This is the letter I am sending with my Christmas cards this year. It seemed as though it might be worth sharing here as well. I have omitted the personal details of the family update section.
Hello, friends! I debated as to whether or not to write a letter this year for my Christmas cards. It was easy to write these when the kids were younger; most of those letters practically wrote themselves as I gave updates about our lives and what the kids had done during the year. The fact that the kids are grown and most of our days are already displayed across social media makes it more difficult to come up with something to say. Postage is expensive and so are cards. Christmas is quickly approaching and my list of things to do is still lengthy, so I thought maybe I’d give myself permission to skip a year sending cards. Then I received a Christmas card and letter from a friend that I don’t really keep up with regularly and remembered how much I enjoy getting cards and reading letters from friends far and near. And while the number of cards I get each year dwindles, I know that the joy of receiving cards never dwindles.
I grabbed my laptop and started typing. What can I say about our year? I don’t have any “big” updates to share. Christmas letters usually contain the highlights of the year—graduations, weddings, new job, new house, new baby, etc. We don’t really have anything like that this year. It was an ordinary year made up of ordinary days. As I get older, however, I’m realizing that it’s those kinds of ordinary moments that make life joyfully extraordinary. The things that actually mean the most are probably not the sort of things people want to read about in a letter—the moment my son gave me advice that was surprisingly sound and wise beyond his years, or the moment my daughter invited me to come with her to use a gift card to a painting class instead of asking one of her friends.
For the past two years, I have kept a “Blessings Jar.” I start in January and all year I fill it with little slips of folded up paper where I write down things that I’m thankful for, things that have been a blessing to me. Not surprisingly, the jar is filled with these “ordinary” moments—the delight of enjoying a piece of pecan pie while snuggled up by the fire, or the wonder of waking up to an unexpected blanket of snow on the ground. As I look at my already overflowing 2025 blessings jar, I’m reminded that it isn’t proof of an extraordinary year so much as evidence of ordinary days, simply lived. These quiet, simple experiences make up most of our lives and, taken together, add up to a year that feels anything but simple or ordinary.
Todd and I continue our work with nursing home residents, which remains a steady source of purpose and joy for us, even in a year like this one in which we’ve mourned the loss of several special friends. Those losses of nursing home friends are still quite fresh, which has been another reason I’ve avoiding writing a letter and mailing cards. Grief has a way of coloring every idea, every sentence, every action. I feared whatever I wrote might sting of sadness or cynicism. Afterall, the majority of my time is spent loving and serving people who are often moments away from departing for eternity. Many of them have overwhelmingly sad situations and find themselves caught up in a system of care that really is anything but caring.
Maybe you’re in a similar place this Christmas. You are struggling under the weight of grief and loss; you feel like this year hasn’t been exactly “letter worthy,” and you wonder if any of it meant anything. Let me suggest that this might be one of the best ways to enter the Christmas season— aware of our smallness and longing for the One who will come and make everything right. The birth of Christ—the One who came to rescue us from our sin—meets us not only in our great joys and deep sorrows, but in the quiet, ordinary moments in between. He helps our souls feel their worth and allows us to find joy even in weary, ordinary days, giving us “a thrill of hope…the weary world rejoices…in all our trials, born to be our friend. He knows our need, and to our weakness is no stranger.” –excerpt of lyrics from O, Holy Night
Whether you’ve had a year of exciting milestones or a year of ordinary moments, we wish you a merry Christmas from our home to yours. We pray you’ll find joy in the smallest and biggest moments of the year to come.
