canes and Christmas sweets, 

and of course, our cottage decorated with her Santa, his sleigh and reindeer. In fact, you couldn’t look far across the campus without seeing something Ms. Selina had lovingly donated to one of her favorite times of the year at Boys and Girls Country. 

It was a true reminder that this season is more about giving, than receiving.

 Christmas is a beautiful and strange juxtaposition when you really think about it. This babe, born to die.

Some other dear friends of ours on campus had a beautiful display with a simple manger scene leading to a cross. It reminded me of the old carol, Christmas has its Cradle, and Easter has its Cross. 

We, too, had a quiet manger scene as part of our display this year. I had bought a baby doll at Walmart to use in the wooden box we found in the attic. At first, I was trying to keep it nice in preparation for the big night, but eventually, I gave in and let Campbell and the kids play with it. For some reason that kept taking it to the playground and burying it! I was telling them not to and they would dig it up, but I would turn around and they would have it buried again! At one point I was just about to walk out to where they were and take it away from them when a little butterfly came fluttering up and landed on the tree in front of me. It was the perfect picture, the winter butterfly perched on a branch in the foreground, the three kids huddled around this little, buried baby Jesus in the background, I should have pulled out my camera to snap a pic, but I missed the opportunity as I stood there pondering it. I let them have their fun getting dirty and getting baby Jesus dirty, too. 

Later on that week as Lily helped me lay the little dirt-smeared baby doll in the manger and I thought how much more fitting it was that he had gotten a bit more sullied over the last week with the kids, she remarked on how cold it had gotten outside. Sweet Girl didn't want to leave him out in the cold in our display and I thought quietly to myself about Mary trying to keep him warm, nothing but swaddling clothes between him and a hay-filled trough. 

I have a lot of emotions going on this Christmas and probably too many thoughts rattling around in my brain to make a concise, cohesive blog about this time of the year. But I think what I keep coming back to is the same thought that I started out the year with, the idea of Home and what that can mean to our kids here at BGC. 

Our Tour of Lights theme was - Faith. Hope. Love. Home for the Holidays.

I wrote a little poem that we put on display that I think sums all of my thoughts up nicely. 

Happy Holidays from all of us here at Cottage 6 and at BGC.

Thank you to Ms. Selina who so lovingly donated to making our Christmas that much more magical. 

Please pray for our boys who will be going home for the holidays and for those who will be away from family and staying here. Pray for our precious singles who will be staying with our one who is not getting to home.

And, Thank you to Cypress Creek Christian Church and the Friendship class for the wonderful Day of Wonder party and for loving our boys so well!!