Christmas Pictures

Well, they aren't exactly the Christmas pictures you'd expect to see a couple of days after Christmas.

On Thanksgiving, my mom gave all her children, grandchildren, and my dad a 5X7 canvas, paints, brushes, and instructions to return them to her on Christmas painted. No excuses. That's all she wanted for Christmas.

So that's what she got! The Spicer children, for the most part, took her instructions to heart and had a great time painting a canvas. The Spicer mom and dad also took it seriously. At the same time, we all had fun creating our very different paintings.

Anna painted a bridge to a path to a home on a hill.

Alex made golden trees.

I think Dean's started out as two orange houses but turned into a purple polka dotted tree.

Song created an ostrich on the savannah.

Emma's is just like her--sweet.

Ella is holding her lovely abstract work upside down.

Better!

I'm not sure if Vera's abstract work is upside down or not. Pretty sure she doesn't care.

Luke was not going for the paint. He used pencils to create a cool house.

He insisted this is his mug shot.

All good mug shots deserve a side view. Sigh.

It's hard to tell, exactly, but those are clay flowers attached to the canvas.

The clear winner, in terms of artistic beauty and merit, was unanimously awarded to John. He took a picture of part of our landscaping and then painted it (taking many liberties as to the actual beauty of said landscape in its current winter incarnation). He also took shards of rock from our yard and affixed them to the painting in certain spots. It looks really cool. John has not painted anything since junior high school. I think he was as surprised as the rest of us that it turned out so beautifully.

It's hard to see again the background of his shirt, but it was really pretty.

I guess next year we'll have to actually buy NiNi a gift...

Merry Christmas, or This Means War!

"Enemy occupied territory - that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to all take part in a great campaign of sabotage."

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

Isaiah 9:6-7 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it withjustice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

These verses are familiar to us at Christmastime. Who doesn't like a Prince of Peace? Who doesn't want a better government, one full of justice and righteousness, than they currently have? It sounds as though those verses were written for us, today.

Not as familiar, however, are the verses preceding Isaiah 9:6-7.

Isaiah 9: 2-5 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. You have multipled the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.

Jesus was born into a world at war. What war, though? Isaiah, of course, was writing to the Jewish people. He was not, however, writing of an earthly war.

Revelation 12: 1-5, 9-10, 17  And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne...

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world - he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God...

Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus...

The war was never primarily an earthly war, although we see it on earth from the very beginning, even the beginning of Jesus' life on earth.

Matthew 2:13, 16 Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him."...Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.

Do you see the same wording in Revelation and Matthew? "Became furious." The devil became furious; Herod became furious. Herod/the devil killed all the male children...this was a Christmas at war. The devil mounted a full-on attack to win a war that had been declared lost since Genesis 3:15. Can you imagine him? The Lord's Son, born of a virgin, enraged him. He pulled out all the stops...killed the baby boys...outsmarted at every turn by the Lord Himself.

Hebrews 2:14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,

1 John 3:8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

He didn't only come into the manger as a sweet little baby on a bed of hay. He didn't only come as the Prince of Peace or a Wonderful Counselor. He came on a mission to destroy the deceiver who had the power of death.

Exodus 15:3 The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is his name.

Colossians 2:15 He disarmed the rules and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

How did He wage the war? By laying down His life. Not the way we normally do it, is it? We want action; we want revenge; we want bloodshed. He gave us bloodshed. His own blood was shed for us.

Romans 5:9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

"Satan's work is not the chief peril dealth with in the death of Christ. God's wrath is." John Piper

Zechariah 3:1-4 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said to Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?" Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, "Remove the filthy garments from him." And to him he said, "Behold, I have taken you iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments."

Jesus, the sweet, silent baby of our Nativity scenes, is God's Chosen Warrior who wrested power from the accuser, satisfied the wrath of God against a sinful people, and washed our filthy garments that we might appear before God in pure, clean robes of His righteousness, having been washed in His blood that was willingly spilled during a war that has been won yet still rages here on earth.

