One of the highlights of the break had to be when all the girl cousins were able to connect at my sister's house. Each one of the teens and even my girl who is 21 this week has gone through major ups and downs this year. They all feel like they walk a lonely path. Yes, they have friendships, but even those waffle from year to year. But family is different. My niece in the States knows this, so when things get rough, my sister will hear, "I'VE GOT TO GO TO CANADA!" And then, no matter what, my sister tries to make it happen. This Christmas was no exception. She made it happen and up she came with my two nieces.
The night before we were all supposed to connect, I was kept up all night by so many thoughts about the girls. I felt like God had given me some really important messages to communicate. Sometimes I get these crazy thoughts, but then I wake up and none of them make sense, but the next morning I still felt so compelled to talk to the girls if I could coordinate it.
Shortly after we arrived, we were in the kitchen and suddenly every single female cousin and all the aunts were in the same place at the same time. I quickly wrangled them all and said, "Come here! I've got something I have to tell you!"
Then, I told them about a blog post I'd read recently on being a Christian teenage girl and how it IS a lonely path. But in the post, the blogger had explained how this can be ok! It can feel like persecution and hardly an answer to prayer. It can feel awful, but in a strange way it shows what it is truly like to be a Christian, being on the narrow path. At this stage of life, friendships are so important to young girls, but God wants to be most important. Then I read some words from the Psalms about how He is with the lonely and the outcast. Finally I gave them a few challenges. I told them to be each others' best friends and to encourage one another to not stay in the pity party, but to help one another rise above each circumstance. I encouraged them to read through the Bible in a year and keep one another accountable. I told them to send each other prayer requests. I even told them about fasting and how that can be such a powerful spiritual tool.
Finally, I gave them an unusual encouragement to work on their relationship with their dads. I explained how fathers can be practice for being married in the sense of learning to submit to their future husbands. This is very difficult to understand and do, but it is also practice for learning to submit to their heavenly father. Each girl has had their dads say some hard things to them this year and has challenged each one of them to walk the path of life in integrity which has meant making hard decisions. I know in our family that never goes over well at first. RM will see something that concerns him. He'll talk with the girls. They'll be upset at first, maybe even angry, but then they see it. Sometime with my help, sometimes on their own. They know their dad knows more than they do. They just don't like that he's asking them to change! Hmmm....does sound a bit like the Christian walk. Eventually they do come around and so I was telling the girls about this and just begged them to keep their relationship with thier dads awesome, all the time. Siblings are also practice for future spouses as we have to learn to love and be kind, share and be generous. They looked at me with, "I don't know about you Auntie P." I stopped there!
Then, around that time, my parents arrived. That was when we were able to have the most amazing prayer time together. Some of the cousins prayed, the aunts prayed, the grandparents prayed with my dad closing. It was AMAZING!!!! I knew at that moment that the Lord HAD been speaking to me that night. I knew I wasn't crazy. When someone drives up 12 hours to see family in Canada, it couldn't be wasted. And it wasn't. The Lord coordinated the whole thing and I was so grateful. We all knew it was very special as many do not have that spiritual legacy and we were basking in the prayers of many generations before us.
So that was definitely one of the highlights of the Christmas season. Christ truly was in our Christmas. It was such a beautiful picture of the future generations that Mary talked about in her Magnificat. Christ came to exalt the humble and there we were with our girls who were feeling so downcast, but who hopefully left feeling exalted.
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