Christmas Day

Merry Christmas!
Christmas is my favorite time of the year. I celebrate Jesus and what He does every single day, but I love the time of year when people are more loving and kind, when you get to see people you haven't seen in a long time, when the lights are at times so beautiful they take your breath away. This year has been so much fun with JadenGrace. She has been so looking forward to this day. She has been asking for over a week if she can open the gifts under the tree and getting increasingly frustrated with my instructions to wait for Christmas day~ Ha! Just like a typical kid! When she woke up this morning I didn't mention to her that it was Christmas day because the others in the house wanted to sleep late. I bargained with them that I would let them sleep as long as Jaden didn't notice the new gifts under the tree. She didn't notice. I was a bit sad as the hours went by and I remembered the older kids and how they knew it was Christmas morning the moment they woke up. How they would have a hard time falling asleep on Christmas Eve, talking and getting up five hundred times for water or potty and such. (Too bad I didn't know about Melatonin back then!) But I determined that I was not going to get emotional about Jaden's disability today! I quickly reminded myself that yes, our lives have changed drastically and Jaden would not respond to things exactly the way our olders did when they were little. But that didn't mean we couldn't enjoy things in a different way. So at about 10 am, God's Grace finally saw that more gifts were under the tree and said, "Is it Christmas today?" I ran to get everyone else and it was a beautiful morning, if you don't count having to twist some ungrateful earlobes.
We are truly blessed. I was reading my No Greater Joy magazine in the bathroom (!) recently, and noticed something Michael Pearl wrote: the worst of times on the outside can be the best of times on the inside. As painful as autism has been to my life, I can truly say I wouldn't change it, due to the things God has done for my heart. It is well with my soul.