New Years Day activity; start a Christmas Jar

Are you past the stay out all night, partying stage of your life?
Does the idea of drinking until midnight make you tired just thinking about it?
If I answered yes, does that make me old?

I am 38 weeks pregnant, have five young children at home; my idea of a wonderful New Year's Eve was going to bed at 9pm (without my husband, so that my big old belly could have some extra room). I watched a few programs on the computer, worked a few Soduko puzzles, and then fell asleep (long before midnight).

But, I awoke this morning feeling a bit like I should have done something special to commemorate the incoming year. It didn't have to happen at midnight, but it's 2009 now. Perhaps we should mark it in some way to make it different, better than 2008, but how?

We started today to fill our first 'Christmas Jar'. If you are not familiar with this, neither were we until one showed up on our doorstep on Christmas Eve. There it was, a big glass jar filled with coins and a book. The book was titled "Christmas Jars." I declared that evening that we would read the book out loud as a family before we even opened the jar. So, over this past week, we read the story of Hope Jensen, an aspiring journalist whose life was changed by a mysterious anonymous jar of change that showed up at her front door. When she set out to detect the giver of the jar, she was led on an investigative journey to the start of the Christmas Jar tradition. We read about how many lives were changed over the years, not only by the jar that one family gave away each year, but by the inspiration that it provided to others to do the same, and the domino effect of this one act of kindness.

We finished reading the book yesterday evening, and opened the jar this morning. We counted the coins, not a life changing amount, but more than we would have imagined. The $ amount is irrelevant when we think of the love that went into this jar throughout the year as some family set aside their change, day by day, thinking of someone who they could bless with it.

For me, I tend to feel very alone as my pregnancy ends, and immediately after the baby is born. It is a time of extreme loneliness for me. Although surrounded by my husband and children, I do not usually feel up to visiting others and we do not have many guests. I often long for someone to share my emotions with as those around me love me and care for me, but do not have any idea what I have just went through or am currently going through. I am sad that I do not have many other new moms to chat with, or that more people don't come by to see how we are doing. Knowing that someone, somewhere saw us and our needs and thought we were worthy of their blessing is an honor. It reminds me that I am not alone, I am not invisible and someone trusts that we will make good use of this gift.

We thanked God for the people He led to bring us this gift and we asked Him to guide us in the way He would like us to use it. We then cleaned out the jar and set it on the table and put a few of our own coins in it. We are already excited as we think about spending the year watching it fill up with our spare change (it is likely that we will have less to give than what we were just given), but we now have a reason to look forward to Christmas Eve 2009 - when we will get to give away our Christmas Jar.

So, if you are looking for a meaningful way to start the new year, perhaps you will find a jar to set on your counter, where you can drop in a little spare change here and there and watch it fill, anticipating the way that you will change the life of some other in need when you give away your Christmas Jar.

Corinne Johnson is a Christian homeschooling mother of five (soon to be six - just two more weeks), a help meet to her husband in his business, and the author of Vacation Education Books; travel guides for families who love to learn.