{"id":1616,"date":"2014-12-22T01:47:28","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T01:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kandynolesstevens.com\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2014-12-22T01:47:28","modified_gmt":"2014-12-22T01:47:28","slug":"6-days-that-christmas-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/?p=1616","title":{"rendered":"6 days: that Christmas letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not every family sends Christmas cards, and I get it on many different levels. I even have some friends that attempt\u00a0New Year\u2019s cards\u00a0which eventually arrive in the mailbox around Valentine\u2019s Day. It counts in my book because the year is still relatively new.\u00a0 Trust me, no judgment here as we sometimes have Blizzards from Dairy Queen for supper. NO. JUDGEMENT.<\/p>\n

Having had pen pals as a teenager, I am still a big fan of real postal service mail, especially Christmas cards and newsletters. I enjoy reading each and every one. My aunt\u00a0who passed away a few years back would tell me how much she loved receiving my card. Much before I knew I had a writer\u2019s voice, she knew<\/em>. In her gentle way, she would tell me to keep writing because my newsletter was\u00a0her favorite each year. She loved watching my children grow in all the pictures, much the same as I do annually\u00a0with the cards arriving in my mailbox.<\/p>\n

Of course, every family has that friend or relative\u00a0who shares a little too much. My sweetie and I would savor those letters. Waiting until the kiddos were snuggled in bed, we\u00a0would giggle and snort through the\u00a0retelling of a bad case of gout or my personal favorite: toe fungus.\u00a0When I referred to the difficult blog I had recently read regarding Christmas cards and not sending them to grieving people, I originally thought the title was\u00a0admonishing card senders\u00a0for fabricating Norman Rockwell like\u00a0families. Intrigued by the article, I read it in its entirety even though I could not\u00a0identify with everything that author said.<\/p>\n

I originally thought the article would be about\u00a0not\u00a0trying to portray your family as perfect, and instead I accidentally stumbled into an article about helping (or from the author\u2019s viewpoint, hurting) families grieving the loss of a child. The concept of being real (okay, maybe not sharing about toe fungus) is refreshingly honest to me. Personally, I think that is the part of all of my talks, speeches, and blogs that resonates with people. I struggle, but more importantly, I share my struggles. <\/strong><\/em>If that is not your style, again: no judgment here.<\/p>\n

I am far from perfect (and so too are all the people that share a home with me). We all have our moments, yet somehow we scrape our broken pieces back together and keep going. Isn\u2019t that what Christmas is all about?<\/em><\/strong> A perfect baby came so we didn’t have to even try to be perfect. He came to give us the hope that would become the glue, putting all the brokenness we experience in perspective. For that, I am truly thankful because I know we don’t have to be (or even pretend to be)\u00a0perfect for God’s love to reach us.<\/p>\n

So in the spirit of being real, I am sharing my sister-in-law\u2019s absolute favorite Christmas\u00a0picture of\u00a0my kids, which was\u00a0taken quite a few years ago.\u00a0 By a few year’s I mean longer than Sally Gal has been alive.\u00a0 So enjoy . . . my perfectly imperfect family!<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The real Team Stevens<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not every family sends Christmas cards, and I get it on many different levels. I even have some friends that attempt\u00a0New Year\u2019s cards\u00a0which eventually arrive in the mailbox around Valentine\u2019s Day. It counts in my book because the year is still relatively new.\u00a0 Trust me, no judgment here as we sometimes have Blizzards from Dairy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[66,105,1127,274,304,1128,1129,1130],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}