Really though, I appreciate that extra bit of heart in a lot of ways. I love depth in conversation. I like to talk deep. I like to talk about ideas and experiences. I have a hard time getting through without referencing a study or something really interesting from NPR or the New York Times. I love it when people listen to me, when they remember those things going on in my life, when they get excited with me over accomplishments or upcoming events and trips. I love it when they tell me about their ups and downs and great ideas. And compliments… who doesn’t love those? I don’t often forget a very sincere compliment. They go in a special place in my head (kind of like that top drawer of my 6-year-old’s dresser where he keeps all his school prizes, found money, and piñata loot) and they get stashed there for rainy soul days when you need a little validation.

Then just today I came home from Christmas vacation and found a surprise package in my mailbox (it contained treats—are we getting a theme here?), a sincere note, and cards of a friend’s sketches. It was the most welcome thing as I had just enumerated to my husband somewhere along the New Jersey turnpike on our drive from Virginia back home to Massachusetts that what awaited me at home was a list of the most dreaded mom tasks imaginable—cue unpack from vacation, post vacation grocery run, post office, library, laundry, Christmas décor take down, 2 week mail sort, and an accumulation of business tasks. My night was made supremely better by this personal offering.

I have practically lived the last month in the fleece pajama pants sent recently along with a stay-warm-this-winter note from a dear friend who jumped ship after a decade and a half in New England and moved to the Pacific Northwest. It was her way of saying I love you and I miss you and I know exactly what your next few months will be like.

I could go on and on about the friend who is known for her handwritten notes, homemade cards, sewing creations, or the one who sends the best birthday video messages, or the one who dutifully comments on your blog.

A few months ago, as the RS presidency member talked about the pies that would be served for an upcoming event, I leaned over to a friend and said, “I love pie—I want all the pie to myself,” to which she responded, “You want a pie? I’ll make you a whole pie.” “Really?” I was shocked. Pie baking is a labor of love. Sure enough, that Wednesday night there was a homemade pie waiting just for me. I was so excited—downright giddy—my own pie! It made my day; it made my week. I know, here I go again with the food, but it’s a trademark L Graff thing.

At a regional conference at BYU one of the speakers said, “Our love is often lazy in its failure to individualize.” This thought has stuck with me for these past 14 years. It reminds me to put in that little extra effort, to use my agency to make life better for others. It’s amazing how the smallest things are really what make our days worth living. So here is to wishing you all a personal 2012.

What is meaningful to you? What simple, personal things have made you day?

Related posts:

1. My Christmas Report
2. Posts of Christmas Past
3. I Believe In Yesterday

Christmas is about Receiving

We are thick in the season of giving. Retail merriment may jing-jing-jangle our nerves, but many of us bask in thinking about our giftees and what might bring them joy. This is progress from our less-enlightened “gimme” days. Wonderful! We are learning to be good gift givers.

The flip side of this is that this is also the season of receiving. Just how enlightened are our receiving skills this Christmas time?

I used to think gift cards were bland and impersonal. It was hard for me to give them and somewhat disappointing to receive. Not so these days. Now I find a well-suited gift card (given or received) to be very satisfying. Maybe not gift cards to grocery stores, but I could be wrong.

Getting gifts from very young children is good exercise in receiving. In nursery or pre-school, kids may not even know how to hold a crayon yet. The tots likely aren’t thinking of Mommy when they make a “present” for her with a jot with the red crayon. However, their scribbled bits can be interpreted by an aware adult as evidence of the child’s growing social and motor skills. They stayed in nursery long enough to participate in the activity, after all. That affirmation is a joy to receive! It’s not the “masterpiece” itself we’re receiving and grateful for. Sometimes the meta-message takes some digging.

Speaking of meta-messages, “receiving” is a rich word in our Mormon lexicon. When we are confirmed we are told to “receive the Holy Ghost.” As a convert with a well-developed spiritual life before joining the Church, I can’t say I noticed a particular shift or infusion of new “oomph” with this charge. Sometimes I think of it like a tuner on a radio. The Holy Ghost will always broadcast; how good am I at receiving It? When I “receive” that Gift, I vow to put myself in a frequency to hear It, feel Its humming presence and proceed with the impulses and messages I sense.