Matthew 1:21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

"For to us a child is born"

The Heroism of Joseph

I have posted this essay by Elizabeth Foss in its entirety on my blog before, but I still love it and thought perhaps some of my adoptive moms might like to see it and share it with their sweet husbands! I post these words again today that so perfectly echo what I've seen in my own husband . John Dee, you are the hero of our amazing family!

I thank my God every time I remember you.

(originally printed: By Elizabeth Foss, Herald Columnist, From the issue of 12/22/05)

My son Christian was searching the bookshelves yesterday, apparently frustrated by the dearth he saw there. Since we have well over 1,000 titles at his disposal, I wondered what was missing.


"There's hardly anything on Joseph here! I understand why we need so many Mary books, but nobody says much about Joseph, you know? And he was a hero … " he trailed off.


A hero indeed. Though I hadn't spoken it, I had been meditating lately about the heroic good of St. Joseph and the Nativity. Commonly, we look at the story of Christmas as a birth story: We have a round-bellied Madonna riding on a donkey until she gets to a cave where animals joyfully welcome a lovely baby. As a mother who has been nine months pregnant during Advent and a mother with a newborn on Christmas Day, it is easy for me to identify with the birth story.


But the Nativity story is also a story of adoption. A strong man heard the call of a God to take into his heart and home a baby that was not his biological child. Against the raised eyebrows of those around him, but because he dearly loved his wife and the God they served, he traveled a great distance. He wasn't sure what he'd find there; to say that the accommodations were less than what he was used to is to understate the case. And then, almost immediately, it was his job to rescue the baby, to save him from grave danger.


Once they were safely at home, he raised the child as his own. He shared the faith of his fathers; he taught him the family trade. Certainly, there were challenges in this family that related to the adoption. This child, at 12, left his foster father for three days to return to the home of his real Father. How many children of adoption have experienced that same restlessness and caused the parents who have rescued them the grief that Mary and Joseph felt while they searched for their child?


St. Joseph was faithful. Perhaps he recognized that we are all children of adoption. We are all broken, disenfranchised, wounded and in grave danger. Our Savior makes us brothers and sisters, heirs to His throne. We become one family of faith, like that little family in Nazareth so many years ago.


For some reason, the Lord has surrounded me by the miracle of adoption. I have seven children. Five of them have godparents who are adoptive parents. Most recently, Christian's godmother welcomed a little boy from Liberia, just in time for Thanksgiving.


When I look at the fathers in these families, I am struck by their courage. Adoptive moms assure me that adoption is rarely ever a man's idea. And it is almost always an idea born of a woman's pain. The sorrowful heart of a mother meets the sorrowful heart of a child and together they begin a new life. But how do they get to "together?" They become a family through the courageous actions of a man who sees the pain of his wife and listens to her as she tells him about the pain of the child. Rarely, do these women beg and plead. Rather, like Mary, they trust God.
They pour out their hearts in prayer and God convicts their husbands. The program director for a Catholic adoption agency assures me that this is not the case of weak, badgered men who cave to whining women. Rather, they are tender, brave men who recognize a mutual need and hear a distinct call.


The father who adopts is strong and faithful. He travels to places like Kazakhstan, Russia, China, Guatemala and even hostile Africa. He saves the baby — often from abject poverty, illness or death. He is the St. Joseph of our times.


There are literally millions of children in this world who need rescuing. We are called in James 1:27 to care for the widows and the orphans. What does that mean exactly? Do we toss a few coins in the poor box or wrap an extra gift at Christmastime or do we take a risk? Are there brave men out there after the heart of St. Joseph who will travel great distances to difficult places to rescue a baby and give it a home all because it's the will of God? It is the will of God.


These are the weakest of us, the poorest, the most defenseless. In this country, we cannot fathom children who scurry along the murky puddles in Haiti scavenging for a few slender fish, only to come up without anything. These children are so malnourished that their hair turns orange and falls out in clumps. There are "dying rooms" in China where children who have cerebral palsy or missing hands or missing ears are left in the dark to starve to death.


