Grace on the Feast of the Holy Innocents

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Innocents...to celebrate...it seems such an odd word to use when speaking of the unthinkable killing of children.  This is to recognize what many consider the first martyrs of the faith as these are the children killed because King Herod was afraid of the prophecies being fulfilled in Bethlehem.  This choice to accept Jesus, even as a baby, was refused and out of fear for his own selfish desires King Herod ordered the killing of the babies (Matthew 2: 13-18).  Jesus is saved as Joseph flees into Egypt after a warning from angel.  

Many have (and are going to) made a parallel to the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary to this Biblical history.  Although there was the senseless killing of innocent children and the woeful crying of mothers (and others), the parallels do end there.  The victims of Newtown did not die because of  the rejection of Jesus....they died from the actions of a young man who had a terrible mental illness.  I am sure we all know those among us who try to overcome their own form of mental illness...even good Christians who have accepted Jesus and battle their illness every day.  We do not know the state of mind or soul of Adam on that awful day...it is hard but we must try to avoid judgment even in this awful tragedy.

There was one other parallel in this events...there was grace in both situations...Jesus would surely not forget any of these children and their innocents souls.  I am sure He holds them (along with other innocent children who have died throughout the ages) in his arms in Heaven today.  Can you not imagine the long line of children waiting their turn to be with the King of Kings, Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?  So, with that thought in mind, we would like to take some time today to remember Grace today on our blog.  A sure sign of hope in the tragedy of Sandy Hook.

Grace was the 7-year-old who many knew for her fashion flare and love for anything sparkly!  She loved pink and purple so much that the church that had her funeral was COVERED in pink and purple (especially balloons!) including the mourners who refused to wear the traditional black in order to honor this little girl.  She was called a little "fashionista" because she loved to shop for beautiful things, especially jewelry.  She loved to play dress up and create art.

There was so much more that Grace wanted to learn and see in this world.  She loved gymnastics and playing soccer.  She enjoyed cooking, especially making cupcakes.  The church was also  decorated with seashells because she had such a special love for the beach and lighthouses.

We have been trying to make all of the quilts a unique and meaningful representation of the person.    I am really not a very creative person (usually taken on the ideas of others when doing anything crafty) and the boys are not really into girly things, so you can imagine making quilt designs for NINETEEN female memorials was any interesting task.  I know that this might seem strange to some of you but I am convinced that in praying for each person before creating their design helped guide us in this effort.  I have to tell you that the quilt for Grace was our last one to design.  When we started on this last quilt idea, we were really not sure what to do to make it special.  We did not have a lot of information about her at that time.

As we prayed for her family and for guidance in making her quilt, I felt the need to go back and read more about her.  It turned out that it was the day of her funeral.  The fullness of this Grace's life was so great that as I read the article about her funeral, I immediately had the image of her quilt in my head.  You will later see another quilt like this one (I had designed for another of the girls but it will be evident the difference in the two), but for Grace the image of a beautiful ball gown came to mind with sparkles and lace throughout the design. In fact, this design evolved after I copied the design you see here because there was so much to tell about Grace.  I look forward to adding all these details to her quilt in hopes that this world will continue to have a little bit of this sparkle that Grace loved so much.

The feast day is supposed to be set aside to honor the children in our lives.  Today, we will also take the time to give our children a special blessing in remembrance of the Holy Innocent.  I try to personalize this blessing by emphasizing the child's strengths after giving them a blessing.  You might have read about the special blessing I gave the children on the first day of Advent.  That blessing was done in private, as I ended that blessing with a discussion about character traits the child should work to improve.  Today's blessing is public (at least within our home) to share these strengths with everyone.  In fact, I encourage everyone to tell something they think is special about the others as well.

Although we do not give gifts on Christmas Day, I felt it fitting to give a little something to our children today.  The boys LOVE reading the odd fact books that pop up every year to recognize the strange things people do in this world.  We have checked these books out at the library to the point where I thought we DID own these books...so I bought some of them to give the boys.  I found the cutest version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle) for Zaira.  It is a stuffed animal with a simple version of the story on the side.

I woke the children up as usual with the promise of a special breakfast.  They were to come to the table while I was cooking.  They found the gifts on the table to enjoy while they waited.  They hardly wanted the breakfast they were so interested in looking at the books!

The rest of the day will hopefully be a blessing as well.  We will be going to pray for the children lost to abortion at the Planned Parenthood clinic in town.  We cannot forget these innocent babies lost in the THOUSANDS each day in America.  We will also pray for the country to see that this tragedy ends.

We also plan to go to the store for another round of fabric for the quilts (We will probably need to make one more stop at a special fabric store next week.).  Then we will make a trip through a drive-thru for dinner and drive around town to see Christmas lights again.  We are hoping one of the churches still has their famous dancing light show going tonight.  

OH!  And we can not forget that this is the FOURTH day of Christmas.  Today we recall the four calling birds who sing out the Good News of the four Gospels...Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  May we take the time to tell someone about the Good News of Jesus!