Sing-A-Long

Its about a six hour drive from where we spent Christmas in central Oregon to home. I can remember being a kid and playing car games to make a drive more bearable. My mom favored the 'quiet game'(who can be silent the longest) for obvious reasons, but I liked the whole 'I-am-looking-at-something-that-starts-with-the-letter-P' kind of game better. You can get a lot of people reading skills from games like that!

Shawn and I made it to Kelso, WA before we had become that unqiue blend of 'tired/silly'. And who knows why the sing-a-long began then, but it did. I believe it started out with the famous Disney song from Aladdin... "I can show you the world..." From there we visited The Lion King, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast and the grand fianlly of "Kiss the Girl" from The Little Mermaid. The jump from Disney songs to old school pop hits was seamless.... Shawn began with various BoysIIMen hits and I chimed in with some good ole Mariah Carey...we laughed at ourselves trying to see how low we could go with the Sound of Music's 'doe a deer...a female deer...ray...a drop of golden sun..."etc. It was a verbal game of limbo! I knew it had gotten bad though when Shawn's beat boxing turned into the infamou "stop. collaborate and listen. ice is back with a brand new addition.." (I hope you are not too young to know a little Vanilla Ice!) "Ice Ice Baby" was followed (ironically) by Randy Travis' "I'm Gonna Love You Forever and Ever . Amen."

At some point, I looked across the car at my husband, whose face was temporaily lit by the passing car lights, and thought to myself: this is the best stuff of life. Christmas with the McDonalds was wonderful...but no Holiday or family is perfect... there will always be ups and downs and forward movement and set backs and seasons of hope and seasons of sadness... The wise Solomon said that there is a season for everything under heaven...

I just wanted to encourage you this morning to be thankful for all the seasons and moments of life and to take the time to feast on the seemingly small enjoyments that make life beautiful.

Hope you had a MErry Chrismtas!