In sealing eternal marriages the man and woman promise to “receive” one another. (If something is received, it must have been given in the first place. That’s my take on wording that isn’t exactly identical.) Is there anything more humbling, open and trusting than that kind of exchange? Marriage is a setting requiring equal (and extraordinary) measures of responsibility and vulnerability.

Receiving in most profound ways, I think, is best accomplished without a lot of (jingle) bells and whistles (although expressed heartfelt “thank you”s and/or notes should be somewhere in the mix.) Isn’t the meta-message of the gift of this season found in reflection, awareness, gratitude, and a blessed balance of humility and majesty? Phillips Brooks, author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” said it well:

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming; but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.

How do you prepare to receive? Any memorable occasions of receiving gone grossly wrong or movingly right? What layers of meaning does “receiving” have for you?

Related posts:

1. What does it feel like?
2. Looking up
3. Milk before meat

Our typical Thanksgiving dinner

On a recent flight, my daughter sat next to an actress affiliated with a Chicago based comedy troupe. The actress needed some ideas for an upcoming Thanksgiving sketch routine and asked my daughter if she had any funny family holiday meal stories. The story my daughter shared was one my husband and I have no memory of. She insists we were there. Clearly the scene made a vivid impression on her.

She was a teenager, and we were enjoying a delicious feast with my sister’s reserved family when for no reason my daughter could fathom, my husband started talking about beef testicles – their size, texture, cultures that eat them and how they’re prepared. For you Westerners, maybe this isn’t such an unusual topic (what with your famed Rocky Mountain Oysters), but we’re Midwesterners with a strong dash of New England in us. Then again, my husband is a person of broad and varied knowledge and knows how to sound certain about things. He insists that he currently knows nothing about beef testicles in general and their culinary possibilities in particular.

I do remember a few odd Thanksgiving vignettes. In the mid-1970’s I was eager to get from Boston back home to Chicago for Thanksgiving. I saw a posting for someone looking for other Chicago-bound students looking for riders in their car. Five of us – three of us complete strangers to the others – squeezed ourselves into a Volkswagen Beetle and drove 18 hours straight, making only occasional stops. At one stop in the middle of the night I ordered a cup of chili at the all-night rest stop restaurant and spooned up a gnarly chunk of gristle that I swear was hairy. By contrast that year’s Thanksgiving meal with my family was beyond fantastic. When the weekend was over, I flew back to Boston.

When Chris and I were first married we joined our friends to make a feast. Not being totally comfortable yet with cooking and kitchens we wondered why the half and half never became whipped cream. We also learned the indelible lesson of making sure to have the lid on the blender before you puree the pumpkin soup.

One year my Chicago clan joined us in Boston for Thanksgiving dinner at Plimoth Plantation. The plantation was interesting with its period costumed interpreters who never broke character, but the meal was uninspired traditional fair served by waiters in a modern building with bland walls. More compelling was a visit to the Wampanoag Homesite where we got quite a different take on the first Thanksgiving Day.

What fond or funny Thanksgiving memories do you have? And, while we still have a little time before grocery shopping, can you share a favorite recipe?

Here are two exquisite recipes my family has nearly every Thanksgiving. (They’re recipes for flatlanders. Adjust as needed for higher altitudes.) In the picture above, the Rice Pudding is in the large yellow pot and the Praline Squash is toward the back in the orange pot.

Elegant Rice Pudding

1 c. water
1/2 c. short or medium grain white rice
1/2 vanilla bean, split (Whole Foods carries them. You can order them – and practically any other spice in the world from The Spice House.)
1/4 tsp. salt
2 c. milk
1 c (1/2 pint) heavy cream
1/2 c. sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 c. dark seedless raisins or dried sour cherries
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon boiling water

1. In 2-quart saucepan, heat water to boiling. Add rice, vanilla bean, and salt. Cook 10 minutes.

2. Add milk and cook over very low heat until rice is tender – about 10 minutes.

3. Preheat oven to 350. Lightly butter 1 1/2 quart shallow baking dish.

4. In small bowl, combine cream, sugar and eggs; fold into rice mixture along with raisins or cherries. Remove vanilla bean and pour rice mixture into buttered baking dish. Sprinkle top of mixture evenly with cinnamon.

