More Christ Time

I want to share a spiritual thought that was brought to me by my 5-year old son, Bronson, this holiday season.  We were sitting in church a couple of weeks from Christmas.  I had been trying pretty hard to focus more on the Savior during the holidays, and it just felt like I was failing this year.  Our gifts to Christ were falling by the wayside as we found ourselves busier and busier this year with all the misc. activities as our kids get older.  I had been seeking for a way to focus on the Savior in a meaningful way.  That particular day we closed our church meeting with a Christmas song.  Bronson is just starting to read and is reading EVERYTHING.  He has an insatiable appetite for reading right now.  He found the hymn in the hymnal and looked at the title and exclaimed, "Mom!  We are singing a song about Christmas HERE at church?"  He was astounded that we would talk or sing about Christmas at church.  That really made me feel a little like a loser mom that I hadn't helped him make the correlation that Christ is at the center of Christmas AND the reason we go to church.  I pointed to the title of the song and covered the "MAS" on Christmas and asked Bronson to read the word.  He was surprised to find that the word Christmas had the name of "Christ" in it... mind blown!  He then excitedly asked me what MAS meant.  I had honestly never thought about it before, so I thought about it for a minute.  Then I remembered that through my amazing study of three years of high school Spanish that the word "Mas" means MORE.  Therefore, Christmas could literally translate to "Christ More" or if you flip it like you would if you were translating certain languages, it would come out to "More Christ"... Christmas Time... the time when we think about CHRIST MORE.  And put MORE CHRIST in our lives.  Now MY mind was blown.  I don't know why that simple little lesson made such an impact on me, but I pretty much couldn't stop bawling the rest of church.  When I went down to Primary and listened to the kids singing Christmas songs about Jesus Christ, I couldn't stop with the tears.  It really was the special witness I needed that day.

Even though we were super busy this Christmas season, we still did manage to think about Christ a little More than usual.  This is one of my favorite things that we did.

Whitlee and Josie are part of a little rotating mommy and me preschool that I put on with some other moms from the neighborhood.  We decided for a field trip, we would take them to a bakery at a local grocery store.  They got to help put some cookies in the oven and then toured the store while the cookies baked.

At the end of the bakery tour, we took the cookies to the residents of a retirement community.  These cutie kids sang Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer probably a hundred times and absolutely made the day of so many of the residents of the retirement home.

It was so absolutely touching to see these sweeties light up the day of so many lonely and sick sons and daughters of God.  I think all of us moms were wiping tears by the time the field trip was over.

It really was a Christmas miracle to witness these kiddos, some of them so shy come out of their shells to share warm hugs and the light of Christmas.

So thankful for the opportunity to reflect More on Christ during this time of year and hope to make "More Christ Time" last all year through.