December 2018 - LPNI

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December 2018

LPNI Devotion – December 2018

Decluttering for Christmas

When our children were young, for me to be able to work part time as a registered nurse in a local nursing home, I had to work one holiday. I chose to work 3-11 on Christmas Day. By this time of day, our children would be getting tired of the toy excitement of Christmas, and we didn’t have family near us to have a big traditional dinner. So, I was content to work this shift. What I didn’t know was that after I had left for work that Christmas Day, my husband had our children clean out their closets! On Christmas Day, really?!? They thought they were being punished and “celebrating” Christmas in a “work camp” environment!!! Bo, my husband, said that after the initial shock of having to do this onerous chore, the children actually enjoyed it because they found past favorites and “treasures” that they had long forgotten.

Thinking about cleaning the clutter out of closets, makes me think that we should declutter our lives during this spiritually eventful time and concentrate on the true meaning of Christmas, the Birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus! We need to relax some on the traditional hectic festivities of buying gifts, planning and attending parties, and preparing for the several course traditional dinner. All of this can be fun but it also can be so very stressful. We can become so engrossed with the trimmings of Christmas that we almost forget that this is the time when a young woman from Nazareth, almost at the end of her pregnancy and her husband are walking and riding an uncomfortable donkey to Bethlehem to be counted in the census which would probably increase their taxes. At last they arrive to find there are no rooms available to them in the local inns, so they find a barn in which she will deliver her son, our Lord Jesus Christ. They weren’t thinking about the census-taking clutter in their lives. They were following God’s plan and trying handle the birth of the very special baby which they knew would change the world forever.

Can clutter impact our lives for the better? No, especially at this time of year we need to declutter from the holiday trappings so that we can fully concentrate on the true meaning of Christmas, which is the Birth of our Lord Jesus.

In Luke 2: 6-7 we read, And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

With decluttered Christmas blessings to all,

Lana B. Wingate, MSN, RN

Parish Nurse at King of Glory Lutheran Church in Williamsburg, Virginia

Parish Nurse Representative for the 35^th District of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod