A Second First Christmas...

So technically, Abby had her first Christmas with us last year.  But she'd only been home  4 months, her English wasn't great and it was just really hard to explain the whole idea of Christmas...  Everything seemed new and overwhelming...  

BUT this year has been a whole different story...  She has a whole memory of new (to her) traditions created last year and she has had so much fun...  She LOVED going to the mountains to cut the Christmas tree...  She couldn't wait to decorate it...  When we put the manger scene out, she remembered exactly where she had put baby Jesus' blanket that my friend had made for her when she heard how Abby was upset last Christmas that baby Jesus was cold and covered him with a piece of cotton...

And we have baked and baked and baked and baked...  Well, you get the idea!!  And she is so excited about the presents under the tree!!  This morning she came in the kitchen and said, "Mommy, I love Christmas, I am so excited!"

"Abby, why are you so excited?" 

"Because we get to open presents tomorrow..." 

"Well, what about baby Jesus?  It's His birthday afterall, and He's the only reason that we get to celebrate Christmas..."

"Mommy?  Is He excited too then?"

I had to stifle a giggle with that one...  We talk about Jesus all the time...  We pray...  She still clearly doesn't get the significance of Jesus, but I love how she thinks of Him...  She doesn't question His realness, she just doesn't understand yet what He did for her...

I told her that Jesus was very excited when we remember to celebrate His birthday and not just think about the presents...

And then her question that once again stumped me (there's been several of them over the last year)...

"Mommy, when is God's birthday?"

How do you explain to a 7 year old... who heard about God and Jesus for the very first time, just 17 months ago...  who has great social language, but is still struggling with taking thoughts and ideas and processing them on a deeper level...  and explain to her that God is not a created being?  That He has existed for all time?  That He doesn't have a birthday?  He just is?  Those thoughts blow my mind and so much of it, I just accept on faith because I see evidence of God and His love for us EVERYWHERE...  But I have no clue how to explain that to Abby...

The God we love is truly mind boggling...  He is so BIG...so HOLY...so GLORIOUS...so AWESOME...  And yet, He loved us so much that over 2000 years ago He sent His beloved Son into this world, born in a smelly manger, for the sole purpose of dying the most horrible death imaginable so that we could be in relationship with Him...

Now that kind of love blows my mind even more than the fact that God doesn't have a birthday...  I pray that someday Abby will look at me with the same wonder over what Jesus did for her on a cross as she did when I tried to explain to her that God has existed for all time...

May we all remember David's beautiful words from Psalm 8:3-4...

"When I consider your heavens,
       the work of your fingers,
       the moon and the stars,
       which you have set in place,
  what is man that you are mindful of him,
       the son of man that you care for him?"

Merry Christmas...  I pray that as you remember the birth of our Savior, you are overwhelmed by His love for you...