DECEMBER 2nd

DECEMBER 2nd:
• Thought/story:
The Stomach Flu Christmas is a great story for whenever you’re feeling sorry for yourself. You’ll soon realize your holidays can’t possibly be as stressed as this poor sister’s!

• Scripture: Luke 7:36-50
Event: Forgiving a Sinful Woman
Jesus Christ was forgiving

• Recipe: Super good sugar cookies w/buttercream frosting
This recipe makes a lot of cookies! Don’t roll out too thin and don’t overbake.
Ingredients: 1 C. butter, 1C. sugar, 3 eggs, 3 tsp. baking powder, 3 1/2 C. flour, 2 tsp. vanilla. Frosting: 1 lb (a bag) powder sugar, 1/8 C. milk, 1 tsp. vanilla, 1/3 C. soft butter.

Instructions: Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs. Stir in vanilla. Add dry ingredients. Bake on greased cookie sheet at 375 degrees for 8-10 min. For frosting, cream the above ingredients in a mixing bowl until smooth. Add food coloring as you like and decorate!

• Tradition: Here are some Christmas ideas from other parents around the country: “Use a chain made of construction paper (to make an Advent Calendar). Make the chain twenty-four links long, one link for each day from December 1 to December 24. Attach it to a construction paper Christmas tree and hang it on the wall near the child’s bed. Each night before the child goes to bed, she removes one link from the bottom of the chain. As the chain gets smaller; the child gets more and more excited, until finally the last link is removed and it is Christmas Eve. My daughter is eager to go to bed because she can remove a link.” (From Sharon, Penn Valley, CA)

“Before Christmas, the children are always saying, “How many more days ‘till Christmas, Mommy?’ In desperation, I put up a little clothesline in the kitchen and put clothespins on the line. Each day, we take down one clothespin so the children can see at a glance how many more days until Christmas.” (Hazel, Santa Ana, CA)

• Small Gift Idea:
Hot Chocolate Gift Bags: Use the brown paper sacks and decorate however you’d like. In each bag place a small box or packet of hot chocolate (you can buy these in bulk in some stores), marshmallows, a mug filled with candy and tissue paper, The tag reads: “Your friendship has warmed the whole year through; I hope this hot chocolate does the same for you.”
STOMACH FLU CHRISTMAS
Janene Wolsey Baadsgaard

My most memorable Christmas was the one I now affectionately call the stomach flu Christmas. Six weeks before the cold Christmas Eve, I had given birth to my son Jacob. This pregnancy had been particularly long and difficult because my doctor had ordered bed rest to prevent Jacob’s premature delivery. After seven pregnancies in eight years, this Christmas season found me exhausted and discouraged. It seemed I didn’t have the time, health, or money to do the things I thought were truly important for the kind of Christmas I wanted my children to have.
I truly wanted the picture-perfect Christmas I’d seen in Hollywood movies or read about in books. But a postpartum bleeding problem, a lingering infection, and a house full of overactive young children all left me feeling overwhelmed. After paying off the doctor and hospital, we didn’t have much money left over for gifts. I’d been sewing dolls from cloth scraps and painting blocks and toy trucks from leftover wood ends in the wee hours between late-night feedings and other fussy sessions with my newborn son.
Then on Christmas Eve, it hit like a blast of arctic air. . .the dreaded stomach flu. All my children suddenly became violently ill. They were too young or too weak to reach the bathroom, so I rushed from bed to crib diapering, changing sheets, comforting the best I could.
Then the illness hit me just as hard. I soon found myself unable to stand without fainting—which thing I learned the hard way. I must have hit my head on the corner of our nightstand passing out, because my forehead was throbbing and a lump was forming when I woke up on the floor in my bedroom.
For a moment I lay motionless on the floor, paralyzed with nausea, cramping, and throbbing pain. Then I tried to figure out what I should do. If I called someone for help, I would expose friends or family to the dangerous condition of the ice-covered roads and this awful illness. My husband had been out of town on a business trip and should have been home hours ago. Because he hadn’t called, I worried he might be stranded on the road somewhere or in an accident.
I felt so sick, alone, and afraid.
“Mom! Mom! Help me!” I heard my children crying and retching in their rooms.
“Dear Father in Heaven,” I prayed. “Why does everything have to be so hard, especially on Christmas Eve?”
“Mommy! I need you!”
“Please give me the strength, “I prayed. “My children need me.”
I raised my head and felt another fainting spell coming on, so I maneuvered my body into kneeling position. If I kept my head down, I could slowly crawl from bed to bed. Hours passed with no break.
Around midnight, I heard the front door open and my husband trudging toward the back of the house. I was laying in a near-fetal position on the floor in the hallway, remaining next to the children’s bedrooms so I could hear and respond to their needs. My newborn son, Jacob, was wrapped in a blanket and cradled in the bend of my body. My husband rushed to the bathroom, then to the bedroom, where he collapsed on the bed and moaned. He wouldn’t be able to help. He was sick as the rest of us.
Just then I heard the pendulum clock in the family room begin the first of twelve soft chimes. When the clock grew silent, I knew Christmas had come. I didn’t have the strength to put the gifts under the tree and the stockings were still empty, but my children were sleeping peacefully for the first time that evening. I felt the slow gentle breaths of my infant son on my neck. Clouds parted in the night sky outside just enough to let a faint bit of moonlight filter into the hallway.
“It’s Christmas,” I thought.
Then, as if someone had quietly placed a blanket fresh from the dryer all around me, I felt instantly warm. I remembered another mother and child . . . another Christmas when everything didn’t work out as planned . . . a Christmas when all the inns were full, when the Savior of the world , Creator and Almighty God, was born in a stable because there was no room.
I knew that the babe in the manger was my personal Savior. I knew I was loved and that I was not alone. Christ understood my situation because he had experienced all that I was feeling personally. He would never leave me comfortless.
I will never forget the stomach flu Christmas. It taught me that life seldom works out the way we plan---and that is the wonder of it all. For only sickness and pain are we awake to the gift of health and love. The stomach flu Christmas taught me that God wants me to grow up, to understand that life is suppose to be a series of problems, even on Christmas Eve; for pain opens the door to understanding. It taught my children that they have a mother who loves them. Perhaps that deep, abiding love was the greatest gift I had to offer. Maybe what I had to give my children wasn’t Hollywood . . . but it was real.
Other Christmas Eves have come and gone with the more common, frantic preparations for that much awaited morning, but the stomach flu Christmas stands out because I know there is joy even in sorrow . . . that the daily miracles of life, health, love, and family should not be taken for granted, not even for a moment. In the stillness of that night, I learned that only in darkness does the light and love of the Savior shine brightest.

Janene Wolsey Baadsgaard is the author of six books, including “Families Who Laugh . . . Last, Why Does My Mother’s Day Potted Plant Always Die?, and Family Finances for the Flabbergasted. She has been home and family editor for the Utah County Journal and family life columnist for the Deseret News. In addition, she has written numerous feature articles for the New Era and the Ensign magazines. She teaches writing and literature classes at Utah Valley State College. She is the mother of eight children.