Joy on Christmas Eve

For me, Christmas is a beautiful holiday filled with sweet memories and spiritual meaning, I hope that whatever you believe and whatever you celebrate, that this year you experience a wonderful, joyful holiday season.

This Christmas, I have so much to be grateful for!  God has done wonderful things for me, scooping me up as a teenager who was depressed and felt unloved (incorrectly) and changing my life forever in just about every way that matters by introducing me to Jesus Christ. 

45 years later, I'm still in good health, productive, and so happy with my wonderful husband John (we've been marred 39 years as of December 21).  Our two sons have both recently acquired new jobs, much better situations. I confess I let myself worry too much about them struggling in this poor economy this last year. 

I work for a nonprofit Boy Scout council that provides "mountaintop" experiences for youngsters while teaching them values and skills that equip them to be happy, successful adults.  I'm always seeing fantastic examples of this; just three weeks ago, I shook hands with a 14-year-old Eagle Scout who saved a young father's life.

Plenty of people don't agree with the values of Christianity or of the Boy Scouting tradition, but I live in a free country where I can worship in my own way and work for this nonprofit that has done so much for my own children.

I need to thank you readers, especially, that I get to share my machine knitting hobby with all of you and make such amazing friends!   This year, I put up 12 new demonstration videos, almost like my own virtual machine knitting club with a monthly exploration, taught five seminars, wrote two new knitting books, and filmed the videos to go with them.  Nearly every day, I answered emails from knitters who sent photos, asked intriguing questions, and provided dozens of great knitting ideas.

The last couple of years I posted a link to a chapter of Luke each day of December up through December 25th, but this year I failed to get that organized.  Today, I thought I'd share a couple of things that I enjoyed, just sitting back and considering the meaning of Christmas.  First of all, here's a message (from my pastor last Sunday) called "The Magic of Christmas," in which he draws lessons from the experience of Mary and Joseph that we can apply to our own lives:

http://mediaplayer.hcbc.com/sermon/the-magic-of-christmas-1360

And matching up to that, here's a YouTube that I found with nativity movie clips and Josh Groban singing "O Holy Night." 



The Sullivans wish you all a very merry Christmas!