Old Friends

Every year, just after Thanksgiving, we get to see some old friends.  We only see these friends once a year - and if we're honest, these few weeks are the only time we think about them - but the time seems magical.  We walk down memory lane of the last 25+ years of our lives, each one telling a story - our story.  And you know what?  This is a tradition that we can have every Christmas, no matter where in the world we live.

Who are these friends?  Christmas tree ornaments.

Every year as Jordan and I carefully unwrap our dozens of ornaments to hang on our tree, we laugh.  We tell each other stories of where the ornaments came from, who gave them to us, where we made them, why they are "important" - no matter how ugly some of them may be!

Jordan's little sock.

Grover was always my favorite.

What a stud!

"A Church Mouse Christmas"

These are some of my favorite ornaments:
Made with my sisters-in-law during Thanksgiving 2012, these
ornaments traveled the US with us as our car was the only place
we had to decorate that year.

When we were at pre-field training before moving to France, they talked about the fact that, as ex-pats, hellos and goodbyes are a common part of life.  Short-term teams come for a few weeks then leave; interns come and go; church-planters plant and harvest and go plant somewhere else.  It's the nature of our job.

But it can get tiring.

We usually wait until after New Year's to take our tree down, but this year is a real stretch - our tree is dead; the branches are so drooped that ornaments are laying on the floor.

But I'm not ready to say goodbye.