I sat in church last Sunday morning just before the service began looking around at the beautiful greenery. There were red velvet bows on Christmas wreaths with pine cones, red candles with glass hurricane lanterns and Christmas trees with white lights. As I took in the entire scene, I smiled at its beauty.

Suddenly, my eye was drawn to one of the Christmas trees up front. A strand of its lights had gone out leaving an unlit portion on the tree. A choir member was fiddling with it trying to get it to come back on and was successful.

During the service, my eye was drawn back to that same tree, and I noticed that same strand of lights had stopped working again. It wasn’t important, I know, but it bothered me. And so….I prayed.

I asked God to turn those lights back on, to give me a visible sign that He was present in that sanctuary. It wasn’t that I didn’t think He was there. He promises us in Hebrews 13:5 “never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” I know that God is with me all the time. But for some reason…on that morning…I needed Him to SHOW me in a way that was tangible. And He gave me more than I asked for.

I sat there staring at the lights and praying for them to come back on, and after a very brief time, while I was still praying………they did. I smiled as tears came to my eyes and I thanked God for answering my prayer. I felt such joy that He would do that for me.

Sometime later, my eyes were drawn back to the tree, and once again, the lights were out. I felt my earlier joy begin to ebb, but at that moment, God spoke to my heart. He said, “My child, those lights do not represent Me. They are temporal. They can not last. My light is eternal. It is forever. It can not dim. It can not be put out.” “Thank you, Lord,” I said. My smile returned for it is that knowledge that should bring us joy.

When I returned the following evening for the Christmas Eve service, that strand of lights was still out. My smile, however, did not fade. My joy comes from the fact that I serve a God whose Son lives in my heart and whose light is eternal.

The parenting books didn’t tell me how to deal with the fallout of telling my daughter the truth about Santa Claus (see previous post titled “Santa Claus”). It would seem that in my bid to be honest with my daughter when she asked me if Santa Claus is real, I have now taken the joy out of Christmas for her. About once per week, we have a discussion about how Christmas isn’t the same anymore, she cries, and she wishes she still believed in Santa Claus. Yesterday she told me that she wished she had never asked me if Santa was real.

I told her that I was very sorry that she was upset. That being a parent isn’t easy. Sometimes Mommy’s and Daddy’s have to make choices. They do the best they can and hope they make the right one. My six year old daughter looked me straight in the eye, while crying I might add, and said, “According to my calculations (this is her new favorite phrase)….According to my calculations, you didn’t make the right one.”

What exactly am I supposed to say to that? I have had all the discussions with her about Jesus being the real reason for our joy during the Christmas season. We’ve talked about how the “spirit of Christmas” lives in our hearts, etc.,…etc.,….etc. None of this seems to matter to her. Most of her friends still believe in Santa and are asking her if she believes in him, too. She doesn’t like being put in this position, and I can’t say that I blame her. She knows that Mommy has told her not to lie, but I’ve also told her not to talk about it to other kids who still believe in Santa. So, like me, when presented with the question, what is she supposed to do? Like me, she told the the truth…no, she doesn’t believe in Santa. This is a lot for a six year old to have to bear.

I, of course, being the one who has forced this situation upon her, feel like a complete and total heel now. For those of you who thought you were in the running for “Bad Mommy of the Year Award,” you can stop losing sleep now because a winner has been chosen.

“Yes, Dr. Sears, I did tell my daughter that Santa isn’t real when she was only six years old. Yes, it is my fault that she is now in the position of having to either lie to her friends or tell them the truth and risk their scorn when she says that she doesn’t believe in Santa Claus anymore. Yes, my honesty has caused her to feel the joy of Christmas is no more. Go ahead and call Child Protective Services. I’m obviously not fit to be a mother.”

Ok…ok, so I’m being a bit melodramatic here. But, truth be told, when I’m looking into her little face as the crocodile tears stream down her cheeks and she tells me it wasn’t the right choice, it breaks my heart, and I couldn’t feel any worse. So much so that I began to question whether or not I had made the right decision. Should I have looked her straight in the eye and said, “Yes, Honey, Santa is real?” Then she could have had the joy of believing a bit longer.

As I thought about it more, though, I realized that even knowing what I know now, I still would have done the same thing. Not lieing to her was not the wrong decision. And God, in His infinite love, confirmed that for me this morning in my devotion time.

I was reading from an advent devotional, and the author mentioned about how there are 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs…one for each day of the month. Imagine how much wisdom we would carry with us if we read one chapter each day. I thought, well, it’s day 12…why not? I’ll start with Chapter 12.

