The Joy of Christmas

By all normal perception this really should have been The. Worst. Christmas. Ever. Things are tight. When I say tight - I mean tighten your belt, hoard your diapers and be thankful for family and friends who have helped you get by. While we have been living in limbo Jon has been serving at Old Chicago. It has been a blessing in that it has put food on the table but not really a whole lot more than that. *A post is in the works fully explaining what is going on with us on that front.*

What money we had put aside for Christmas found it's way into being the means to the end of Lucas' pain. Last Thursday Luc came to me and told me his tooth hurt. Can you see where this is going? I checked it out and sure enough there was a puss pocket below the tooth. At this point I was panicking - we have absolutely no insurance right now. We do qualify for state care for the kids but that has been one giant mess trying to get all the paperwork done. Somehow paperwork can't get done if it keeps getting lost - strange, huh? I got in touch with Jon at work and he started working the phone trying to find a dentist that was both open the weekend before Christmas and taking new patients.

Let me just take a moment to share with you that God is amazing. Jon made a call to a family that we had gone to church with in hopes that the husband (an oral surgeon on post here) could at least write a script for some kind of antibiotic and pain med. so that we could make it through Christmas. Andy told Jon he would see what he could do and call him back. Next thing we knew Luc had an appointment for the next day with the best peds dentist in town. So one x-ray, a tooth extraction, and a spacer later our boy is back to normal.

So back to my original point. From the outside looking in we should all be pretty miserable. Believe it or not I think this is the best Christmas we have ever had. We actually enjoyed each other. *Our 4 kids are awesome - but I'm sorry - they can also be annoying and loud and messy and... well you get the idea.* There weren't a ton of "things" but there was a lot of togetherness and love and joy.

I hope this post finds you feeling joyous and blessed.