​There are periods in our lives that don’t need solutions or speeches. They simply need a place where the weight can rest before you pick it back up and carry on. For me, one of those places has become writing.
Even growing up, I felt more comfortable putting my thoughts into words on a page than trying to say them out loud. I remember one time in high school when a friend wanted me to go see a movie in the theater with them. It was in a franchise I hadn’t been allowed to watch growing up. They were really excited, and I wanted to do something fun with my friend, so I asked my parents. I could tell they weren’t keen on it, but as a teenager wanting to fit in, I didn’t think too much about that. They told me I was old enough to make my own decision. They didn’t explicitly say yes or no, but I could tell.
We decided to go.
That night, though, I struggled to put into words how I felt about potentially disappointing them. So I wrote them a letter. I explained that I didn’t need to go, that I didn’t want to disappoint them, and that if they truly didn’t want me to see it, I wouldn’t. Long story short, I didn’t end up going. Years later, I found that letter tucked away in my mom’s things while we were moving.
There’s something about stress that seems to quiet the noise in my head just enough for me to write. When the words stop racing and I can place them onto a page or a screen, they become more manageable. I can slow moments down, revisit details I missed, and dig deeper into how something actually made me feel. From there, it feels easier to express those feelings to others, once they’ve been sorted through first.
Writing brings me a great deal of relief, but it doesn’t always solve the problems I’m facing. What it does do is keep those thoughts from festering or calcifying. It gives them somewhere to go. Whether I’m recording my thoughts in a journal, bringing experiences to life on my blog in hopes someone else might relate, or writing fantastical scenes for a story that may never see the light of day, the act itself matters. Writing lets me work through things without the added stress that often comes with talking.
I don’t think I’m a terrible conversationalist, though that could just be delusion speaking, but there’s so much more pressure in spoken conversation. Tone matters. Timing matters. There’s always the risk of saying something wrong or having something taken the wrong way, without the forgiveness of a backspace. Writing, on the other hand, is patient. It doesn’t interrupt or reinterpret. It simply absorbs without asking for immediate clarity.
As the weight of the day slowly transfers onto the blank page, the relief is temporary, but real. My mind settles. I feel myself soften instead of harden. Writing helps me remember who I am, even when things feel like they’re coming at me from all directions.
I know not everyone writes, but everyone needs a place where they can unload after long days. For some, that might be reading, music, crocheting, gardening, or cooking. The possibilities are endless, and sometimes they change from day to day. What matters is having somewhere to set the weight down, even if only for a little while.

This week, I had a conversation with a friend that stuck with me. Not because it was particularly dramatic, but because it highlighted something subtle and surprisingly prevalent in how we move through the world right now. At first, we didn’t name the issue we were circling. We compared various moments where people with less experience, understanding, or relationship tried to correct us or diminish us. As we compared notes, a common thread began to emerge.
Not a generational one, but a relational one.
Entitlement, as I’ve come to understand it, doesn’t seem tied to age. At least not in the way it’s usually framed. It shows up more as a mindset. A way someone orients themselves in the world. And more than anything, as a manners issue.
Somewhere along the way, the idea of respect became muddled. There’s basic human dignity, which should be given freely. No one earns the right to be treated as a person. That should be a given. But there’s another kind of respect too. The kind that grows slowly. Through consistency, listening, and showing up. Through accountability, over time.
That second kind isn’t automatic. And most importantly, it isn’t guaranteed.
Lately, it feels like we’ve begun treating all respect as owed by default, without making room for context. As if every voice carries the same weight in every situation, regardless of experience, responsibility, or consequence. As if feeling strongly about something is the same as understanding it deeply.
That shift shows up in small ways. In how we speak to one another. In how quickly we center our own comfort. In how easily we ask others to adjust themselves so we don’t have to sit with discomfort, urgency, or inconvenience.
This is where manners come in. The quiet kind, rooted in awareness. Awareness of the fact that you aren’t the only person in the room. Awareness that pauses before making a demand. Awareness that shared spaces, shared systems, and shared moments require a little restraint to function well.
Manners are what smooth the edges of community life. Especially when things are tense.
Entitlement skips that pause. It narrows the focus until the world revolves around the self. My feelings. My comfort. My interpretation. My timeline. When that happens, everything else becomes secondary. Context. History. Experience. Even responsibility.
My unease with entitlement isn’t about silencing younger voices. Many of them are sharp, thoughtful, and deeply perceptive.
