Sunday, December 1, 2013

25 days of love…..so put away that elf…..

santa

We don’t do Santa. We used to so don’t be a hater and hear me out. We used to stand in line with our crying toddler and make her sit on a large bearded strangers lap. We used pay through the nose for pictures of a large man who claimed he was from the north pole holding our crying red nosed Rudolph child. Things change though when you start to see the world through the eyes of a child who wonders why this Santa type man never came to visit them. This is a personal choice that we have made as a family. So you can stop the hate mail of how I have “stolen “this from my children. And don’t get me started on the stupid elf on a shelf marketing scheme tradition.

We have a tradition as a family that we started five years ago. I had seen another blogger do this and I was humbled and inspired that we as a family could do this. So I gathered all four blessings (at the time) and asked them what they thought of 25 days of kindness. Or 25 days of random acts of love. Now don’t assume that this is the only time of year that I ask my children to be kind and love other people. Yet I believe especially during this month that their focus as well as mine needs to be focused on the King that was born. And our King is all about love, kindness, grace and mercy and gives these with reckless abandonment. Through these acts I hope to instill some of these traits into my now five children even more. We believe as a family that the most important thing about their lives is that they desire to become more like Jesus every day. Not what their GPA is, or what team they are on, or what college they will go to. But how they treated others around them. How they loved. How they showed mercy. How they gave kindness. How they bestowed grace. With reckless abandon.

As a family we have sat down and decided on 25 different things we can do. One person or family each day will not only be blessed but prayed for. So today we start our 25 days…….of random acts of love.

Some of the things we will be doing or have done in the past range from quite simple to more thought out acts.

- From buying coffee for our school crossing guard along with a big hug. Because seriously we have the best crossing guard. He is nothing but love bursting out of that orange vest every morning. And we just need to love on him for a bit.

-We have made up about 100 sandwiches and passed them out to the homeless men and women. This is one of the kid’s favorites to do, we ride around a couple of blocks from where we live and just walk the streets loving on some of the strongest people we know. The kids also like bringing them to the library where we find some individuals just trying to stay warm. A simple sandwich and conversation brings us more joy than we can ever express.

-The kids would like to tie balloons to grocery carts at a local supermarket. Because who doesn’t smile when they see a balloon?

-Buying a meal for a family in a restaurant that we don’t know. We know as a large family that this can bless the socks off a large family. And we just want to pay it forward.

-One evening we will spend writing encouraging notes to those we know are hurting during this holiday season. We can all relate to some time in our lives when the holidays did nothing but remind of us the pain and loss we try and forget the rest of the year. And who doesn’t want a hand written note in crayon from a little girl who spells everything backwards?

So for the next 25 days we will be out and about trying to spread a little love. Will you join me in this? Can you commit to spreading some joy 4 times this Christmas season? Or maybe even once?

Be a part of spreading some simple love…..not deciding where that stupid elf is going to go.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

totally awesome