Home for the Holidays

Christmas is my favorite time of year. The snow, the music, the cookies, they all fill my heart with peace and happiness. For the past four years, the holidays have brought the new stress that comes from living 2,000 miles from Nebraska. With some trial and error, I have found 5 vital things that make the holidays happy.

1. Plan Ahead: This is the most vital part of our holidays, and it's not just about making plans. My husband and I budget each month for travel and gifts during the holidays. It may seem silly to set aside $15 a month for family Christmas gifts, but it pays off to not have to rely on holiday bonuses or squeeze it from somewhere else. The same goes for travel (via car or plane).

We also make our plans in September. Making these plans long before the holiday season helps us be practical about our decisions and also gives our families a lot of time to plan.

2. Decide what you (and your spouse) want/need first: One of the most difficult parts of the holiday is hearing someone you love talk about how excited they are to see you for the holidays. However, what's worse is getting caught up in their excitement at the expense of your own family.

For example, Alex knew taking his new job that he wouldn't be able to take any time off in December. This meant that Christmas in Nebraska wouldn't be possible (with our priority of spending the holiday together). We had a great "Christmas" in Saint Louis with my family over the Thanksgiving holiday and it was a fun way to kick off the season. My mom did a great job of respecting our needs, and planned a great get-together with plenty of traditions and fun.

3. Communicate your expectations: With changes like moving and marriage, you cannot assume that your holidays will stay exactly the same, so help out your family by communicating what your expectations are. It can be as simple as what kind of cookies you want to bake or as complicated as celebrating on a different day (like this year's Christmas at Thanksgiving). Tell your family things you need (ie what time you need to leave the celebration) or things you want (ie I really wanted to learn how to make some of my mom's recipes) before the actual holiday time starts.

4. Be Flexible: This one goes with the above. It can be dangerous to have TOO many expectations. I try to pick 1-2 things that are important, (For example: I wanted to bake with my mom and spend time with my friends), and let the rest be flexible. This certainly extends to your in-laws. Let yourself be open to new traditions and experiences, and for heaven's sake, don't compare!

5. Stay in the moment: My first holiday away from home (Thanksgiving last year) I kept getting caught up in how things were different. I was lost in my own head reminiscing and I began to feel homesick. Until my sweet mother-in-law took me for a Starbucks run and a great conversation. I realized that I was missing out on new great memories by focusing on how much I missed my own. Some of the best ways to stay in the moment involve activities. Don't let yourself just sit around, make yourself play a new game or participate in a new hobby. The laughter and fun will help you grow closer to the family you're with. Toss the pressure off yourself and others and simply celebrate. After all, the Shepherds probably didn't have the perfect outfits and Mary certainly didn't feed those guests with any sort of gusto :)

So Happy Holidays, and Merry Christmas!
'till the cows come home,
Ellie

Please STOP giving marriage advice

I've been married for 365 days. I could lie and say that it has been a fairytale full of perfectly romantic love and laughter. It's been more like the 36 mile hike we took 8 months into our dating relationship: breath taking, hilarious, sweaty, painful, and strengthening. I could wax on and on about how much I've learned and pass on sage wisdom. However I don't really think 1 year gives me any sort of right to give sage wisdom, and I'd rather share something I feel is much more relevant to my experience.

"It's about the marriage, not the wedding." I heard this so very often as I was planning my wedding. It was often followed with some sort particular piece of advice about how the stay married for the long term. This often came from women I admired, so I took each and every piece of advice to heart. I committed it to the picture of who I needed to be and what we needed to do together to have a great marriage...with disastrous results.

Rome, Naples, and Venice all received their own souvenirs from this girl. I left tears in each Italian hotel room we visited on our honeymoon. Don't get me wrong, the trip was fun and fabulous, but I had created all these expectations and requirements for my relationship with my husband without actually talking to him about it. So imagine his confusion when my outbursts and fears of failure reared their ugly heads.

It took me months to realize that all the well-meaning pieces of advice were just that, advice. My marriage wasn't doomed for failure simply because I couldn't possibly live up to every action required when combining all the advice I received as a life plan. Most importantly I realized that my marriage was about my husband, my Lord, and me. Because we are our own individuals, we won't do everything our friends and family suggest. It won't all fit, and some advice because of our personalities would do far more harm than good.

There is one source of advice that has never failed me. It my half of our wedding sermon and founded in Ephesians 5.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 

It might sound scandalous or old fashioned to submit, but submission is not synonymous with "obedience". Submission means I trust my husband and my Lord to lead me. I certainly give my input, opinion, and desires. I do not simply sit quietly by as decisions are made. I do however respect my husband's role as the leader of the house and do not undermine him. This is the only advice I am attempting imperfectly to follow.

So to those of you married or single seeking to give advice to those newly engaged or newly married, please stop. Please give all the well-wishes and encouragement. If you are sought out, give counsel. And most importantly pray.