But naming something isn’t the same as knowing how to move through it. Experience adds texture. It builds pattern recognition. A sense of how quickly things can unravel, how high the stakes can climb, and how much care certain moments require.
Time doesn’t make someone better by default. But it does change how you assess risk. How you carry responsibility. How you understand the weight of certain moments. And the dynamics you hold with certain people.
As this idea of entitlement lingered with me this week, I found myself turning inward. Thinking about ways I can ensure my own potentially entitled tendencies don’t rise to the surface. That’s what led me to stewardship. To caring for things because they’re fragile, not because they’re replaceable. Books, technology, relationships, communities, even words. Stewardship assumes limits. Entitlement assumes abundance. One asks, What will this cost? While the other asks, Why not me?
I don’t have a neat conclusion for this. No clear solution to offer. Just a quiet resolve.
I want to move through the world with a little more awareness of the space I share with others. To pause more often. To pay attention to what a moment actually requires, rather than what feels easiest in it.
Not because I expect anything in return. But because I’ve seen how much care matters when things are tense, and how easily it’s lost when everyone is reaching for the center.

I started off the year stating that I wanted to romanticize my life intentionally. Almost immediately, the reality of another new year settled in, and I felt weighed down by it. As I’ve spent the last few blogs brainstorming topics and ideas, I’ve worked hard not to make those weights the center of my posts. While I love having an introspective space where people can hopefully feel seen and relate, I already spend so much time carrying those thoughts that I simply don’t want to live inside them here. At the same time, I don’t want to pretend that life is all rainbows and unicorns either.
As I took notes, wrote out half-thoughts, and quietly argued with myself, it occurred to me that I had a fairly fatal flaw in my thinking. Not talking about the troubles in my life isn’t avoidance. It’s setting a boundary with myself. And romanticizing my life isn’t pretending everything is perfect. It’s choosing to focus on the wonder of things.
To me, one of the most romantic things in the world is a love letter. I blame Jane Austen for this. Across her novels, she uses letters again and again, often at the most pivotal moments, especially when her male characters can no longer say what needs to be said out loud. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy writes to Elizabeth after she rejects him, not to persuade her, but to take responsibility and explain himself. In Persuasion, Captain Wentworth writes to Anne when he realizes he can no longer remain silent out of fear of rejection.
I think the thing I love most about letters is that they carry the weight of love, remorse, reflection, forgiveness, devotion, gratitude, friendship, to name a few, in a gentle and meaningful way. So that’s what I want this blog to be. A small collection of love letters to a few of the things that add a little wonder to my life.

The pressure of a new year is everywhere. I scroll through Instagram and see endless lists of resolutions. Start a new diet. Start working out. Quit smoking. Reinvent yourself. The pressure to overhaul everything in January can be overwhelming, to say the least. It’s made me grateful that I chose a different approach this year. Instead of resolutions, I settled on a word, or in this year’s case, words, that I want to shape how I move through the months ahead. (If you want to read more about that, I shared it in last week’s post here: Romanticizing Life, Intentionally.) 2026 isn’t going to be about a dramatic reset for me. It’s about something quieter and kinder. Something I can actually live inside of. The first thing I did this year was turn my planner into a cozy place. A place I want to look at. A place where I want to document my days. After that, I created a loose time block for each day of the week. This is my first week trying that rotation, but the goal was never rigid structure. I wanted a schedule that gave me wiggle room, one that would be forgiving on days when my energy runs low, while still making space for things I’ve allowed to slip to the back burner. Reading. Writing. Gaming. Playing music. Working out. These are all things I’ve regrettably negotiated away over time. I realized I had been treating them like extras, when in reality they’re pieces of myself I’ve been compromising for the sake of productivity and obligation. Seeing them written into my days felt less like indulgence and more like honesty. Keeping my planner aesthetic and journal-like has been one small way I’ve been romanticizing my life lately. Waking up earlier on workdays to enjoy a cup of coffee is another. I may not be the world’s biggest coffee connoisseur, but there’s something nostalgic about it. Something grounding. And then there’s probably the silliest thing I’ve done. When I write, whether it’s for my book, my blog, or just practice, I use a keyboard I bought last year that looks and sounds a typewriter. It’s loud and clunky, but something about it makes me feel more present. The older style tricks my brain into taking my writing more seriously, as if I’ve stepped into a time when words were slower and mattered more. Add a wax burner and nostalgic music in the background. Whatever the setup looks like, I’m practicing slowing down and setting the mood. Romanticizing my life this year hasn’t been just about adding more joyful things to my plate. It’s been about noticing more. Especially the small things I would have rushed past before. As I work to balance joy and responsibility this year, I’m also learning to give myself grace. The schedules I’ve made have pockets of space built into them, room to shift things around when I need to. I’ve intentionally overlapped activities throughout the week so that if I miss something, which happens between life and living with a chronic illness, I don’t have to carry guilt until the next week rolls around. I know this is something I’ll continue to struggle with as the year goes on, but I’m trying to front-load myself with grace before I need it. The point is to let my routine guide my days, not govern them. Some days the list gets done. Some days it doesn’t. I’m learning that neither defines my worth. This intentional slowing hasn’t just changed how I structure my time. It’s changed how I show up for the people around me. While my sister and niece have moved out, leaving just me and my parents again, I’m making a conscious effort to enjoy our time together. One way we’ve been doing that is through our tiny homestead. Mostly my mom and I, with my dad’s occasional input, have been making plans. Mapping out the garden. Talking through how we want to offer farm-fresh produce. Figuring out how to be more present in that part of our lives. It’s been fun and exciting and a learning process all at once. It’s reminded me that I actually enjoy a challenge, especially one I’ve chosen for myself. It’s been a quiet adventure so far. Choosing to slow down. Choosing intention. Choosing to notice the little things that fill my cup.

