As promised (even though a little bit late), I will share another daily tradition that we have started in our family. This tradition is the daily hours (or offices) of prayer. The tradition of set hours of prayer dates back to pre-Jesus times. This is a Jewish tradition that the first Christians continued as they developed their Christian practices.

There are several different ways of observing this throughout the day as well as several different ways of actually practicing it. The one we use with our kids for both morning and evening (vespers) prayers is a set of books called The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle. It’s fairly short and is based mostly on Psalms and prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, but with a few other early Christian works and short passages of Scripture. There are several repeated pieces (like the Lord’s Prayer) that my kids now have memorized, which is nice.

I also use Phyllis Tickle’s book for noon-time prayers that I do myself after getting all the kids situated for naptimes. John and I also use the compline (which are said right before going to bed) together at our bedtime. It’s the first time in our marriage that we have stayed consistent with praying together each day as a couple. Recently I started also trying to do morning and evening prayers directly out of the Book of Common Prayer. The main difference with doing this is that I get a better chunk of Scripture reading, so I use this for my “quiet time” each day. I have been very consistent with morning prayers, evening prayers are hit and miss depending on how our day goes. But what I like about doing this is that it has been encouraging me to actually be in prayer daily (when I do it individually I can take time to really pray for those needs around me) and to read my Bible each day. For some reason I find it easier to be consistent with reading the Bible when it is interwoven into my prayer time. And because there is an actual reading program built in, I don’t like getting behind, so I am more likely to keep up each day.

I have to admit that these prayers are not always beautiful, especially when we are trying to do them as a family because my boys are not always well-behaved and in a prayer mood each time. But I am hoping that consistency will bring long-term benefits in the end. And as an adult I find a lot of beauty in the prayers themselves and in the renewing of my mind that happens as I continually fill it with these good and pure things. I used to pray almost entirely only my own words. But I am enjoying adding in this other tradition of praying both prayers directly from the Bible and well-crafted beautiful prayers written years ago by others striving to live out their faith. When I pray these prayers I am joining with believers around the world in a whole new way. This tradition is enriching my spiritual life. Therefore, I find beauty both in the words themselves and in the effect they have on my day.

One of the things we are using Advent for is to build tradition. We are very blessed to have lived the majority of our lives (all but our year and a half in Germany) near our families. So, Christmas is spent celebrating with everyone, and I love it. But it has also been hard for us to begin our own traditions, to define what Christmas looks like for us. So even though this will be our 15th Christmas as a married couple and our 12th as parents, in many ways I feel like we are still sorting this out.

We tried for a few years to do our own little Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve. But since we already have two other Christmas celebrations and admittedly it’s more fun to open presents with larger groups, we’ve cut back on that a bit. Now I’m trying to concentrate a little more on the whole season of Advent to build our own traditions, and this has the added benefit of helping us keep the important parts of Christmas more in focus.

I shared our little Advent tree last year when we started it, but here’s another picture in case you missed it. I had a moment of panic when I couldn’t find the tree even though I was positive I’d packed it in Germany. But John produced it in seconds. I still haven’t asked him where he found it. The ornaments are hand-embroidered, but pretty simple. We add one each night when we read the corresponding Bible story. This year we are using Ann Voskamp’s Unwrapping the Greatest Gift for our readings. I haven’t decided which I like better, just reading the passages straight from the Bible or reading her narrative. But it’s fun to have some variety.

I wanted to also share with you another everyday year round tradition we started since this is about finding beauty in the everyday, not just in the Christmas season, but I’ll save it for tomorrow so this doesn’t get too long. Thank you to all who have been reading these posts and letting me know that they are meaningful to you. Please feel free to share your own moments of beauty in the comments.

Today I took the time to clear off my mantel. It usually serves as a repository for confiscated toys and other small junk that I am too lazy to put away. So today I cleared it all off and dusted it and then added some lights and greenery. We are choosing not to do a Christmas tree this year for a variety of reasons, but I really miss the atmosphere of the lights, so this helped things feel more like Christmas. Our advent candles also finally came today, so I got to add those to our homemade wreath as well.

It’s nothing fancy, but these things add some beauty to our life. Sometimes I am only looking for beauty outside of my control, but the truth is that God has given us an amazing ability to create beauty ourselves. Let’s not waste that gift. In this time of my life I have very little time to be as creative as I’d like to be, but I want to make sure to treasure the small ways that I can add a little bit of beauty to our everyday life and to be thankful that God has allowed us to contribute to his world in that way.

If you have read my recent post about learning to juggle life with four kiddos, then you know that life is pretty chaotic here sometimes. Today actually started out as a very good day. School went quickly and smoothly, the housework was coming along great, and everyone was decently quiet for naptime. We have small group on Monday evenings and this week we were meeting here, which means I had lots of motivation to get the whole house clean (something I like to do at the beginnings of my week anyway). And it was all going so smoothly until Elise went to choir practice. This happens every Monday, but it is a little bit of a pain not to have my most helpful child during the last hour or so of prep before people show up here. I had cleaned most of the downstairs and only had the upstairs to do. The main issue with cleaning upstairs is always the boys’ room. They are horrible at cleaning it and I can talk at them until I’m blue in the face and they just do not seem capable of making much progress on their own. Which is frustrating. While they were working hard, sort of, in their room, I cleaned the stairs, the nursery and my own room (which took awhile because their mess had somehow overflowed into my room). By this time, I needed to start the soup for supper and I was tired of continually having to tell them what to do every five minutes in order for anything to get done. So I told them to keep at it while I headed down to the relative quiet of the kitchen to make supper.

Dietrich, of course, followed me. Through all of the chaos of cleaning upstairs he had been there, but I hadn’t really paid much attention to him. Now it was just him and me getting supper ready. This is one of Dietrich’s favorite times of day because he loves food. He always wants to see what I’m making and then gives me a very appreciative “mmmm.” As I worked on supper and Dietrich busied himself with something in the corner, I started thinking through what I could possibly put in a blog post today. I know I’ve missed several days and I don’t want to stress about doing this every day, but I really do want to be intentional about finding beauty in the everyday. And since chaos is often a part of my day, I was trying to decide what was beautiful in this chaotic process of housework and cooking.

And then I noticed what Dietrich was doing in his little corner. He’d pulled out a glass jar and was pretending to fill it with water at the refrigerator and then pour it into his bowl of cheerios. He was cooking, just like mommy. I went and got him a spoon and measuring cup, so I could put the glass jar away, and then of course had to get him a mixing bowl too because he wanted to stir the food on the stove with his long wooden spoon. Once I successfully distracted him from the hot stove he headed off into the pantry. Next thing I know he is trying to get a measuring cup of flour from the bag I keep in the pantry. Thankfully he couldn’t actually get into it, but he seemed content to pretend to empty several cupfuls into his mixing bowl. And as I watched him at his work I realized how much he is learning. Even when I think life is so chaotic that we are just surviving, my littlest son is actually thriving, growing and developing in new and exciting ways every day. Which means, that we probably all are.

Again, you have to really watch to see it. Who knows what all Dietrich had been practicing while I cleaned around him without ever really noticing him earlier. And if I really took the time to observe each of my kids would I see what they are learning in each day as well? And perhaps, if I am really observant I’d discover how much even I have grown in the midst of the chaos of my day. Growth, it isn’t always pretty, but it is beautiful.

When I first came up for the idea for this blog series, the leaves were in full display of fall colors and I was thinking that those colorful leaves could be one of these entries. But then one day I got up and overnight the color was suddenly gone. Most of the leaves had dropped from the trees, and even the ones on the ground seemed to have suddenly turned brown.

So, today, when I looked outside and noticed the odd yellow coloring in the light of the late afternoon and suddenly remembered I needed to find something to photograph for a blog post, I headed out with camera and toddler to see what I could find. From the window everything looked just as brown as can be, but it turns out that there is color out there if you get close enough to see it. The red of a hidden leaf on the ground, the orange adding subtle color to the leaves clinging to the trees, the green of a tenacious patch of grass clinging to life. None of it was obvious until I got close, but once I did, it was beautiful. Elise saw me taking pictures and poked her head out of the front door: “Mom, what are you doing?” “I’m taking pictures for my blog. I’m trying to find things that are beautiful.” “So you think brown leaves are beautiful?” “They look brown from there Elise, but if you get close, there’s actually a lot of color here.”

