Drenched. . .

This past weekend I went to camp with the great group of kids in this picture. We had to take the picture indoors because it was pouring down rain outside as we prepared for departure. Then, we traveled by van to a nearby town where, in the still-pouring rain, we moved ourselves and our stuff to their bus so we could travel together.

After driving for a bit over an hour, we arrived at camp where it was still raining. We checked in, carried our stuff through the pouring rain to our cabins, considered if we were dry enough to go on without changing, and headed back to the gathering spot for opening worship and fun and games.

It was FUN! And as the rain continued to fall through the evening, the night and the morning, we continued to have fun. By early afternoon we had stopped noticing that it was raining and that we were wet. The rain ceased to be a factor in the experience.

I've been musing about why the kids were so mellow about the rain. I'm sure the counselors were sick of the rain, but they never mentioned it except to point out that a place might be slick, or that a camper should put on a jacket. Our counselors just kept on showing love and joy and patience and kindness and peace and goodness to the campers. The rain simply wasn't a factor.

What if, when the young people of our church came through our doors, they were so immersed in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and goodness that the stress and the pain of ordinary life stopped being a factor? What if everyone spoke to them kindly and respectfully as if they were peers? How would they respond? How would they treat others?

I can't predict with absolute certainty but I can report that on our travels back from camp we had no bickering, no complaining, and lots of happy singing and laughter. When asked if they wanted to go back another time there was a unanimous YES! And when they got off the van there were lots and lots of hugs.

This might just work on adults as well; after all, who doesn't like to be treated with respect and to have love and kindness poured out on them? It might take a bit more time for the grown-ups. They have a lot more defenses to wash off before the love can get through, but love is pretty strong!

I wonder where I can get a barrel of this stuff . . .

Close Encounters

I recently read a story about Pope Francis visiting a very modest parish in a poorer part of Rome. The parish had recently built a new sanctuary, and fifteen families are now living in the old space. The story was about the Pope's visit and the homeless families, but one part that grabbed my attention was the interview with the local parish priest, Don Marco Ridolfo. He said, 

“When peoples’ intentions are sincere . . . a parish can become a school in which to learn patience and tolerance, which can be applied outside as well. Examples of enlightened people like Pope Francis help us do away with that cursed temptation to think that if you are a good person, you are alone. And then, because you are alone, you are weaker and you have to stay on guard, so it becomes easier to embrace all those things that hurt you, to let circumstances make you ugly. When you start to understand that there are other people that see things the way you do, who want to live, who want to believe in this kind of life even if it’s difficult, then it’s a completely different thing."

I was really touched by his description of church as a school for patience and tolerance, and by his honesty about feeling alone while trying to be a good person.

I think Don Marco has articulated two very good reasons for raising your kids in a parish or congregation. First, his point about patience and tolerance: The church is a family of equal siblings (all children of God, and equally beloved in God's sight.) As such, it is a great place to practice patience and tolerance. Just as we have to put up with relatives who we would never invite into our lives otherwise, at church we will be expected to learn to love and respect people we would normally avoid. It has become very easy to simply associate with people we like or who share our values. Most of the time we go places in our own cars, riding only with people we like. Most of us (67.9%) live in single family dwellings in households that average 2.6 people in size. We don't have to play well with others in our daily life! So whether you're the weird relative who is tolerated, or the cool relative who is doing the tolerating, your church family will welcome you.

Don Marco's second point about feeling alone as a good person is also very valuable. We sometimes feel that we're swimming upstream in our "goodness." It is tempting to give up on trying to do the right thing and just going with the flow. Assembling regularly with other people who are also trying to be good people is encouraging. It removes our isolation and gives us strength for the journey. It also allows your skeptical kids to see that other people trying to be good people, and to hear those people share their experiences. (Maybe someone cooler than you will inspire your child.)  Don't you want that for your kids?

I know these thoughts may idealize the church, your church, but you can help it be an ideal community by bringing yourself and your kids to take part. Give it a try!

Daddy Sang Bass. . .

Sitcoms are filled with references to how mothers influence their children but precious little attention is given to how dads influence their kids. Yet the marks dads leave, even if they are absent, are huge. Fatherly influence is important to both boys and girls and goes way beyond genetics. Here's a very small sampling of ways that fathers influence their children:

• Preschoolers with actively involved fathers have stronger verbal skills.
• Children tend to embrace the food preferences of their fathers.
• Children with actively involved fathers display fewer behavior problems in school.
• Girls with strong relationships with their fathers do better in mathematics.
• Fathers role model what it means to be an adult to adolescent sons.
• A father's presence or absence significantly impacts a child's security.
• Fathers who attend church regularly are more likely to see their children continue in the church as adults.
• A young girl's positive relationship with her father fosters better relationships in the workplace and with authority figures in adulthood.

Sounds like a very tall order! What is an actively involved father? How do we get all these benefits for our kids? Let me propose a ridiculously simple exercise to get you started: Sing in church!

Active participation in church means more than standing up and sitting down at the appropriate times. It means folding your hands and closing your eyes during the prayers, and encouraging your child to do the same. It means singing along with the hymns. Not all of you sing like Blake Shelton or Josh Groban. No problem. Just sing along as best you can, and you will get better. More importantly, your kids will want to sing with you. Reading along with your kids in the hymnal, whispering the meanings of words they don't know, or singing your favorite choruses in the car after church will make a big impression on them. When you don't sing along it says to them that you are not involved, and they will copy you.

What follows is a generalization that will not hold true in every family, but it is still worth thinking about. Most children spend significantly more time with their mothers than with their fathers. This makes a dad an object of greater mystery and interest than a mom who is far more available. Your kids are watching. Intently. They know what you do, and they imitate it.

My mother deliberately taught me a thousand things before I started school, including how to love my kids. My dad taught me to tie my shoes. Guess what I remember in exquisite detail? You got it! Learning to tie my shoes still ranks as a big achievement because it earned my dad's approval.

So sing to the Lord. Sing with gusto and enthusiasm, in tune or out. Sing out your wonder and awe at the amazing child entrusted to you by God Almighty. Someone is watching you.

For All the Saints

Last week Pope Benedict designated seven new saints of the Roman Catholic Church. This announcement got a lot of attention because one of those designated is the first Native American ever chosen. The proclamation was timely; All Saints Day is this week.  

I grew up on All Saints celebrations that featured "For All the Saints" ringing the rafters. Then, when my children were small, I discovered "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God," a hymn written for children in the late 1920's and still included in the Episcopal hymnal. It's fun to sing and includes some great conversation starters!

I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen, 

and one was a shepherdess on the green;

It starts out so traditionally; saints are people with virtues. Kids will just love the images presented there, doctor, queen, and shepherdess, all becoming saints. And there are still more occupations included:  

And one was a soldier, and one was a priest, 

and one was slain by a fierce wild beast;

Yet another implication that special people get to be saints. And then, in the last verse, a twist:

They lived not only in ages past; there are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints who love to do Jesus' will.

Where? Where are these hundreds of thousands? I’m not seeing these exemplary, super-naturally powered people in my neighborhood.  Martin Luther, on the other hand, wrote that we are each saint and sinner simultaneously. Sometimes sainthood is best described as being a forgiven sinner. 

Being a parent truly helps us comprehend this saint-sinner concept. What parent, looking in exasperation at a mess created by playing children, hasn't gone to get a camera to record the mayhem before scolding or cleaning up?  In that moment your child is saint and sinner simultaneously. That helps this last bit make sense:

You can meet them in school, on the street, in the store, 

 in church, by the sea, in the house next door;
They are saints of God, whether rich or poor,

and I mean to be one too.

Sainthood, what a wonderful goal to dangle before a child's eyes! Why not? We bring them to be baptized. We teach them right from wrong. We love them unconditionally and forgive them when they mess up. It sounds like a good environment for raising saints! And God loves them even more than we do.

Seeing people (past, present, or progeny) as saints will make us more saintly too. I'd like to be patient, brave, true, and joyously do God's will. I would most assuredly benefit from reflecting on the fact that I'm forgiven. Take some time this week to think about the saints you have heard about, known, and admired. Maybe even take the time to sing this song with your little saints. (I searched YouTube for a good rendition of the song and I am very disappointed. This one is the best I could do. You can find the complete lyrics at Wikipedia.) Celebrate the exemplary and forgiven people who inspire you. Remember those who are now gone but who once passed on the faith to you.  

For all the saints. . . Alleluia!