I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. They put too much pressure on me to reach a certain goal, and when I stumble along the way, I end up feeling worse about myself than I would have if I’d never started at all. Instead, I’ve taken to choosing a word that I want to apply to different aspects of my life. This, however, is the first year I’m torn between two words: intention and romanticize. Let me explain.
“Intention” feels fairly self-explanatory. Going into 2026, I want to move through my days more deliberately. I don’t want to rush from one obligation to the next or say yes simply because it feels easier than saying no. I want to choose how I spend my time, my energy, and my attention with care. I started practicing that in small ways in 2025, and I’ve seen how much steadier life feels when I slow down enough to decide what actually matters.
“Romanticize,” on the other hand, feels like it needs a little more explanation. I stumbled across this idea a few years ago on Instagram, first in the homestead world and then in the book world. It doesn’t really have anything to do with romance or relationships. Instead, it’s the act of purposefully doing things in a way that makes you fall in love with your life, or at least one small piece of it at a time. When I think about romanticizing my life, I think of Audrey Hepburn. Slowing things down. Learning something just because it brings joy. Almost like you’re trying to woo yourself.
As I went back and forth between which of these words I wanted to be my “word of the year,” I struggled at first because they felt counterintuitive. Romanticizing your life feels light, almost indulgent. It’s about leaning into what feels good, following joy without needing to justify it. Intention, on the other hand, feels weightier. Purposeful. Rooted in choice and discipline. One seemed to whisper, do this because it makes you happy, while the other seemed to caution, don’t do something just because… make sure it matters. I couldn’t figure out how both could exist in the same space without canceling each other out.
Somewhere in the middle of this small, definitional dispute with myself, it dawned on me. Doing something just because it brings me joy doesn’t make it meaningless. In fact, enjoying my life, enjoying what I do and who I am, makes everything else easier to do with intention.
I want to intentionally set aside time and activities that make me love my life. There are plenty of things already weighing on me as I step into a new year, but I don’t want those things to outweigh the good ones I so often miss.
Maybe this year doesn’t need a single word at all. Maybe it needs a balance. Intention without rigidity. Joy without guilt. A slower way of living that allows meaning to grow naturally instead of being forced. If I’m honest, that feels like the truest way I know how to step into a new year.

It’s that time of year again. I’m sitting in my cozy house, listening to Christmas music and watching Hallmark movies. A warm cup of tea is never far from me, with delicious cookies at my beck and call that I’ll probably regret next month.
Christmas has always held a special place in my heart. As a child, I loved the presents and the lights. My family went all out. We would take the day after Thanksgiving to decorate our house and often my grandparents’ house as well, covering everything in lights and festive displays. Christmas carols by Elvis, Patsy and Elmo, Reba, and Burl Ives played as we hung bright, twinkling things around our home.
As a teenager and young adult, I craved that time with my family, especially my grandparents. Every year on Christmas Eve, after we’d finished our huge Christmas feast, we would sit down with our slices of pie and watch Home Alone or rather, we would watch my grandpa watch Home Alone. Every year without fail, he made the same comments at the same moments. Each trap Kevin set earned a heartfelt, “Oh man, that REALLY had to hurt,” each one worse than the last. It was like watching my grandpa transform into a young boy all over again, every single year.
