Spotty McSpot

What helps poor little poxykids feel better?

Oatmeal baths, calamine and 

this.  

Glowing Hearts

The other night while saying bedtime prayers with the boys we prayed for our country in this new year.  We prayed for our leaders that they would be helped in their important responsibilities.

We prayed for all the people that they would have what they need,  feel love and be kind to each other.

We thanked Heavenly Father for this this great, wonderful nation, that I think, is the best place to live in the world.  

We have a stable government who I think tries to take care of it's people (what a huge blessing this is!), we have a stable economy, we are relatively unharmed by major natural disasters, in our province it's usually sunny (!) and we don't have to deal with dangerous bugs (bonus).  

We are free to pursue the education and jobs we want, marry whom we want, raise our families in the way we want and create the kind of life we want to have.

  

We have a tradition in our congregation at church where a couple of Sundays a year the general meeting (before we divide up for Sunday school classes) is all music.  

Members tell everyone why they like a particular hymn and then we all sing a verse or two.  These are the best meetings, an hour of all the most moving, stirring and fun songs in our hymnbook!  

This morning someone chose to sing O Canada and America the Beautiful.  

I could barely sing as my heart swelled with gratitude and love for our wonderful country (partly pregnancy hormones I'm sure, but I feel this way usually anyway) 

I love this country! 

I wish good things for all the people in it.

O beautiful for spacious skies, 
For amber waves of grain, 
For purple mountain majesties 
Above the fruited plain! 
America! America! 
God shed his grace on thee 
And crown thy good with brotherhood 
From sea to shining sea! 

( I know, I know, it's old!)

Mary

I love being pregnant at Christmas.  

Maybe because I feel things more with a little baby growing inside me.

I think about Mary a lot.

How she experienced all that she did.

All that traveling at the end.

Giving birth in a barn.

It makes the whole thing feel more special, more holy.

When I am pregnant, I feel a connection to her.

Not because I am anything like her but the connection all pregnant women have,

we know what the other is feeling, physically, partly emotionally too.

We know what is coming for each other.

Every woman who is growing a baby is so special and at Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of our Savior, being pregnant really helps me to think of him, because babies are so much on my mind already.

It also very much makes me think of Mary, celebrate and revere her.  

For doing what she did.

For being the woman to bear our Lord and bring him into this world.

For being willing.

And for doing it under the least desirable of circumstances.

What a true woman.  

I love these thoughts, I am glad that my circumstances help me to truly feel love during this time

Because that is why He came.