5. Place baking dish into a large baking pan in oven. Pour boiling water into baking pan to a depth of 1 inch. Bake 30-45 minutes or until pudding is firm and top surface is golden brown. Cool to room temperature on wire rack.

Serve at room temperature or refrigerate (covered) to serve chilled.

Praline Squash

2 packages winter squash, thawed
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
a dash of pepper
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons soft butter
1/2 cup chopped pecans
• Combine 1st four items and cook over low heat until butter melted in.
• Add this mixture to the beaten eggs.
• Pour into a greased 1 quart casserole.
• In a separate dish, combine the remaining 4 ingredients and sprinkle on
the casserole.
• Bake at 350o for 30 minutes. (adjust for altitude)

You can also find my dad’s fabulous apple sausage stuffing recipe (and many other great food related essays and recipes by LDS authors) in my book Saints Well Seasoned: Musings on how food nourishes us – body heart and soul here literally for pennies! (Warning: there are typos in Camilla’s cinnamon rolls and Jan’s Red Jello.)

Related posts:

1. Find It!
2. Creamed Onions and Orange Rolls
3. What to do with the leftover Easter candy . . .

Where he slips his hand across her knee. Where she puts her head upon his shoulder… First date? Old lovers? They are too quiet with one another to be new, and her hair seems askance and he seems calmed by her easy way. They must be married.

Where a mother fusses over a baby hidden in an expensive carriage, and how suddenly a fleck of a hand blooms above the tuft of swaddling blanket and visions of a redhead baby boy bloom in my head, unbidden… Simply because the hand was pale, and his mother was a ginger.

And my mind wanders with them all day, these people/characters filled out by my mind, apparent only in face. They are reduced to their mannerisms and accessories, taken out of context, in five seconds of one day.

It seems unfair. But in my defense I usually give them an imaginative vignette worthy of their most astonishing feature.

(Good or bad.)

My son just turned eight and on Sunday we met with the bishop for his baptism interview. Perhaps I should have insisted on Saturday [the-day-we-get-ready-for-Sunday] that he have a haircut or stuck to my weak decree of  “No Vans at church.” But I didn’t do any of those things and so he sat there, a thick swatch of hair blanketing his eyes, the toe of his faded shoes skimming the carpet back and forth underneath him.

He’s a quiet boy. So quiet that I think a lot of people assume that he’s a disrespectful kid. I frequently prompt him to answer questions and make eye contact and it feels silly to be reminding such a large child, but his heart is anxiety ridden, and his personality unsure, and when he grabs my hand through the fleece of an oversized sweatshirt, or still expects that I can carry him up the stairs to bed, I know his heart/mind/soul and what it thinks and feels. And I know it is pure and sweet and good.

The bishop talked and we listened. My son answered questions with the most imperceptible nods and suppressed mouth. The bishop paused at one point and smiled at my boy, “Wow, you are one quiet kid!” He said this as his eyes crinkled and welled, “But it’s ok because I was a really quiet kid too, and then they made me bishop and now I can’t stop talking.”

And there was a sudden moment that it was clear—the bishop saw my boy. The real boy. Not the old shoes, not the messy mop of hair, not the unwillingness to engage. He saw the boy inside, and the man he will be.

(And as a mom, I so appreciated that.)

I’ve glimpsed these moments too. One winter, driving downtown, I was one stoplight away from my destination when the traffic stopped. Though a few homeless people milled on the sidewalk outside my car, my heart began to hammer against my ribs as I watched a certain one. He was not different from any of the others, but something pulled me to him. The light changed to green and I quickly turned right and circled back around the block, praying aloud that he would still be there. He was, and I pulled up to him and rolled down the passenger window and called out. He walked towards my car as I reached money in my hand across the seat, and our eyes locked (eyes I will never forget) and what I said was “Merry Christmas,” but what I wanted to say and lacked courage for was, “You are my brother.”

He bowed his head at my offering, quiet gratitude or guilt for the sordid things my generosity would purchase, but I didn’t care, I needed to stop. I needed him to know he mattered, that I saw he was a child of God and part of me in the most basic and ethereal of all senses. And whether that exercise affirmed something in him or just me, I pulled away from the curb and burst into tears.

(And abandoned my errand all together. How could I after that sacred moment lost?)