The School of Reformation

When I was growing up kids were occasionally threatened with "reform school." Back in those days you could be removed from the school and the home and sent away to clean up your act.  It was a scary threat -- to be sent away to a place where people would make you walk the line. Still, there was a hopeful premise underlying the threat. Those who threatened still believed that it was possible to reform a wayward child or adolescent. These days we are more cynical; at least some of us no longer believe that reform is possible.

I have been thinking about the word reform this week because this coming Sunday is designated as Reformation Sunday in the Lutheran calendar. I love the word reform. Re-form. Form again. It is a hopeful word.

In the place that I inhabit, a place where faith and parenting intersect, Reformation Sunday is a time to look around and see what needs to be reformed. There is always something. For example, I need to reform my eating habits so that I eat more fruit. Re-form. Form again. Not break a bad habit, just reform my habit. Breaking a habit sounds a bit violent when you think about it. Reforming sounds like gentle molding. I like that.

As a parent, you are continually reforming your children, yourself, your rules, and your routines. Each reformation is intended to improve things or to adjust to changed circumstances. It is a living, growing, changing, hopeful, and dynamic approach to life.  It is impossible not to reform when there are children in your day-to-day life. They are the catalysts for these changes, and our lives can be immeasurably enriched by these reformations.

Historians and theologians will tell you that the Reformation that spawned the Lutheran church was a significant point of change in Western civilization. Life would never be the same: economics, education, religion, and governance were all impacted.  Still, in the midst of the Reformation, things were retained. People still worshiped. There were changes to the form of worship. The communal language was used and everyone participated. Some things stayed the same. The object of worship, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, remained the same.

This is how reformation in the family needs to happen. Some things will change, and some will stay the same. Your family may be facing  the arrival of a new baby, a child's departure for college or military service, the fears and blessings that accompany the start of kindergarten or handing over the keys to the car. Some things will have to change. And some things will have to stay the same to keep us anchored through the change. What anchors your family? Is it bedtime blessings, breakfast rituals, Sunday worship followed by brunch with family or friends? Do those rituals need to be reformed so that they will have greater staying power?

The Reformation we celebrate and your child's first solo drive bear much in common. They are life-changing events. They cannot be undone. They both promise greater autonomy and greater opportunity. They bring relief to some who were overburdened. They are undergirded with hope.

Happy re-formation to you all!

The Long View

It is the tradition, when building a cathedral, to lay the first stone at the east end of the church and build backward from there. The Washington National Cathedral was built in this way. Its first stone was laid in 1907. Five years after construction began, the first services were held in the Bethlehem chapel. Construction continued until the final stone was placed in 1990. The finished structure has over 83,000 square feet, is 102 feet high in the middle, has over 200 stained glass windows, and tombs containing the remains of several notable Americans, including Woodrow Wilson and Helen Keller.

I recently took a tour of the Cathedral and left pondering the sheer magnitude of this project. Who could conceive of a project that would take 83 years to complete? The original architect of this project, George Frederick Bodley died less than a month after the first stone was laid. All told, a total of five architects contributed to the building of the Cathedral.

One of the most famous features of the Cathedral is the "Space Window" which contains a rock brought back from the moon. It was hard to imagine a plan that would be flexible enough to incorporate such an artifact when the first flight at Kitty Hawk had just happened. According to the docent on my tour, the south windows were designed from the beginning to represent the gifts that people use to serve God. This particular opening was designated for the Scientists and Technicians window. The white spot in the center of the red circle is a slice of moon rock brought back and donated by the crew of Apollo 11.


In the instant world of the 21st century it is almost impossible for us to think in terms of decades, never mind centuries. That is partly a consequence of the pace of change in the life we live today, and partly the result of our ego-centric worldview. In the midst of this, the one place where we are perhaps still called to take the long view is the family. Having children is an act of hope. It is a dream of the future; an act that tells the world we believe in life. When we become parents, we have to remember that we are raising children who will most likely outlive us. We need to prepare them for a world we cannot see or even imagine.

Can we learn something about life architecture from the great architecture of the cathedral? The cathedral is shaped like a cross - reaching up, yet reaching out. It points toward God, and is put together of millions of smaller pieces - each small piece someone's best work. It is surrounded by enough natural space to allow time and calm for reflection. It incorporates the very greatest stories from the Bible and recognizes the gifts of all people. It acknowledges that there are fearful creatures around us, but lets the light in to chase the dark away. Both life, in the form of the baptismal font and the table where we can gather to eat, and death, in the form of crypts and memorials, are woven into the construction of the whole. What a wise design for a church, or a life!