And what will become of the children who grow up orphans if we do not have men like St. Joseph in our midst? According to Shaohannah's Hope, a foundation begun by Christian music legend Steven Curtis Chapman, who has adopted three daughters, "Statistics regarding the future prospects for children who emancipate from orphanages, the foster care system, or who grow up as street children are profoundly bleak … . Theft, prostitution, homelessness, substance abuse, incarceration and suicide affect the lives of the vast majority of those children who grow up as orphans and never find permanent, loving homes. In short, orphans by definition are children who for whatever reason have found themselves in need of permanent, safe, and loving families. And for such children, being taken in by a family through the "spirit of adoption" is their greatest need"(http://www.howtoadopt.org/).


They were going to stone the Mother of God. Joseph knew the baby was not conceived by him. He didn't understand it. How could this baby be his to raise? How could he be asked to overcome the opinions of his community, the misgivings of his own mind, and listen to the call upon his soul? Where would he find the courage? How could he possibly provide for the childhood of the child of God Himself? Why couldn't this be simple? Why couldn't he marry Mary and just conceive a baby of his own? Instead, he must set off on a two-year odyssey to distant and hostile lands to bring home a baby that didn't even look like him. And what of the future? This was an extraordinary way to build a family; how could he know what the future held, particularly with a beginning like this?


A hero? He was a hero. He was a strong, courageous, man of faith. And there are men like him today. They are Paul, and Joe, and Mark, and Chuck, and Scott, and Kevin, and Ed. They are ordinary men who are called to extraordinary measures for a humble, helpless child and the love of the woman who becomes the child's mother. They are the men of the Christmas story. God bless them.

Brandon Heath--The Night Before Christmas

I love this song! I love Christmas!!

Sophia C. and the Angel Tree--a Fairy Tale

Two years ago, in a faraway land, a beautiful little blond-haired princess was born. She had an extra chromosome. No one understood that made her extra special! The doctors told her parents she was cursed. Her parents believed the doctors and sent her to live in an orphanage until the curse could be lifted. No one in her country understood that it was no curse, but a blessing. They kept trying to remove the curse from princess, without success, until...
Something extraordinary happened!

The fearless and bold Andrea Roberts, leader of Reece's Rainbow Adoption Crusaders, has kind helpers in this princess's country who scour the countryside, looking for pretty little girls and handsome little boys with extra chromosomes. When they find these children, like our princess, Sophia, they take pictures of them and send them back to Andrea. Andrea puts pictures and all the information she can find onto the Reece's Rainbow website so families like mine can find these pretty little girls and handsome little boys and bring them home. Home, after all, is the place where people with an extra chromosome are best able to reach their amazing potential!! Home is the place where princess Sophia's curse can at last be lifted...the curse of living in an orphanage with no parents to love her, place sparkly tiaras on her head and dress her in the colors of royalty, as every princess deserves.

So many families look at the pretty little girls and handsome little boys on Reece's Rainbow and know they want to bring one or two or three to their own home. Isn't that a happy ending? No, because the big scary expenses of adoption stand in the way of so many of the families. These special families could treat the pretty little girls and handsome little boys to a sweet life of fun, family, and festivities, if only they could clear the path of that dragon and bring their prince or princess home.

Sophia is a true princess and she needs her happy ending! Will you help her family-to-be find their way to her by slaying some of the big bad adoption expenses? Sophia's expenses are even bigger and badder than most of the children on Reece's Rainbow. She needs a knight in shining armor!

This Christmas season I am raising money for Sophia as part of Reece's Rainbow Angel Tree. The Angel Tree is our biggest fundraising push of the year and I am honored to help. I would be all the more honored (more like thrilled) if you would join with me in slaying the expense dragons in her way! If you donate at least $35.00 to Sophia's account (as explained below), you will receive a Christmas ornament with the Reece's Rainbow Christmas Tree logo on one side and Sophia's picture on the other side. $30 will go to Sophia's account while $5 goes into the Voice of Hope Fund to defray the costs of the ornaments. Click here for a full explanation. Speaking of money-hungry dragons, all donations are tax-deductible, too.

