Welcome back my friends to the morning mindset.

Carrie Green here. I'm so thankful that you're with me this morning.

If you have been with us for the morning mindset for the last, I don't know, month and a half, you'll know we have been going

through the book of First Peter. And here right before the Christmas holiday I am

going to take a break from First Peter to just walk through some thoughts that I have about the Christmas holiday.

You know, Christmas can be a time that's very busy for many of us.

It can be a time of high stress for some people.

There are others who really struggle at Christmas time because of some loss that they experience during

this same season at some time in the past.

And I understand all of those scenarios. I know how that

could be both a blessing and a curse to step into the Christmas season. And so I

want to give you some thoughts that I've been pondering related to the idea of gift giving because gift giving is a big part of things at Christmas.

When I was a kid, I just remember we typically as a family opened all our gifts on Christmas Eve at our home

because we would travel to my grandmother's house to open gifts there with

extended family on Christmas Day and so both of those days were just these moments we

anticipated as kids, just so excited and we had already scoured the

catalogs and circled the things that we wanted and

we're in such anticipation for Christmas morning. And you know as adults that

anticipation can easily fade as we're dealing with all the organization and

events and stress sometimes of the holiday season. And I'm hopeful that

some of the things that I share in these next few episodes will be helpful to you

in helping you kind of step back and breathe and remember that Christmas really is

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