Blessed Christmas Day

Today was simply marvelous on so many levels, including the level of me climbing the stairs to the balcony this morning to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus” with the mass choir. I had entirely forgotten about this opportunity until Justin pointed it out to me in the service folder. I told him I was going up after taking the Lord’s Supper (love going to the Lord’s Table with my family like this!) and asked him to take charge of my purse and coat. He whispered to me that he wanted to go up, too, and would carry my items when we got to the stairs. What a sweetie pie!

As it turned out I took only my purse, knowing Jill could grab my coat for me. Putting the purse on cross body style, up the stairs we went, with me holding the handrails on both sides. In doing so I can climb up with one foot per stair rather than the customary two feet per step. I think Justin was amazed to see me do this. (Our stairways at The Palace are too wide for me to reach across to do this.) I caught my breath at the top of the steps, got the sheet music, though I didn’t really need it, and waited for the choir to return from communion before I took a seat. Justin found a seat on the side, as he wanted to watch me sing rather than join in.

I was warmly greeted by my former spouse’s cousin, LuAnn, and it was so good to see her. We were going to be joining the sopranos and took seats next to my niece, Alayna, and my sister, Lynn. They were quite short of sopranos so were glad we were coming to help them out. There had to be at least 40 people who were singing, doubling the size of the choir. This was helped by having some of the orchestra members sing with us as well. Anyone who has sung it before with a choir is invited to join and I cherish this opportunity more than I can express. Later my sister, Jill, reported that she could hear me from downstairs, which is good, I hope. As we sang to the pre-recorded accompaniment, I could see the director, Kevin, holding in his tears as we got to the last pages of the piece.

Besides singing the Chorus, as a congregation, we sang many lovely hymns and carols accompanied by the orchestra (actually it’s a band since there are no strings, but I can’t bring myself to say ‘church band’), including “Hark, the Herold Angels Sing” with the pipe organ and instruments. Nothing like it!  First German is blessed with many wonderful musicians and singers, and organists, oh my!

For our lunch, rather than having our usual leftovers from Christmas Eve, I decided to make a ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, and such for our feast. Not too much but still celebratory. Oh my, how good that ham was! Lynn and Jill joined Mom, Justin, and me around her small table and enjoyed our Christmas lunch. Lori, David, and Dustin came by for a little while as well before going to visit family members on David’s side of the family for the rest of the day. It’s so cool to have Justin and Dustin together, and with Alayna, the night before. And in Mom’s living room today.

This evening we had leftovers and then Justin set up his laptop at the table for us to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Mom wasn’t crazy about this movie the first time she saw it many years ago and I really can’t say if she enjoyed it this time, but Justin and I did. We generally watch it every year for Christmas and this year actually got to watch it together on Christmas Day because he came along with me. Yay! He forgot the cord to connect his computer to the TV so that’s why we watched at the table. Not the most comfortable but it worked and made for a nice end to our Christmas Day.

“For the Lord God omnipotent reignth…”