I feel like my mother best explained it to me in the temple, the last few moments of being just her daughter, while we stood before a crystal sconce lit mirror in the bride’s room, all golden and soft shadow. Her hands fumbled with the edges of my dressing as she attempted the millions of buttons up my back and suddenly put her head in her hands and sobbed. “Mom?” I sought her reflection in the mirror. “I see you,” she said as she looked up. “I see what Heavenly Father sees. And I am honored.”

If we could really see what he sees, would we not be honored to be in the presence of so much nobility in spirit? Because that nobility lies in everyone: the couple, the mother, the quiet boy, the homeless man, the bride, you, them, your enemy, yourself. Perhaps we would love more, and more freely. Perhaps we would be stumbling over ourselves, lining up to serve one another. Perhaps we would just be more patient, kinder.

I wonder how this happens? How do we see God’s children as such every day? How do we see them as He sees them—their whole, real embodiment and true character—and not pick apart their parts?

And, have you ever had any moments like these?

Related posts:

1. My Husband Seems to Attract Them….
2. The light is red
3. Running with scissors

Scales of Justice

Justice and Mercy walk into a bar.

Justice overhears a customer order “another Shirley Temple, please.” Barkeep reminds the customer that he hasn’t paid for his last two yet.

Justice grabs the customer by the collar, yells, “You can’t pay your bill? You’re outta here!” and kicks him out the door.

Mercy goes out and drags the customer back in, orders a Shirley Temple for him, pays for it and pays his back tab as well.

Then, turning to Justice, Mercy grabs him by the collar, yells “You may be right, but why do you always have to be such a self-righteous, retentive, heartless jerk about it!?” and kicks him out the door.

Then Mercy goes out, drags Justice back in, puts salve on his scrapes, and buys him – and everyone else in the bar – a free Shirley Temple.

Which do you think are true about this (little lame) anecdote?

A) Neither Justice nor Mercy behaved very well.
B) Justice and Mercy behaved exactly as they should have, with Mercy having more chutzpah than he generally gets credit for.
C) In the end the blessings of a Temple are available to all.

This little romp leaves me musing on a couple wrestles I’ve had with the concepts of justice and mercy.

I learned about one in our Marriage and Family Relations Class taught in our Illinois ward by my friend, the fabulous Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife. One of the many challenges she says couples face is the insistence on “being right.”

Maybe you balk at the idea of letting some ridiculous pronouncement come out of your spouse’s mouth without the appropriate – and just – correction being made. I mean, really. To just let something that wrong/irrelevant/ungrammatical/insensitive, etc. go by unchecked? Never! The cause of truth is at stake!

Or maybe one of you trots out a parade of your partner’s past gaffes or mistakes whenever any new evidence of imperfection surfaces. Gotta hammer home the proof: one of you is perfect and the other, obviously, is not.

Yet, these situations where “justice” constantly trumps, if not mercy, at least kindness can corrode relationships. Sometimes the notion that you have to be right needs to be slapped upside the head. Use judgment, of course, but seek for connection, not for needing to be right all the time.

The other wrestle springs from my quibble with 2 Nephi 2:27.  In this verse we learn that we are free to “choose liberty and eternal life….or to choose captivity and death.” For me, most of my choices are not so stark. They are not between a good choice and a bad choice, but between two good choices. As my  son used to say “Who would take who in a fight?”: Prayer or action? Certainty or faith? Personal responsibility or delegation? Leniency or demanding high standards?

And even Justice or Mercy?

What experiences have you had with holding on to or relinquishing the need to “be right” in a relationship? With choices between good and bad? With choices between two goods? And, in particular, with Justice and Mercy?

Related posts:

1. A Paradox
2. Justice, Mercy, and Other Mysteries (Also, It’s Time to Send Your Submission to Our Journal)
3. Practicing Grace

We kept our First Estate. Presumably we’re keeping our Second Estate. But have you ever tried to offload Real Estate? For me selling our house in Massachusetts was an opportunity for friendship, interfaith bridging, and an exploration of the tokens and tchotchkes of our religions.

My husband accepted a job in Chicago and we had to sell our house in Belmont, MA. We cleaned up the place, hired a realtor, stuck the sign in the yard and prayed for the best.