As I was reading, my eyes hit upon verse 17. It said, “A truthful witness gives honest testimony, but a false witness tells lies.” I continued to read and verse 19 said, “Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.” And then, the one I needed the most. Verse 22 said, “The Lord detests lying lips, but He delights in men who are truthful.” (NIV)

Note it doesn’t say, “except for when it involves telling your six year old the truth about Santa Claus.” It simply says, “The Lord detests lying lips….”

Thanks God, I needed that. My daughter is upset with me. I know it won’t be the last time I make a choice that she is unhappy with and thinks “is the wrong one.” But God didn’t give her to me so that I could be her friend. He made me her mother. It is my job to train her in His ways, even when it hurts.

She also needs to be able to trust that when she asks me a question, she doesn’t have to wonder whether or not Mommy is going to tell her the truth. Some may think I’m being too literal about this, that I’m blowing it way out of proportion. But, I don’t think so. Where does the line get drawn and how do you determine when it’s not okay and when it is? The answer is, you don’t.

Sticking to what God says we should do in His Word may not always be the easiest path, but it will always be the right one. That is what I hope to teach my daughter in all of this.

My family has been doing the Christmas movie craze this year. We’ve seen Santa Clause 1, 2, and 3, The Polar Express, and Enchanted. I’m sure we will not stop until we have seen It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and who knows what else? While Enchanted isn’t really a Christmas movie per se, I noticed that it shares what seems to be a common theme in each of these movies….the need to believe in something or someone even though there may not be any tangible evidence that the object of the belief is real.

In the first Santa Claus movie, Scott Calvin first can’t accept that he has become Santa Claus. Then, his ex-wife and her husband don’t believe that Scott is Santa Claus. It is Scott’s son, Charlie, who believes all along that he has experienced his father being Santa and helps the adults in the movie finally believe what Charlie has known all along.

In the second Santa Claus movie, Scott, who has now been Santa for about 10 years, must find a wife or stop being Santa forever. He falls in love with Charlie’s principal, Carol Newman, who doesn’t even like Christmas. In what I think is the best line of the movie, Charlie shows her the snow globe his dad gave him in Santa Clause 1 that allowed Charlie to see his dad wherever he was anytime he wanted. When Charlie shows the globe to Ms. Newman, it comes to life and Charlie says, “Sometimes seeing isn’t believing. Believing is seeing.”

In The Polar Express, a young boy has doubts about whether or not Santa is real. One night he boards a train with other children bound for the North Pole on Christmas Eve. The theme of the movie is you can’t hear the “bells” of Christmas unless you believe. When finally he decides that he does in fact believe, he hears the bells again and Santa tells him, “the true spirit of Christmas lies in your heart.”

Miracle on 34th Street chronicles a young girl, Susan, who does not believe in Santa Claus because her mother, Doris, has told her he is not real. An older gentlemen enters the picture claiming to be Kris Kringle and looking very much like Santa Claus. Unexplained incidents begin to occur and in the end Susan and her mother both believe in Santa.

Enchanted chronicles a fairy tale character, Giselle, who becomes a real person in modern day New York. Just before leaving Andalasia, her fairy tale homeland, she finds her true love. She believes the entire movie that he is coming to find her in this land so far away from home.

I starting thinking about “sometimes seeing isn’t believing. Believing is seeing.” We as Christians have a word for this. It’s called “faith.” The Bible says it this way. “We live by faith, not by sight.” (1 Corinthians 5:7 NIV) The NLT translates it, “For we live by believing and not by seeing.” So you see Ms. Newman, it isn’t “sometimes,” it’s all the time.

The Bible is full of individuals who lived this out beginning with Abraham, the father of nations. In Genesis, Chapter 12, verse 1, God spoke to Abram (before he was renamed Abraham) and said, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you.” (NLT) Abram did just that having no idea what to expect. He had not “seen” this land before, but Abram “believed” that God was faithful to keep the promise He had made. Hebrews 11:9 states that “even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith–for he was like a foreigner, living in tents.”

I have felt like Abraham before. God has called me to step out in faith and go to “a land He will show me.” I didn’t know what He had in store, but I knew that He knew “the plans He has for me,” and that He calls me to “live by believing and not by seeing.”

This is the essence of being a Christian. I don’t see God nor do I hear an audible voice when He speaks to me. And yet, I know with every fiber of my being that He is real. Like the spirit of Christmas in The Polar Express, the Spirt of the Living God lives inside my heart in the person of His Holy Spirit. I had to believe in God and His Son, Jesus. I had to believe that Jesus came to this world, took on human form, lived a blameless life, died on a cross for my sins and then rose on the third day. I had to believe that I couldn’t save myself and by faith ask Jesus to come and live in my heart.

Once I did that, my eyes were opened and the intangible became tangible. Believing is seeing.