If you click here, you can donate money to Sophia by clicking the "Donate" button, which takes you to a Paypal page. On that page, near the top, is a box with a blinking cursor in it--put the amount you wish to donate in that box and click the yellow box that says "Update Total". After that, scroll down a bit and you'll see a place to log in to PayPal. If you have a PayPal account, I probably don't need to tell you what to do! If you don't have a PayPal account, however, please note that on the left side of the page there is a place to click and you can then just pay by debit or credit card. By donating in this way, you are ensuring that Sophia receives the money you donated.

Click here to see all the other pretty little girls and handsome little boys that Andrea has gathered from around the world! For the months of November and December all our precious little ones with Down syndrome (aged 5 and younger) are gathered together on one page so we can follow along and rejoice as their dragons are slayed and the path cleared for parents to bring them home.

Thank you for being a part of Sophia's happy ending!

Now this I say, he who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who sows bountifully shall also reap bountifully. Let each one do just as he has purposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed. 2 Corinthians 9:6-8

Trick or Treat!

Sunday evening, we participated in one of the funniest little rituals we have here in North America...my children dressed in costumes and went door to door, begging for candy and actually receiving it while doing nothing more than saying, "Trick or Treat!" I think it's hilarious that we do this! Each year we go to my parent's neighborhood (our old neighborhood) to participate.

We have only gone trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood once. The houses are on 1+ acre lots and it takes forever. Since we're all about inefficiency in the Spicer household, we go to a neighborhood where the houses are closer together and allow for maximum candy haul. Many thanks to my parents for allowing us to invade their home while they suffered through a Ranger loss in the World Series. Many thanks to my sister and her daughters for hanging with us, too! As always, it was FUN!!!

Buzz Lightyear, made in....wait for it....China!

Buzz and Woody--You've got a friend in me!

Vera in the suit that I shamelessly begged for on facebook...and actually received from a cyber friend of the past several years! Isn't that cool? Vera had been asking for a suit for quite some time now. She wanted to be Daddy. She is incredibly happy to be wearing the suit, button-down shirt, and one of Daddy's old ties in this picture. Words truly cannot express her joy.

Emmapatra...Cleoemma...The Queen of It All.

I bought the Woody outfit for Dean but it was too small. No problem, however, because Ella has watched Toy Story approximately 1 billion times in the last two months and has even made her own sign (as in sign language) to show us when she wants to watch it. She was also incredibly thrilled with her costume.

Anna, being curled and whirled by my sister, Aunt Paige. Why?

The amazing results!

Anna as Artemis! I surprised her by finally making a Greek goddess costume for her this year! She had been trying to come up with something on her own but I was, regrettably, too busy with her younger siblings. Not so this year!! How fun!! We made a laurel wreath, bow, arrows and quiver and spray-painted them all silver.

Our photographer, Song, tried to tap into the dark side of their characters. The sad results are below:

One out of four ain't bad!

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

I sing this hymn so often to Vera and Emma they think it is 'their' song. I can sing it on autopilot, in fact. Today, however, the words of the hymn blew over my heart in a fresh way and I remembered the beauty and power of the words. As I thought through the hymn I added a few thoughts of my own along with selected Bible verses. I hoped it might be appropriate to share as we meditate on Christ's death and resurrection during this Easter season.

Come Thou fount of every blessing

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of the heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows. If you haven’t received an expected blessing, then you can know with certainty it isn’t the good and perfect gift for you, or at least not yet.

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever! If my heart is tuned to the abundant and undeserved blessing of God’s grace and mercy it cannot easily be tuned to selfish wants, sinful desires, fleshly concerns.