At the time I worked at an upscale gift shop, The Crafty Yankee, in Lexington, MA, just kitty-corner from the Common where the first battle of the American Revolution was fought. My good friend and workmate Martha Busby, a Boston area Catholic with Irish roots, wanted to help us in our selling quest. One day at work she presented me with something special. It was a little plastic statue of Saint Joseph. “I just got him at the Catholic store for you. A priest blessed him so he should be good to go,” she said earnestly.

Huh?

Martha knew I was a Mormon, a Christian, a believer. “It’s a Catholic tradition,” she explained. “A priest blesses these statues and you bury them in the ground – upside down and facing the street for tough sells – you pray and have  faith and St. Joseph will speed up the buying process.”

I had never heard of this before but was delighted that Martha would trust me not to laugh at her or this notion. “What can it hurt?” she said with a wink and a smile.

I planted St. Joseph. The house sold within the month. Granted, this was before the real estate market tanked, but it was still pretty speedy.

When the house sold, I brought Martha a thank you present. I gave her a plastic Nephi action figure and a Book of Mormon with a note saying, “We Mormons believe in the power of buried things, too!” We laughed and hugged and felt that warm glow of sisterhood.

I loved this exchange for the closeness and commonality it brought to Martha and me. I loved it for the acknowledgement of our mutual faith in God and the respect we had for the idiosyncrasies of our traditions. I don’t quite know what to make of plastic St. Joseph statues – or of dashboard Liahonas for that matter. As long as I never bury my faith or covenants, I figure I’m still making progress in that 2nd estate anyway.

Got thoughts on unique missionary moments or reciprocal faith exchanges? The use and abuse of Mormon kitsch & knickknacks? Coping with our own odd traditions? Please share in a spirit of good will.

(For more on St. Joseph and real estate selling powers, check out http://nyti.ms/jKqxmA.)

Related posts:

1. Oh the Glitz and the Glamour!
2. Statue of Limitations
3. Practically Perfect in Every Way

Maddie safe in her father's arms

I’m feeling dizzy these days. My husband and I divide our time into seasons and spend winters and summers in Utah and springs and falls in Illinois. For the past three weeks, however, I’ve been in Boston. I just got back to Illinois last night and spent the morning at the temple for my Friday morning ordinance worker shift.

I can’t keep track of what state I’m in. The state of Utah? The state of Illinois? The state of Massachusetts? A state of confusion? A state of bliss?

All of the above.

As some of you may recall, last month I begged for your wisdom in “Pointers for Nana” as I got closer to the due date for my first grandbaby. Thanks for the deluge of good counsel. It has already come in handy.

Despite my daughter Britta’s confidence that her baby would arrive well before her due date of April 2nd, our beautiful Magdalena Chase Kimball Ingersoll (aka Maddie) took her exceedingly sweet time and arrived April 10th, just last Sunday. Everyone is healthy and beyond happy. And everything about this baby is exceedingly sweet. There is great rejoicing in the land!

It’s not just the time zone between Eastern and Central time that confuses me. It’s which generation am I in? The linear movement of time has morphed into something round and endless. I watched my daughter become a mother and had flashbacks to when I delivered her. (The resemblance between my daughter as a newborn and Maddie is astounding.) I kept thinking about my mother (who died in 1994) and about my being her daughter. I felt like all the women in my line back and back (and maybe forward) through time were there in the same place – the same state of bliss – welcoming Maddie with songs and blessings. And I, by proxy, got to cuddle and kiss her on behalf of them all.

No matter whether I was sorting onesies, providing compare-and-contrast samples of diaper wipes or reeling with the enormity of what my daughter has embarked on – what any mother embarks on – I was almost always red-eyed and verklempt. And inarticulate. That’s one reason why this month’s post is short.

At my temple shift this morning I had an assignment to participate in sealings. My first involvement was to act as a daughter to be sealed to her parents. In one of God’s amazing tender graces of synchronicity, the given names of the mother “I” was being sealed to was “Brita Magdl.” There I was, acting as a daughter being sealed to my “mother” Brita Magdl when the real me is the mother of Britta and grandmother to Magdelena.

God’s course, the scriptures tell us, is one eternal round. How can I not be a little dizzy with wonder and awe as I see Him at work in these miracles of life?