Crossroads

It has been said that the church is a crossroads - a place of intersections. It is the place where daily life and eternal life overlap. The place where fear and faith and doubt and dreams all meet.  It is the cross road - the place where we  pick up our crosses and follow Jesus, and where we lay them down. The place where we are reminded that there is One who makes the load lighter; One who gives hope and light and love. 

All the of following are taking place at my church this week:

• Confirmation 
• Pre-school graduation 
• Job interviews
• A wedding 
• Celebration of a retirement 
• An end of school picnic 
• A funeral 
• A last day of work 
• Meetings to plan for summer
• A special Eucharist 
• Teacher appreciation
• Last day of regular Sunday School

At the same time, people are experiencing:

• High school and college graduations
• Traveling relatives
• Surgery or health issues
• Babies being born
• Applying for summer jobs
• Houses being sold or renovated
• Kids coming home from college
• End of school year events
• Vacation and camp preparations
• News of great sadness or great joy

Weeks like this can overwhelm families. Come to the crossroad and rest with your baptismal brothers and sisters. Come and refresh at the font, soak in the familiar and the family, float in forgiveness and love - if only for an hour. It will put everything in perspective.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-hallelujah!

Some people think that faith is a really serious thing. Even in the aftermath of God's great practical joke of raising Jesus from the dead, we still intone Alleluia with a reasonable amount of gravity and decorum. Does anyone else think that the idea of greeting the news of the resurrection with a face suitably composed for the grave-side is slightly ridiculous?

Most kids, as we all know, don't hold on to the serious very long. In fact, we tend to worry when they do. Yet, at some magical point, we declare that they are old enough to "take life seriously!" If they don't, we call them free spirits. . . as if that were a bad thing. (Back to Easter again, wasn't free one of the great gifts of the resurrection?)

Some churches, I recently learned, treat the 2nd Sunday of Easter as Holy Humor Sunday. I absolutely love this idea!  I think that God, who created us with the capacity for joy and laughter, would feel our worship as we come together to laugh and rejoice. I also think this would be a fantastic experience for children.

We don't have this at my church (yet!) but I have made it my mission during the Easter season to have lots of laughter at every event with children, and to connect that laughter with the Alleluia (Ha-llelujah) of the resurrection. I don't think that this linkage will necessarily sink in on any conscious level, but I hope it will leave an Easter afterglow that will stay with them for a lifetime.

Just before Easter a friend posted this 1 minute video to Facebook. The video quality isn't that great but just listening to this baby chortle can make your day. You will hear it echo in your head, long after you watch it. 

Don't your insides feel great? There is plenty of science to back up the old cliche' about laughter being the best medicine. So why not add a dose of laughter to your family's daily routine? Let the kids lead the way - they are naturally silly and, if you aren't focused too closely on making them into serious people, you will find plenty of opportunities to laugh.

If you're not sure how to get started with this, the "Ha-Ha Game" is a great shortcut to breathless giggles. It's this simple: Say Ha, the next person says Ha-Ha; continue taking turns, adding another ha until someone cracks up completely - and then start over.  As you gain experience, you will have to work harder for the laughter, but it will be just as sweet once it arrives. Try it out! You'll have fun, and you will give your kids a great gift!

I plan to bring you more laughter as we progress through the Easter season. May the joy of the resurrection seep into all the dry places of your life and wake them to new growth.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed, Hallelujah!!!

The Meeting Season

Yesterday, as a bunch of little kids helped me put the Christmas story together in sequence, I got to thinking about Mary and all those strangers arriving unannounced to see the new baby.  Can you imagine? First an angel shows up and announces her pregnancy. That would have been enough stranger for me already.  Then, exhausted from giving birth, huddled in a stable without her mother or sisters to welcome them and usher them in to see the baby, a batch of filthy shepherds who hadn’t bathed in weeks shows up. Then the KINGS! Well-dressed in rich clothing and driving Rolls-Royces (OK, camels, but still, all the neighbors would surely notice them parked outside and start wagging their tongues!) Can you imagine?