Streams of mercy never ceasing

And yet, when our hearts are not properly tuned to His grace we can still be sure of His tender mercies and forgiveness.

Call for songs of loudest praise

Once we realize, deeply realize the depth of our sin and depravity and the even greater depths of His love and mercy there is simply no other response than to sing the loudest praise! Amazingly, in so doing we find our hearts once again tuned to sing of His grace.

Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above

The journey of faith we’re walking is God’s way of teaching us the melody and lyrics of praise that the angels sing to Him: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty! Who was, and is, and is to come! As we face trials, when hardships are thrust upon us from without or within, God’s holiness becomes all the more evident. His lessons are amazing in their precision as He excises our hidden sins while helping us fan into a flame the gifts He’s given us.

Praise the mount I'm fixed upon it
Mount of Thy redeeming love

He has redeemed us! We were bought at a price; it cost Him His life.

Here I raise my Ebenezer
Hither by Thy help I come

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far has the LORD helped us." One of the greatest, most freeing things we can know about God is that He is helping us. We would not make it without Him. We try and we try and yet in the end it was always Him lovingly guiding us.

And I hope by Thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home

My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. We will make it home. It is not in God’s good pleasure to lose those He has saved.

Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wandering from the fold of God

Jesus came looking for us! He isn’t a cold, impersonal God in heaven wringing His hands over our big problems. He came down, He comes down, He will always come down to share in our sufferings.

He, to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood

Knowing we had no way to save ourselves He gave his blood to be the atoning sacrificial lamb. John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be!

From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. When our debts overwhelm us on earth, we have only unpleasant, hard consequences awaiting us. Yet as our sins are a whelming flood, His grace frees us and indebts us to Him even as He erased our debt on the cross.

Let Thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee

Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance? We don’t come to God and stay with God out of fear, but love. How wonderful to count on His goodness, knowing that even when we have trials He is for us. He is for us.

Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above

Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. We are sealed in Christ. He put His mark on the seal; drove a nail through it, in fact.

Here's my heart Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above!

Amen.

Christmas with PopPop and Nini!!!

After breakfast, we headed an hour away to my parents' home for even more festivities, food, and fun! NiNi always has a beautifully decorated home and makes everything so nice for the holidays (and other times, too).

First things first, however, as gifts cannot wait until later when 10 kids are involved (my 8 and my sister's more reasonable 2).

Cute picture of Luke, but I can't help thinking of Adam and Eve seeing him with that apple!

cousin Shelby and Song

cousin Chandler

Beautiful Aunt Paige

Ella is just cute.

Emma, too.

NiNi and PopPop!!

My lovely Mom

Yippee, another crime-fighter in the family!! Look at that aim!

Daddy of the incredible 8 having a great Christmas day!

Christmas breakfast at the Spicer home--the new tradition

We seem to have settled into a new tradition with John's side of the family, although both sides would always be welcome to come...Christmas breakfast at our house!!

We also seemed to have settled into a menu: monkey bread; breakfast casserole with potatoes, eggs, sausage and cheese; tortillas; pico de gallo; and cranberry fruit salad. Song and Anna also love for us to pull out the punch bowl and little punch cups and have cranberry juice with ginger ale, in addition to orange juice and coffee. Can you tell I like this breakfast?

What I love are traditions, particularly when they're fun and they involve families and friends.

Emma loving on cousin E.E. (known to most as Andrea)

Cousin BeccaBoo who is looking far too old and gorgeous!
Our perpetually guilty looking dog Michael (aren't your dogs given formal names like that?)
Anna Blythe

The beautiful cousin Stephanie, now in her last college semester before beginning medical school in the fall! We are so proud of her!

Our lovely Andrea, a very happy and newly minted college graduate

Listening to John read....

....the Christmas story from Luke 2, another family tradition. Could anything be more wondrous than the actuality of the God of the universe being contained in the fragile body of a baby?

Emma on her 'phone' with the punch in the background. Did I mention I love our Christmas breakfast?