At least once during our festivities, my grandma would sit down at my piano. With or without a music book in front of her, she would play beautiful hymns and carols. Always quietly, as if she simply wanted the music to fill the spaces between conversation. If she ever made a mistake or forgot a note, you couldn’t tell. It wasn’t meant to be a performance. It was a constant presence, gentle and grounding, never overwhelming.
​My mom was always at the heart of it all. The kitchen came alive under her hands as she prepared beautiful spreads of food, each dish arranged with care, never rushed, always thoughtful. It wasn’t just about feeding people. It was an act of love, of service, of making sure everyone felt welcomed and cared for. Her quiet devotion set the tone for the entire day, a living reminder that Christmas is meant to be an offering of ourselves to others, not just for one day, but for the whole season.
My dad, meanwhile, was rarely still. He bustled in and out, fixing, adjusting, hanging lights, making sure the outside of our home felt just as warm and inviting as the inside. He greeted neighbors with a wave, a joke, a smile that came easily and honestly. His cheerfulness and steady kindness reflected something deeper. That how we show up to the world matters. That joy, generosity, and welcome shouldn’t be seasonal decorations, but year-round practices.
As an adult, I miss the calming reassurance of so many of those moments. The smiles and laughter. My grandparents’ laughter and hugs. They were so ingrained in this holiday that without them, it feels like a different event altogether. And then I remember.
They both knew what this holiday was really about. At the core of the movies, the music, and the presents, I was always reminded that this holiday is a Holy-day. We celebrate it because God came to earth in the form of a baby, the most vulnerable form, to die for each and every one of us. That the God of the universe, the Creator of all, loved us so infinitely that He chose to come down, suffer alongside us, be beaten, ridiculed, and killed so that we would have the chance to spend eternity with Him.
He didn’t have to do that. We chose to separate ourselves from Him. We chose to sin. We choose, again and again, to push Him aside. And still, He chose to endure the pain and suffering before Him so that we, too, would have the chance to choose Him for eternity.
It’s because my grandparents knew and trusted in that truth that I know I’ll get to spend Christmas with them again. And next time, it won’t be for a season.
Next time, it will be for eternity.

The year is coming to an end, and so is my mental fortitude. Lately, it feels like around every corner there’s something that drains me a little more. Between endless tasks, technical woes, and rising pain levels, I’m starting to feel numb. I love my students and coworkers, and I’m trying to purposefully find ways to fall back in love with my job, but after a series of trials and tribulations, my reserves need regeneration. I’m at the point where anticipation is the only energy I have, and I’m tired of it.
As I get closer to break, my list of “hopefuls” grows, starting with tangible moments that help me reset. At the top of that list is the desire to refresh my room. Nothing eases the tension in my chest at night quite like curling up in freshly washed blankets, my reading light glowing softly, books lining the shelves. That kind of coziness makes sleep come easier. Right now, I don’t feel that comfort.
When my niece moved off to college, I inherited her cat. In the short time she’s been gone, this cat and I have grown pretty close. One of the harder times for both of us, though, is bedtime. My room isn’t set up for her to stay in at night, so after cuddling, she has to go back to her room. I’d like to make my room a bit more cat-appropriate and move some of her things in so she feels more comfortable. Along with cleaning up and doing some minor reorganizing, I’m hoping this larger project will help set the tone for my mental break.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about doing things that fill me up instead of depleting me. One thing I’m genuinely excited about this break is reading. I’ve fallen behind, and that makes me sad. Back in November, the second book in Callie Hart’s Quicksilver series came out. I picked up Quicksilver to reread it, but I haven’t made it past page one. I even tried the audiobook, but my never-ending to-do list drowned it out. I’m hoping that with a little peace and quiet, I’ll be able to return to this small thing that used to bring me so much joy.
Writing, at least, has stayed within reach. I’ve been intentionally making time for it, even with my workload. When my brain feels like it’s overflowing, being able to put any thought to paper replenishes my soul just a bit. That practice has helped me see real growth in my book, and more importantly, a growing comfort with my own style. With that comfort, I’m hoping to make some real progress and maybe even double the length of my draft, pushing toward Chapter Twenty. I’ve even gone so far as to join an author forum on Threads, where I can ask for advice and share experiences with those who are where I am, and those who have been there before.
As meaningful as my personal reset feels, it isn’t the thing I’m most excited about.
