The Christmas Visitor

Sometimes the wierdest things come along and make you slow down. The Sunday evening before Christmas, our family came home from church to leftover pizza from Papa Murphy's... which was, at the time, pretty decent for leftovers. However, a few hours later, a little visitor came knocking. First, it visited Hope and then Stan and a couple of hours later, he came to see me as well. When we woke up the next morning to find he had also visited Lily. For some reason, Banner was the only one who didn't receive a visit from this notorious creature. Who was it you ask? Well, we can just call him the Christmas visitor, who came in the form of a rather nasty stomach flu. Believe me, you do not want all the details. By Christmas Eve, all five of us were sick... and I mean sick. Over the course of that week, we managed to introduce our visitor to seven of our extended family members (Sorry everyone - it was a gift we did not mean to give). After getting over that, Lily and I have been coughing our little heads off. Sickness aside, I realized that it really made us slow down. We watched (and listened to) the kids play, hung out and watched movies, let them have picnics in the floor. We went to bed earlier and slept later. We stayed in our jammies all day long. And you know what? It was nice. I was actually blessed by it. So, while I'm not necessarily fond of the stomach flu, I am thankful for the downtime it allowed us to have as a family. It will be a Christmas we will remember - when the Lord used a virus to help us slow down and see Him. I hope your Christmas was very blessed. May you see Him as the new year begins.