I don’t expect all those visitors rattled the baby Jesus in the least.  He was still blissfully unaware of the fact that He was no longer tethered to his mother’s body.  Eating and sleeping were His primary concerns; the rest was just kind of a blur behind His mother’s face and voice.  I’m guessing that was a little different by the time His first birthday arrived!  

My sister tells of her husband’s grandmother who offended her deeply by asking about my niece, “Is she strange yet?”  Turns out this is a German phrase meaning “Is she afraid of strangers yet?” I like it. Children go through periods of being fearful of strangers. It’s part of the developmental process. Are your children “strange” these days?

Who is coming to your house for Christmas?  Or who is going to be at your parents, or in-laws, or wherever you’ll be gathering?  Will there be strangers? Yep. They might even be named Grandma and Grandpa, or Aunt Laurie, or Uncle Greg. These people, whom you have loved and known all your life, may be strangers to your child.  This point was driven home at my recent visit with my family.  My niece said to one of my daughters, “I’ve only seen you like five times in my whole life.” Now, that’s not an exact count, but several of those visits WERE when she was too small to remember!

Meeting all these “strangers” can create a lot of stress for your child.  Of course it’s more stressful for some children than others, but regardless of their personalities, it can take a lot of energy to deal with all these people.  They may also resent that you are holding some strange baby cousin or that you are deep in conversation with some strange woman (like your sister), and not paying them sufficient attention. Stress then brings out the worst in your child - whining, clinging, melting down. . . and you are embarrassed.

When you take your children to church, the neighborhood pool, or  your company Christmas party, you are very aware that all these people around you are strangers, and you monitor your child closely. Do the same with your loved ones, and your child will feel a lot more secure, and warm up to the relatives faster. It’s very hard to think of our families of origin as strangers to our children but, in reality, that may be what they are, especially if we don’t live close enough to come together regularly.  Keep all this in mind and you can successfully introduce your past and present families to each other, even if a few smelly shepherds or kings on camels show up.

The Remembering Season

How are your preparations coming along?  I don't even have to specify what preparations I'm talking about - you know I mean holiday preparations. Are you having any fun making them? I'm just checking because it is so easy to miss the fun - and, to quote a song from an old movie "but it's the laughter, we will remember, whenever we remember, the way we were." This is the season of remembering.

I was at my sister's home for Thanksgiving and all the nieces and nephews were there and we made lefse. Now making lefse is a special holiday tradition for people whose forebears came from Norway.  It's a labor intensive undertaking that yields what are essentially very thin potato tortillas. It is manna to some of us, tradition for others, and love, even to those who don't especially like it. My grandmothers and great-grandmothers (well 3 of them anyway) made lefse, and my mother is passing on the tradition to the next generation. It's messy and time-consuming and involves a lot of work and, especially when there are beginners, laughter. For the cousins, seven of them, and one recently added spouse, it was a great way to be together. They haven't grown up near each other so gatherings can be a bit awkward. Tackling this project was a way to pool their talents and splash around in the laughter. They will remember this day.

The next day, some of us filled up a couple of cars and visited the farms where my parents grew up. And we visited the churches and the graves. We felt sadness as we missed those no longer with us - but joy at all the wonderful memories. I have to say, on the whole, that it was fun to ramble through the memories. And new memories were being generated even as we waded through the old ones:  the startling sight of a llama among the sheep, the fight over the check at the restaurant, the wind, the Starbucks. There will be laughter from this day to remember as well.

This is the remembering season. Take time to share your memories with your kids and to make some new ones. Play some cards, sing some songs, and visit some relatives. Your kids won't remember most of the gifts they get this Christmas, but they will remember your stories and traditions and what made them laugh.  Find the time, and the laughter – it will add joy to your season.

The Waiting Season

When my girls were small we had a favorite waiting-for-Christmas tradition: a fabric “calendar” with a little stuffed mouse that moved forward one pocket each night. Even when they were old enough to have cell phones and day planners we hung up that calendar. It was a fun and meaningful way for them to mark the passage of time. The church has designated this waiting-for-Christmas period as the season of Advent, a season of waiting. Advent is filled with texts about the coming of the Savior, and the coming-again of the Savior. It is not a passive sit back and wait – it is an active, waiting-and-watching season of life.

