"God Bless Our Christmas": A Giveaway for the Day Your Child Gets a Diagnosis

My sweet friend Hannah who ate chocolate chips out of the bag with me on the last night of the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writer’s Conference and won the award for best blog is an actual real book-on-the-shelf writer.

She wrote this sweet story and its accompaniments: God Bless Our Easter and God Bless You and Good Night. Beautiful board books for familes, not just children. She used vivid words and a soothing rhythm to remind us in God Bless Our Christmas who is the reason we have all these blessings to enjoy.

“The Christmas carols that we sing

Are full of joy and love.

I have such cheer this time of year.

It comes from God above.”

–except from God Bless Our Christmas

I cuddled up on the couch last week to read this with Amelia, my four year old, and her best friend Ellie. They took a break from the ponies in the dollhouse to tuck into each of my sides and hear the words. Amelia liked the penguins best. Ellie liked the polar bears. I liked the simplicity that so often gets overlooked in our busy holiday.

But most of all I liked having a normal moment with my baby girl. Normalcy has become a thing of the recent past for us in the last few days. I suppose that’s common–because when you get news that’s hard and uncertain, a new normal develops.

When I wrote these words to those who bear sadness this Christmas, I didn’t know how true they would become for me–
Let this season of love put you back together again.

In the midst of uncertainty and fear, we are welcoming the arms of love that have wrapped tight around our family during these last few days.

Last week, I took my four year old for a stat CT scan and prayed only for an answer to why she had stopped using her right hand and begun stuttering and being clumsy. The test revealed that Amelia has an arteriovenous malformation (AVM). It’s a scary moment to realize your mother’s intuition is right. That, yes, there is something very wrong and it might get worse before it gets better.

But here’s the truth of our diagnosis. She will get better. This is a treatable condition that we still don’t know about completely and there’s still more testing to be done. But she will get better. Even if that better means a surgery or a drug regiment or who knows what. They tell us we’re the best case diagnosis for something being wrong in her brain.

And I’m scared out of my mind that it will be nothing or something or anything. I’m scared I won’t be strong enough for her, for my husband, for my other girls. I’m scared I’ll run out of energy to give.

But I don’t have to have enough of me to go around. I have a great big God who formed her and knows her and formed me and knows me. He knows what we need and what we can handle. He’s given us a network of friends and family who are already begging for jobs to do, already bringing meals, already replacing my favorite lost pair of earrings.

God Bless Our Christmas indeed.

So today I’d like to spread a little Christmas love. I’m giving away one copy of God Bless Our Christmas. Winner will be chosen at random from comments left on the blog. You can comment on Facebook too, if you like, but I won’t pool entries from there. One location is all I can handle.

Tell me whose Christmas would you like to bless?