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    25 Days of Thriving Through Christmas: An Advent Devotional for Adoptive and Foster Parents
    25 Days of Thriving Through Christmas: An Advent Devotional for Adoptive and Foster Parents
    25 Days of Thriving Through Christmas: An Advent Devotional for Adoptive and Foster Parents
    Ebook119 pages1 hour

    25 Days of Thriving Through Christmas: An Advent Devotional for Adoptive and Foster Parents

    By Kathleen Guire

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    About this ebook

    25 Days of Thriving through Christmas: An Advent Devotional for Adoptive and Foster Families, provides an insightful, practical, and encouraging resource for parents navigating the Advent season. The book fills a void for adoptive and foster families as to ideas and guidance of not just "surviving" the Christmas season with children who have experienced trauma but to "thriving." With applicable daily Scripture readings to practical suggestions, this tool for helping families will become an annual tradition!

    • Included are daily tips, tools, and scriptures. These tips and tools will help your family thrive, not just survive!
    • Weekly readings just for you parent - on Joseph, Mary, Wisemen, and Jesus with a thought-provoking lesson
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKathleen Guire
    Release dateNov 19, 2019
    ISBN9781977803054
    25 Days of Thriving Through Christmas: An Advent Devotional for Adoptive and Foster Parents

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      Book preview

      25 Days of Thriving Through Christmas - Kathleen Guire

      An Invitation and Introduction

      Free E- Course

      I’d like to offer you a gift this holiday season. I have created a companion course with tips and some videos just for you.

      Click on the icon above and I’ll send you the link to the course! You’ll also receive advent tags, one for each tip in the book!

      Introduction

      She stood at the stove in her pink and blue plaid robe, tied tightly at the waist, her dark pixie cut askew from the pillow. She leaned toward the teapot, willing for it to whistle. On the cutting board cranberry orange bread waited to be sliced and toasted. We kids would lather the slices with butter and watch it seep into every crevice. Mom was always the first one up and the last one ready, thinking of everyone except herself. Her porcelain skin, dark hair and full lips gave her an Audrey Hepburn-ish look, but her heart more resembled Mother Theresa. She served the poor in the same way she served her family, with every ounce of herself. As a teen, sometimes I wished she served the poor less and me more, but as an adult I know serving the Lord was her true passion. She cared for the least of these because that is what He told her to do. She served Him by caring for the broken, the outcast, because she had been broken and outcast. Mom understood the truth of the Gospel that Jesus came for the lost, to heal the broken hearted. She passed her heart on to her children. She passed her traditions on, too. At her insistence, we read the passages from Luke every Christmas morning, a tradition the Guire family continues to this day. There are so many Christmas seasons I hear an Amy Grant Christmas song and burst into tears. My mom has been gone for over twenty years and yet, a sight, a sound, a feeling takes me back. I see her standing by the stove or holding a mug of hot water to keep her hands warm. I revisit Christmas memories again and again just to catch a glimpse of her and ponder the meaning of it all.

      Standing around a grand piano at a cast party for a production of Scrooge singing Christmas carols, sends me to the ghosts of Christmas past, standing in the choir loft of St. Patrick’s singing Joy to the World on Christmas Eve at midnight mass. I thought those times were so ordinary, yet so magical and permanent. I thought they would never end. But, they did end. Again, years later, with my own children, we lit the Advent candles, read the readings and sang the Christmas carols. Oh, those days when I was cranky or tired and pushed through anyway, I am glad. The ghosts of my Christmas past paint a picture I am happy to revisit, not ones I regret. That’s why I’m writing this book for you, dear friend, 25 Days of Thriving Through Christmas, to build memories for each of us, that we can revisit and weep with tears of sorrow that they are over and joy that we have them tucked away to pull out and read at any moment.

      When Jerry and I adopted a sibling group of four from Poland, the holidays took on a new bent. Kids from hard places often do not know the meaning of celebration. We have to teach them and be patient while they sit on the sidelines or hide under the table. We parents must gently coax the child from darkness into the light without overwhelming them at the same time. It’s like walking a tightrope with no pole in the middle of a crowded mall during Christmas season. The slightest noise or smell can set these kids off and then everything is out of kilter. Some parents decide not to make any traditions or participate in anything because their kids don’t want to or they are afraid. Years from now ghosts of Christmas past will haunt these families with the vacuous vacuum of silence. Other families do the opposite and participate in everything, throwing their kid’s universe out of whack. No one enjoys the holidays. Mom is cranky and says things like, This just doesn’t work for me, I give up! Kids are in survival mode, lashing out, melting down and the home becomes a war zone.

      Let’s find some balance, remember my Mom in the plaid flannel robe slicing cranberry orange bread while children waited at the table with Christmas music playing in the background? Those are the kind of memories we want to make. Here’s a key point, we can’t expect perfection. We can’t count on everything going right on every outing or cookie day. What we can do is persevere. Do it anyway. Many of the stories I share about my kids seemed a disaster when they were ‘live’, but add the lens of years and maturity and my kids look back on those times as cherished Christmas memories. So, join me in THRIVING through Christmas. Each day read a tip and a short Biblical application for Mom and Dad. For each of the four weeks, there is a chapter for more reflection and deeper thought and study. Thanks for joining me!

      Chapter 1

      Joseph

      We had an All Saints Day party

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