Another melted vanilla ice cream sky courtesy of Father Sky’s pastels, so pretty with all the cloud layers pooling together, gray and blues and whites. I’m sitting on the back porch of my niece’s family home high up in the Randolph County hills looking at the mountains so beautiful in their colors subdued by the early morning mountain fog. As the sun burns the mist off the forests, a glorious sea of Christmas tree green pine trees raise their slender needles in prayers of thanks for a glorious morning. The myriads of greens are punctuated by the leafless hardwoods standing naked in the sunshine. The sky I see is ocean blue now, cloudless and clear. A fat mocking bird surveys his backyard domain flicking his tail as he scampers around. The soul soothing quiet is disturbed by a murder of crows loudly laughing. I’m drinking my coffee content with knowing this sweet little family loves me as I love them.

My niece and her family brought me home this morning after a delicious breakfast. She cooked us a delicious supper, too, night before last. I sat in the swing a long time after I got home, lonely for Chief and our daughter Rosalyn. I’m trying to remember our last Christmas together but I can’t conjure up the memories with Rosie. The last Christmas with Chief our family was suffering with Covid. We were so sick I can’t even remember those days. I’d love to have one more Christmas with Chief and Rosie sitting around the table with us but those days can’t be. But don’t you know Christmas is beautifully celebrated in heaven, the music splendorous, the pomp and circumstance celebrating Jesus’ birth. Chief sent lots of cardinals to my yard today to cheer me and I enjoyed watching them frolic around the feeders.

Stew and I opened our presents this morning since we are leaving early tomorrow morning to spend Christmas day with my oldest son Thomas and his family. Looking forward to days of perching on the porch swing watching my bird camera and reading my new pioneer lady cookbook. Ever time the bird camera pings I see Bootsy, the neighborhood watchdog. Maybe she’s a bird dog.

While I visited with my niece’s family her daughter and I built four little gingerbread houses. My little house pieces would not behave, kept falling down like tornado winds were rumbling, so I asked her mother to help me as I licked the icing off my fingers. She came to my rescue and put my house back together and frosted it with a wonderful snowfall.

As I sat watching her squeeze the icing bag I thought, our faith is like a gingerbread house. Our little houses symbolizing God’s love, his love the icing that holds us together, even our broken pieces made whole with a foundation in God’s grace. The gingerbread house’s molded pieces sometimes break just as we have broken hearts. Our broken lives’ are healed with Jesus’ love just as the gingerbread house is bound together with icing, imperfections covered, both made whole and strong.

Build your life on Jesus and when things break and fall apart God will provide stability and the icing to rebuild.

“My idea of Christmas, whether old fashion or modern, is very simple: loving others.” — Bob Hope