I spent two Advent seasons “great with child.” Pregnancy is the epitome of active waiting: preparation for an unknown but beloved person to arrive, preparation for the needs of the tiny guest and all those affected by her birth, and watching for signs of her imminent arrival. Evaluating every twitch, itch and tickle, watching for the labor pains that would deliver her to this world. Alert, watchful, making preparations, it was Advent come to life. 

In the instant culture of the 21^st century, waiting is rare, and most of us don't know how to wait well. I have been driving a lot the last couple of weeks and in at least 4 states I saw signs for hospital emergency rooms with “approximate wait times” displayed in digital lights that changed with circumstances in the ER. More and more babies are induced or delivered by C-section at a time mutually convenient for doctor and mother. Kindles and Nooks make waiting for the library to open, or for Amazon to ship, a thing of the past. Waiting has become so uncommon that last week's Facebook status updates featured a lot of comments about traffic, lines and waiting – because it was unusual.

In the end, we are all waiting for the great unknowable visitor - death, whose arrival cannot be predicted, but there is a more immediately relevant reason for deliberately teaching our children to wait: it is good for them. Many years ago a study found that the ability to wait, to delay gratification, was a significant predictor of future success (measured by normal, American standards such as getting a job, finishing school, forming lasting relationships,etc.) Check out this clip from a recent repeat of The Marshmallow Test.

Can your child wait? Can you help him learn to wait? Since there is so much to wait for with Christmas coming, this is a natural time to practice.  Practice the old swimming rule of thumb - wait for 30 minutes after eating. Remember how endless that seemed? Yet all the time it was helping us learn to wait. Try meeting a “Can I” question with “I have to think about it; I will tell you in 30 minutes” or, “we'll talk about it after you've finished your homework/chores/project.” If your children have had very limited waiting experience, this may prove difficult for them, but you will be blessing them for life.

Welcome to the Waiting Season, your estimated wait time is 24 days. . .

The Serving Season

Serving food, serving drinks, serving the hungry in soup kitchens, and serving our neighbors are regular hallmarks of the "extreme season." All around the church and community people are lining up volunteers and asking for donations of money,  gift cards, time, and patience. At home, this may begin to take a toll if your heart is bigger than your available hours or dollars. I remember a lot of years where I was just plain mad all through the holidays because I felt like a failure on every front - everyone needed more from me than I had to give. I used to think this was because I was a single parent on a tight budget but I have since learned that almost everyone feels this way at some point during the holidays. Here are a few things I figured out along the way:

• Start by deciding how much money you will give ahead of time and then, as a family, DECIDE where you'll give it. Some families pick one thing and stick with it year after year but others like to mix it up and give to a lot of places. Your family members may not all agree so you may have to divide the budgeted funds between several causes. That discussion will be almost as rewarding as the giving. Depending on the ages and temperaments of your children there may be spirited debates over the merits of buying dog food for the animal shelter or toys for children whose parents are in prison. People may get passionate but that's OK - it's for a good cause!
• Choose ONE actual hands on service project. Giving money is very helpful to recipients but less valuable to your children who really won't fully grasp the giving of money until they have earned some themselves. If your children are very small, substitute for a Meals-On-Wheels driver and take them along. Take older kids to wrap gifts at Blue Santa, help an elderly neighbor put up a tree or some lights, or serve dinner  at a soup kitchen. Wherever you serve, serve together.
• Find a way to participate at church. Welcome guests, make cookies for the choir members who will sing multiple services on Christmas Eve, help carry all those poinsettias into the church - or offer to deliver them to shut-ins after the Christmas Day services. Check to see if someone could use a ride to church. Sing in the choir or play in the orchestra. Even offer to stay and lock up the building after the last service! Take some of your baking to a family who has had health issues or recently lost a loved one. Serving at church helps reinforce for your kids that it's really all about THE BABY.
• Don't do things you, or your family, resent. If traveling to see relatives is more chore than joy - stay home! Go another time when you can enjoy it more.  Hate sending Christmas cards but want to stay in touch? Send a New Year's letter or a valentine or write a generic letter that can be sent with birthday cards.

I think it's easy to feel like you're in a rubber raft about to go over a waterfall as the holidays approach but try not to lose sight of the countless blessings in your life and the baby in the manger.  Holding those things at the center can help you float a little more gently down the holiday river.