Related posts:

1. Pointers for Nana
2. Another One (Bites My Bust?)
3. Justice and Mercy Walk into a Bar

Then, in a huge explosion of emotional glitter and figurative fireworks, I became engaged.

I cannot – for the life of me – remember any of my post ideas. Not one.

Dinner has been late every night. I’ve put product labels on backwards, upside down, and even on the wrong item. I meant to have this post up hours ago, but… well… haven’t.

I’m not myself. Thankfully, not one person has had a problem with my fuzzy, errant actions or lack of concentration. Because, it turns out, everyone loves a love story.

**************

There are so many parts of a “love story”. All the firsts that are encountered, fumbled, missed, celebrated – the first meeting, the first date, first kiss, first fight, first time “I knew”. The ebb and flow of lives and souls towards each other and away, the distractions, hazards and antagonists that cause the wary or oblivious heart to stumble and bruise – all combine to make each love story unique.

I like asking people about how they met their partners/spouses/boyfriends. I’m fascinated by which movies or characters, books or music people find beautiful or true love stories. The variations in what is seen to be romantic is astonishing, as is the difference in dating habits amongst people I know. Hollywood certainly knows the allure of a love story, though what I class as excellent love stories (Monsoon Wedding, Stranger Than Fiction and the BBC’s The Taming of the Shrew for example) may not follow the same formula or be what you class as love stories – but they are love stories to me.

I now have my own love story. It’s still being written, with luminous ink freshly splashed over the astonished, blooming chambers of my heart.

What’s yours?

Why are people fascinated in love stories? Do you have a movie, book, song or part thereof that is a beautiful love story to you? What makes a great love story?

Related posts:

1. Bragging
2. It’s All About Poop
3. Spellbound by Story

Michelle Larson is:  wife, mom to 5, future adopted mom to a child from Ethiopia (waiting for referral), director of a non-profit called Grow.Learn.Give., sister of twenty-six (counting in-laws), daughter to four, teacher of lots of church kids, runner- skier- dancer- writer for herself, health teacher to anyone that will listen, chaeuffer and slave to five little piggies. ….all rolled up into 72 inches.

“I met the greatest guy at the ward service project today….too bad he’s short.” That’s how my love story began circa fall 1992. However, my roommate was the one who said it; she shares not only my Amazon-woman stature, but also my first name. We were the “Shellies,” one with one l-y and the other with two ll-ies. We went through many a date-less weekend together while our smaller-statured, less intimidating (so they say), more dateable roommates painted the Provo town red. Yes, we were tall, loud, opinionated, older (?), busy, and getting masters degrees. I can see why we could scare some folks.I owe my married life to that Shellie with one l-ie. Every love story is a gift, and every love story has an angel. She is ours. She not only befriended my future husband, but she also introduced us and cheered us on when things got rough. How could things get rough for a couple made in heaven? Well, you see, there are four and a half inches of femur bone length that became a real stumbling block in our love story. I like to blame all precedent love stories, not to mention every romantic movie known to mankind. It is just how it is; the boy is taller than the girl. He protects her and shields her and puts his arms around her shoulders as they stand for pictures. He bends down to kiss her and leads her around the dance floor in a flowing waltz. Tall, dark and handsome seems to be the dream of most, and sadly, it was mine.

The love story begins like every love story: flirting and sarcasm and dating each other’s friends. We admired each other so much that we would set each other up with best friends and even siblings. Soon, I noticed that every social engagement I had somehow involved him. The number of friends invited on our “group dates” soon dwindled down to the two of us. The two of us is where we were most comfortable. I suppose it was after I made him an Orange Julius one morning after a bike ride that we decided we could and maybe should be alone. The chemistry was unbearable and yes, we needed to maybe even date. Don’t think this “Orange-Julius” moment was love at first sight—this had been festering for years now.

After that fateful morning I decided that if this is what fate had to deal me then I was going to make my poor lover suffer. I became very hard-to-get, evasive, and downright mean. Insecurities, my insecurities drove this. Can you blame me? I had waited twenty-five years for this guy…and he’s short?!

