The day before Christmas

Today started out at 3:48am with Shari already buzzing around the house! Shari had just gotten up because of her coughing and didn't want to wake me up. There were several things that we needed for stocking stuffers so we were at Wal Mart before 5:00am!!!! For everyone who knows Shari, you're saying "you've got to be joking". We each took a basket and shopped for 45 minutes and got almost everything we needed for tomorrows festivities.
Yesterday we had my family up for our Christmas celebration and had an excellent time. The main purpose of yesterday was to let my family know just how much Shari means to me and she is a keeper!! I wanted everyone to know that I attempt to look at my bride through God's eyes and not the perspective of the worlds eyes. I had great peace with the out come. My older sister Chris gave me a tribute in a journal that talked about the special times we've had throughout the years. I read to my mom and dad the tributes that I had written them over 10 years ago. With the tributes, I also read what I had written for Brittany's Mini Mag over 10 years ago. It was titled,
"How Many Tomorrows Will There Be?
With families becoming busier and busier each day, we all tend to forget the people that have shaped our hearts and have been one of the most influential forces in our daily lives. I'm talking about our parents, our brothers, and our sisters.
The importance of the family unit is sometimes over looked in today's society but with the morals and standards dropping steadily each day, we can only look to ourselves to the commitment that we have to our spouse and our children. We all to often, do not want to put the time, research or the effort into our most valuable resource, our children. We donate our time to building our career through being "involved" in causes, resume building, and charities that on the short term are very satisfying and rewarding but the sacrifices that we make towards our family is most often disastrous. I site the statistic of our divorce rate in the United States which is been over 50% for the past decade. Over 55% of today's youth will experience a single parent household by the age of 18!
We need to re-evaluate ourselves and look closely into our hearts to what we already know is true, but we are so afraid to change. Having the ability to try something new, to forget our pride of being right, to being able to say loving words to the people who have meant the most to you throughout the years, without having the fear of the worldly values castrating you for showing honest and true feelings. These thoughts have weighed heavily on my mind for my family and friends of recent months and God has inspired and given me the courage to reach out.
This little story was just before the tribute that honored my dad. Consider what tomorrow is and how our Father in Heaven has been so faithful to all of us throughout the years yet sent His only Son to die for us!!! May your celebration of the birth of our Savior be the greatest day of this year.
Blessing from the Condon Family