Seek First to Understand

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood." This is one of the 7 habits of highly effective people according to Stephen Covey. This author points out habits that are crucial to success. I have also found it to be one of the most important parts of working with students.

This week a disturbing video was released on social media of a student in my state (South Carolina) being forcibly removed from the classroom by an officer. According to the local news reports I read, the student was disrupting class by using her cell phone and refusing to do work. She had been asked more than 20 times to leave the class by the teacher, and administrator, and the officer in the video. Every time she refused and so the actions in the video occurred.

This is a terrible situation and yes, I believe that students need to follow classroom expectations. I also believe that people in authority need to practice understanding. I posted to my Facebook page 10 alternative actions the officer should have taken. Yes the student needed to be held responsible for her choice, but so does the officer. He choose to escalate a situation that he could have de-escalated. I know he could have de-escalated it because it's something I do every day.

I teach middle school. My students often have not yet developed fully functioning logic skills. They are like many 12-year-olds: unreasonable, dramatic, and stubborn. Often students refuse to do what I ask in class. Often students refuse to leave my class when I ask. It makes me frustrated when students don't follow my directions, but I take a breath and remember that I am the adult. These are young people looking to me to see how I react.

When a student refuses to do what I ask, I go to their desk and whisper in their ear, "You have a choice, you can either write me a note about what is wrong, or step out into the hall and we can talk."

If a student doesn't choose one of those choices, I go again and whisper to them, "If you don't write a note or step into the hall, you will have a reflection essay (a 3 paragraph essay explaining what happened, who was affected, and how to resolve the situation) to complete."

Today for the first time this year, a student still refused and remained in class. I ignored him, because he was sitting silently and not disrupting the rest of class. When the bell rang and he went to leave, I asked him to stay. We talked and he described the fact that he had a personal tragedy that was upsetting him. After we talked, he agreed to write the reflection essay and he turned it back into me at lunch with an extra apology note thanking me for listening to him.

I am not perfect in my classroom. Sometimes I do loose my cool. I am still working to improve my teaching skills and grow my relationships with my students.

Those of us who work with students have a huge responsibility to our students. We must show them how to be understanding of one another. Perhaps the officer was having a terrible day, perhaps he had his own personal tragedy at home. Perhaps he just needed a little understanding, but he received as much understanding as he gave...none.

'till the cows come home
Ellie

Dear Conservative Christians

Dear Conservative Christians,

I am one of you. You are my friends and family, but I need to confess something. 

I worship a god that is not the one true God. That god is me.

Daily I put myself before my Lord. I worship myself when I choose to speak my own words and further my own agendas instead of his message. I worship myself when I watch another Netflix episode instead of pulling out my bible. I worship myself when I buy that cute dress I don't need, instead of placing bills in the offering plate. I worship myself when I let my own anger, sadness, or frustration cause me to say mean hurtful things to God's people.

There are days when I celebrate this sin. I proudly proclaim that I am a confident independent woman who is not afraid to speak her mind. I consider it a strength that I can read people in a situation and manipulate them into an outcome that serves what I want.

Yet on Sunday morning, you greet me. As I walk up the steps to the church you give me a warm smile and ask about my week with my students. You say such kind things to me about being a mature young women with a heart for the Lord. You invite me into your women's groups and encourage me to join the choir. Never once have I seen you carry a sign or post a social media message telling me that I am going to hell or that I need to know that pride is a sin.

What if my sins were different? What if I were gay? Would you still welcome me into the church? Would you make it your personal mission to make certain I knew you disapproved of me and my sin? 

"For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." James 2:10

There lies the problem. My sin is no more condemning than any other. Just like lying, sexual immorality, murder, worry, jealousy, slander, and hate, pride is a sin that separates me from God. No sin is better or worse than another in Christ's eyes.

Now before you tell me that this is different because I recognize that pride is a sin, I will tell you this: I don't fight against pride every time it occurs. I don't always even recognize it when it happens, and like I said before, I sometimes even celebrate it.

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

God himself didn't need me to clean up my act before he could love me. He didn't even need me to recognize my own sins. Instead, his love and his Holy Spirit called my heart and revealed the grace of redemption through Christ's death on a cross and resurrection from the grave. It was the Holy Spirit and my own personal study of the bible that made me realize that I have a whole lot of pride.

How can we as Christians claim our standard for love is higher than Almighty God? Why do we demand that we must make sure someone acknowledges their sins before we can love and accept them?

I beg this of you Christians, stop using your voice for condemnation and hate. Stop making your stand one of pointing out everyone's sins, and start following Christ's example. His passion was for the people. He loved so many regardless of their backgrounds, age, gender, or sins. He did not demand that people change before he loved them. It was after they were touched by his love that they felt inspired to make their changes.

If you want something to get angry about, start ranting against poverty and injustice against life. Those were the passions of the early church and I think we could learn a thing or two from them.

Sincerely,

Ellie  

**If you are an LGBTQ person reading this post, please see it not as a condemnation of you, but of those who have treated you with anything other than love.**