This is where Shelly with one l-y stepped in to save the day. She was secretly having those “Don’t give up on her, you are meant to be” talks in the Tanner Building during their grueling number-cruncher accounting classes. She reminded him that this girl, yes, the tall one that treated him like dirt, hated numbers, slept too long, spent more than she made, was uncultured, spoke ungrammatically, and was chronically late was the one for him. By some miracle, it was these talks that kept him on my leash.

All the while the she-angel was telling me how wonderful this boy was. She read my Mia Maid list of “Traits of My Future Husband” and pointed out how every trait was covered, except for the shallow things, like tall, broad-shouldered, basketball player, dark skinned, etc. She spent extra time on the traits like loyal, smart, funny, likes vegetables, and extra, extra time on the recent addition of the trait ”loves me.” “He really loves you, Michelle, he really, really loves you.”

An inner-height love story is much the same as any love story. While dating, I grew to love and respect him and yearn for his every breath. I got those same butterflies when he entered the room that all lovers get. We talked and swooned non-stop for months. We used every excuse to be with each other: cleaning, eating, studying, driving, walking, exercising. We knew we couldn’t live apart for one more month, let alone the rest of forever.

We learned to kiss sitting down (or lying down, but don’t tell our kids that), we never danced without laughing, we could trade shoes and most articles of clothing, we took pictures sitting down or on a slope or in soft dirt/sand so I could squish down four inches. We took advantage of curbs to satisfy that need to wrap our arms around each other in the traditional romantic way. We surprised our closest friends and family with our engagement—most people thought we were just best friends. We were and still are.

Fifteen years of a loving and “easy” marriage are a testament to the fact that all good gifts are made in heaven, but sometimes the package is different. Why I came in a six-foot package and my husband a five-foot, eight-inch package, I’ll never know. But, I’ll never doubt the joy the gift of marriage has brought to my life or that the angel (Shellie with one l-y) was directly sent to deliver this gift to me.

Related posts:

1. My Secret Crush
2. Remembering Dad
3. From the Inside Looking Out

Every year about this time I feel the pressure build. What am I going to do for The Family Christmas Letter?

There are a lot of styles of family Christmas letters. One of them is Brag Rags. Of course we enjoy the highlights of our friends’ years. It’s the kind where the “typical accomplishments” involve advances in world peace, cures for diseases and callings-and-elections-made-sure that leave me quaking in my humble elfin boots.

There are Grinch Greetings. Some people share their rants about how life has mistreated them this year (again) and detail their disses and disappointments. These don’t make for jolly reading, but they provide interesting psychological profiles.

I appreciate Homespun Holiday Howdies. While I may not retain the names of these writers’ prescriptions meds, their bushel count for garden beans, or the number of times they called a plumber this year, I’m glad they share with me the minutia of their precious lives. A steady diet of it might drive me nuts, but once a year at Christmas is a joy.

On Downer, On Blitzen Christmas letters can be wrenching. Some years are just awful and there simply is no festive way to pass on news of diagnoses or disasters. 2007 was our year for that. When you have a few minutes you can check out the online version of our efforts that year at http://kimballsdeepchristmas.blogspot.com/. My hallelujah-he’s-still-alive-husband figured out the technology. I’m usually a scissors and paper gal.

Whatever form they take, I love getting annual hold-in-my-hand updates from my amazing extended posse. Truth be told, I love making them despite the pressure. It’s a good blend for my artsy and authory sides and a joyful way to share the love.

When creating my own Christmas letters I have five golden rings rules:

1. Be Creative

2. Keep it brief – under one page of text.

3. Entertain/Amuse

4. Don’t make anything too labor intensive

5. Never require extra postage

Over the years I have sent out crosswords, jigsaw puzzles, word searches, board games, song lyrics, Sudoku (one which I discovered too late was impossible to solve; and, as penance, one the following year that I knew would work), cartoons, a mini-advent calendar and more. I think I only broke the “no extra postage” rule once. I have broken the labor intensity rule too many times to count.

What do YOU do for your family Christmas letters? What kinds have you received that stand out in your memory (for good or ill)? How do you feel about e-Christmas cards or blog holiday greetings as a substitute for mailed ones? Have you made any noteworthy connections by sending family Christmas letters? How do you word your spiritual holiday enthusiasm in letters that may be going to people who aren’t “into that sort of thing”?

Related posts:

1. My Pastoral Life
2. Living By the Rules
3. Posts of Christmas Past