And that is what beauty is sometimes like: hard to see, unless you get close. Something I’ve been thinking about lately is working to see glimpses of God in others, as we all are made in his image. But we have to get close to see it. From a distance all we see is the outer shell, sometimes it takes getting close, really getting to know someone to see that inner beauty that reflects God. So, Lord help me to have the courage to get close enough to people to see their hidden beauty.

OK, so this feels like cheating because it is so obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated. One of the ways I see beauty in the “process” is in my children. They are all on their way to adulthood, but if we just focus on the end result we’d miss the beauty along the way. It’s pretty silly to say that we miss the beauty in our children now because we are focused on their future adulthood, but I think sometimes we do miss it. We see the physical, but do we notice what’s deeper? Do we stop to spend time with our children, REALLY spend time with them, get to know them? Do we miss out on building memories and love and character because we are in such a hurry to get to the next stage, and then the next, and so on?

This idea has been obvious to me over the last year and a half since Dietrich has been born. Because I am fairly certain he’s my last child, I have wanted to slow down and enjoy each stage he is in. To focus on the positive in that stage instead of the things I don’t like. It isn’t easy every day, but I’d like to have that attitude towards each of my children. So, here are some pictures gleaned from the last 12 months. Each picture in some way shows beauty to me in one or more of my children’s faces. I hope that by noticing the beauty on the outside, I can remember to stop long enough to see the beauty beneath as well.

Before I get into this post, let me add a quick disclaimer and explanation. We don’t do Santa Claus in our family and never have. This is most likely due to the fact that neither John nor I grew up with the tradition and so don’t see a need to add it now. But it is also because in general we just don’t do make-believe characters on holidays or special occasions as we’d prefer to concentrate on the reality behind the celebration. The one exception was a brief stint with the tooth fairy. She met an untimely death when she came into contact with five year old Elise, who though she loved to imagine things, liked to have the line between reality and pretend very clearly drawn. So, just so you know the background here, though my kids hear things about Santa Claus, we do not really talk about him much in our house. But I don’t want this post to be condemning in any way to those of you that do. My desire in this post is just to encourage you to think about it in perhaps a different way than you have before, because until this conversation, I had not thought of it in this way.

It was Christmas Eve. The kids were anxiously counting down until Christmas morning, eagerly anticipating opening the many gifts under our tree. Will and I were in the kitchen where I was helping him make chocolate fudge as his Christmas present for everyone. As we waited for the fudge to reach the correct temperature, Will mentioned something he had heard from one of his friends. It was something along the lines of “you had better be good or you won’t get good presents for Christmas.” I don’t think we have ever said this to our kids, but it is found in much of what we hear and read about Christmas. “You’d better watch out, you better not cry, you better not shout . . .” And it suddenly hit me that this idea that permeates much of our Christmas thought and teaching may be robbing us of an important truth.

I wasn’t sure what Will thought about this idea, so I asked him a few questions. “Will, you know that isn’t true, right?” He assured me that yes, he knew it wasn’t true. “Why do we celebrate Christmas, Will?” “We celebrate because Jesus was born,” he answered. “Yes,” I agreed, “Jesus was God’s gift to us. And did Jesus come because we had been good?” Will looked at me with realization dawning on his face and answered, “No, he came to die for our sins. We were being very bad!”

If what we are truly celebrating at Christmas is God’s gift of his son to us, then our gifts should mirror that. We give gifts at Christmas to those we love because we love them, not because they have in any way earned them. I know that we want to teach our children that good behavior brings good rewards and bad behavior results in bad consequences, but this isn’t the message of Christmas. Christmas is about the fact that even though we didn’t deserve it, God sent his son to us and made his life available to all. And I want to make sure my kids find that truth quite obvious in our Christmas celebrations.