At the end of the day, what I’m really looking forward to most is making memories with the people I love. This will be our first Christmas with both of my parents retired. My niece is home from college. My other niece’s twins are over a year old now and much more involved in everything. My sister recently got married, so this will be our first Christmas with her husband and his kids. I know there will be plenty of moments worth holding onto, moments that will help carry me into the new year.
Even writing these hopes down gives me a little more energy to tide me over until I get to experience them for real. My hope is that whoever is reading this has their own small things to hold onto as Christmas approaches. It’s okay to need a reset. It’s important to take time to restore your energy. Christmas can be a beautiful reminder to slow down and remember what truly matters.

There is something magical and powerful about watching confidence take root. It doesn’t arrive loudly. It doesn’t announce itself. It usually slips in, filling the places a person once believed were empty. I see this happen most often when I teach coding.
I’ve been teaching coding since 2018, when my boss took a chance on me. Back then, I started with HTML, which felt like taking baby steps into a new world. Over time, I moved into Arduino’s quirky dialect, then Python, and now JavaScript. Each one came with its own alphabet, its own grammatical rules, its own way of structuring thought. But just like learning any spoken language, once you understand the foundations (the grammar, the syntax, the logic beneath the words), you begin to feel more confident. You stop guessing and start understanding. And slowly, the language starts speaking back.
Year after year, in both elementary and high school, I watch students approach coding the same way someone approaches an unfamiliar animal. Carefully and hesitantly, unsure if it will bite. Coding feels unreachable to many of them, almost mythical, like it belongs to someone smarter, braver, or naturally gifted. They underestimate how capable they really are, how many problem-solving muscles they use every single day without noticing. They don’t realize that coding is simply another way of thinking, another path through the forest, another lantern they already know how to carry. 
Maybe that’s why I love it so much. In high school, I preferred math because 2 + 2 will ALWAYS equal 4. There’s something reassuring about a problem that behaves itself. You can walk toward it or backward away from it and still arrive at the same result. My state testing scores, however, insisted I was better at reading and writing, but those subjects felt too subjective, too open-ended. My ideas didn’t always align with those grading me, so the “right answer” rarely felt predictable. 
Coding, though, lives in a beautiful space between those worlds. It holds the solidity of math, the comfort of structure and logic, yet still leaves room for invention and creativity. It offers multiple ways to reach the same outcome, like writing a story where the ending is set but the path is entirely your own. You can work forward and backward. You can take the long road or the straight line. You can explore. And when things break (as they often do), the break is simply information. Nothing more. Nothing personal. Just an invitation to understand the problem differently.
And I have watched students do exactly that in ways that steal my breath a little every time. 
One year, in my TEALS class, a student built a nightscape scene that required multiple shapes to interact with each other. The problem was that we hadn’t yet learned the code to make the objects aware of each other’s edges. Most students would have abandoned the idea or simplified it. But not this one. Instead, he sat quietly, coding, debugging, calculating angles and distances with the kind of steady focus that makes you forget you’re in a classroom at all. 
When he showed me his solution, I nearly laughed in delight. He had coded the math of the shapes themselves, using perimeters and radii to create a “mock” awareness between all of them. He reverse-engineered a concept he didn’t know yet. He built his own bridge across the gap. It was clever and elegant and entirely his own. I still think about that moment, the way he shrugged like it was no big deal, unaware he’d just demonstrated exactly why coding feels like a living literacy.
Moments like that remind me why coding matters beyond the screen. 
Because that’s what it is. Another language we use to understand the world. Another way to build meaning and shape possibility. Another alphabet for the future.
Every time a student presses “run,” fully expecting failure, and instead sees their work shine back at them, something shifts. Not because the code works, but because they do. Confidence grows there, steadily covering old doubts with something new. They begin to realize that learning to code isn’t about perfection or instant brilliance. It is about patience. Curiosity. Trying again. Letting yourself be a beginner long enough to become something else. 
In a world that keeps asking us to adapt and endure, there is something hopeful about watching students meet a challenge head-on and refuse to back away from it. Coding is full of obstacles… broken programs, stubborn logic errors, moments where nothing makes sense, and the cursor blinks like a dare. Yet again and again, I watch students press forward. They press “run” one more time. They rewrite. They rethink. They try another approach.
Confidence doesn’t bloom because the code works. It grows because they stay in the room with the problem long enough to find a way through it. It grows in the quiet grit of trial and error, in the small victories that come from patience and persistence, in the steady recognition that setbacks aren’t failures but part of the process.
And maybe that’s the real magic of coding. Not the logic. Not the syntax. Not even the finished program.
It is the resilience built along the way. It is the problem solved after ten different attempts. It is the quiet triumph of not giving up. 
A kind of confidence that doesn’t shout, but settles instead.
Confidence that is earned.

As I’ve gotten older, Christmas and how I view it has changed and grown. Some years I’m fully in the spirit, and other years I’m basically squinting at the season from the corner of the room. But at the core of it all, there are small comforts that steady me, little traditions and moments that wrap themselves around my edges in the gentlest way. This year is no different.
One of my favorite things to do during the colder months is curl up on my couch in front of a crackling fire with a hot cup of tea and a good book. It’s where my introverted bibliophile soul feels most at home. The soft glow of the Christmas tree fills the room and makes the whole moment feel like the first real exhale of the day. Sometimes there’s music playing quietly in the background, the same carols I grew up with. “The Christmas Guest” by Reba still gives me chills after all these years, and playful classics like Frosty the Snowman and Percy the Puny Poinsettia pull me back into childhood without asking permission. Even the memory of that borderline-aggressive pine spray my mom spritzed onto our artificial tree still drifts through my mind. It was the kind of pine scent that announced itself the moment you walked into the room, and somehow that unmistakable smell still carries a softness that belongs to a simpler time.
There are plenty of tiny comforts I pretend I’m above, even though they absolutely make the season feel complete in ways my soul still craves. Growing up, my mom loved Christmas with her whole being. The second Thanksgiving dinner ended, the tree went up, the lights went out, and every corner of the house transformed. When we weren’t listening to music, Hallmark movies were playing in the background. Love them or hate them, there’s something about those cheesy, predictable, cliché movies that I need after a long day. I don’t care how many times I’ve seen “The Spirit of Christmas,” I still get that little breathy “ahhh…” moment when Daniel says, “Twelve days isn’t nearly long enough.” These movies are like potato chips. They’re not a full meal, but I keep reaching for them anyway.
Speaking of things I keep reaching for, I’ve learned that somewhere along the way I stopped resenting fudge season. (Mom, don’t worry, you’re not misreading this. Miracles still happen.) If you know my family, you know November and December are fudge months for us. We make twenty-seven different flavors, each with its own carefully crafted recipe. It takes time, effort, and a whole lot of counter space to prep, cook, set, cut, and wrap them. For years, the moment November hit, I’d feel that familiar sink in my stomach because I knew what was coming. But in recent years, that feeling has softened. There’s something oddly comforting about the rhythm of it now. Moving around the kitchen with my mom, Christmas music or a movie playing in the background, each flavor slowly coming together. It creates a warm, steady atmosphere that softens the pace of the season and fills the kitchen with a feeling I didn’t appreciate until adulthood.
At the end of the day, nostalgia ties all of this together. Christmas has always been the season where memory feels louder. When I look at our tree, filled with homemade ornaments from my sisters and me, little souvenirs from vacations, and tiny tributes to pets long gone, I feel that familiar warmth settle in. Childhood peace finds its way back to me every time I hear those old carols or watch Christmas cartoons like “Donald’s Snow Fight” or “Mickey’s Christmas Carol.” It’s an immediate comfort, like being pulled into a memory that still knows my name.
One of my most cherished traditions sits outside of music and ornaments altogether. Every Christmas Eve, my grandpa watched Home Alone like it was the first time he’d ever seen it. It didn’t matter how many years passed or how many times we put that movie on… he lit up the exact same way. He laughed, cringed, and cheered at all the same parts, completely delighted every single time Kevin outsmarted those burglars. I loved the movie, but I loved watching him even more. And if I’m honest, I’d trade just about anything to sit beside him and watch him watch it one more time. Even now, that memory is one of the comforts I keep returning to. A tradition that lives on, even if he isn’t here to carry it with me.
Growing up, Christmas was my favorite holiday, not because of gifts or snow, but because it brought everyone together. The day after Thanksgiving, we decorated the house inside and out. We baked fudge, cookies, and savory treats for my mom’s annual Christmas party. We caroled around town, and we played or sang in our church’s Christmas program. But at the heart of all of it, beyond the lights and carols and decorations, was our core belief in Jesus. Christmas wasn’t just a holiday for my blood family. It was a celebration shared with my Christian family, where we all set aside our differences and worries to remember that God came down in the form of Jesus to live and ultimately die so that each of us could have the opportunity to spend eternity with Him.
And that is the most comforting embrace I get during this time of year.