Hello friends. This is Jennifer's very own Dr. Phil. I'm interrupting your Java with Jennifer to announce it is Jennifer's Birthday today (Dec 19). If you'd like to send her a Birthday Greeting, click here. Her computer will read your birthday wish to her with a "British accent." It will be a sweet surprise to her.

To thank you for your kind words to my beautiful bride (of twenty years), I have prepared a special Merry Christmas Song for you. Just click the link below to see me sing my heart out to you - in my elf outfit. :)

Come On Over to My House

Well friends, we are now going on a tour of my home as it is transformed for Christmas! But, this tour is not a visual one. No, I am going to let you experience my home the way I do. A tour of texture, scent, sound and atmosphere!

As you enter my front door, the first thing you will notice is the scent of Christmas. I am a fragrance fanatic and my latest winter wonder is from the White Barn Candle Company. It's an oil called “Cinnamon and Clove buds.” It's scent is released by a tiny tea light candle lit beneath the glass containing just a few drops of the yummy oil! The aroma fills my house with the warmth of the holiday and draws me to think of the beauty of the season.

I would invite you to hang your coat in my entry closet, but, it's jammed with all the non-Christmas décor that was displaced! So, instead, you can drop your coat off in my bedroom. This is the first bedroom suit Phil and I have bought in twenty years of marriage. In fact, it is our anniversary gift to each other and our Christmas gift to each other also!! If you run your hands up the posts on the bed, you will feel the most intricate twists of knotted pine! The wood feels like petrified, smooth rope woven together with artistic precision! The bed is so tall that I have to get on my toes to climb in!

The room is quiet and clutter free (at least for now- it's still new!) It's serene with my favorite Christmas CD playing in the background. I've had it several years and I found it for five dollars in a bargain bin at one of those big discount stores. It's called "Winterlude.” It's calm, contemplative, lovely and very soothing. It hosts one of my favorite Christmas hymns “ Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus”, written in 1744 by Charles Wesley.

We are about to leave the bedroom but, I've got to show you what makes it such a refuge for me. It's my books! Yes, in the drawer of my bedside table are all my audio books I'm listening to lately. A biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernof, a book about the First Ladies by Margaret Truman (yes, the Presidents daughter), and a totally amusing mystery by David Baldacci called “The Christmas Train.” Books are such a vacation, education and inspiration to me. As Cicero said: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”

 

Now, lets move into the living room which, as I write this, is being decorated by my middle-age mavericks! I call them the Dream Team! Billie and Patti show up at my home when I need them most. Sometimes it's with soup, sometimes it's with encouragement and sometimes with paint and brushes! Today it was with a truck! Patti saw my home needed some help, so with some advise and donations from her decorator-sister, she and Billie brought lamps, pictures, hammers, nails and total unselfish generosity to adorn my home. They are making my home lovely.To me, my home looks beautiful not because I can see it, but because it is a reflection of friendship and love.

“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it”. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

So, give these three things a taste test:

1. Winterlude -- Instrumentals for a Contemplative Christmas: Music: John Darnall
2. The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
3. Cinnamon and Clove Bud oil from White Barn Candle Co.

Eden Had No Tombstones

It seems that aging is our friend when we first find ourselves on this planet. It holds our hands and ushers us through the seasons of childhood delivering us into adulthood fully equipped. Age provides forus. It grants us opportunities, experience, change, and maturity.

After we’ve become acquainted with the aging process though, it loses some of its amusement. Like when we turn thirty! We anticipate the years with a little more circumspection. Aging has given us that glance into our future. Aging takes us into our forties and through our fifties. Still somewhat of an ally, it grants us the gift of hindsight. It encourages us to feel more comfortable in our own skin-even if it's sagging to depths we've not plummed before!

Aging gives us a reason to laugh at ourselves, a reason to appreciate our ownership of what is good in our lives and aging even gives us the confidence to weed out that which was choking us.

The thing is that aging seems like a friend until it suddenly turns on us. No longer an ally, it acts as a double agent. It subtly hands us over to the enemy of frailty and infirmity. It places us in empty nests, sandwich generations, wheelchairs, walkers and eventually, nursing homes.

It abandons us to the confines of a body that won't serve us well, yet allows us to keep a brain that is fully capable of recognizing our own limitation. Aging used to be the thing that prompted us to celebrate birthdays. It used to be that which allowed us to get a drivers license, a marriage license, a business license. Aging once was our ticket to freedom. But, in the winter of life, it becomes no longer a source of freedom, but a prison.

I guess this is a fresh contemplation for me as I have recently watched my grandmother fail in body and mind as the aging process betrayed her. It made me wonder why we have to deal with such injury and insult.

From the beginning of time, aging has done this to every human being (with a few Biblical exceptions). It has brought us to our death beds and then left us there, alone, abandoned. Why does this seem so odd to me if it's always been this way? Maybe because it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

When the garden was created, God made no place within it's lush surroundings for death to exist. That’s right, Eden had no nursing home and no cemetery. We weren’t created to die. The betrayal of age and the onset of death will always seem counter intuitive because its counter creation. God created us to be uncorrupted by sin, untouched by death. But, When sin entered the garden, death entered our race.

Yet, when death entered our race, in the fullness of time, so did Life enter our race! Jesus boldly proclaimed that He came to give life! He was the Resurrection and the Life and anyone who believed in Him would NEVER die but instead, have the light of life.

So when aging brings us to the doorstep of the undertaker, it should feel odd and make us long for Heaven, because we were not made for time, we were made for eternity. We were not designed for death we were wired for life!

As I contemplate my precious Grandmothers passing this week, I shed tears of loss, tears of remembrance, tears of gratefulness. But, I also believe each tear is shed as one of our collective loss. Tears that confirm that Eden had no tombstones. Tears that reveal the truth that life, not death, is our true intended reality. Resurrection, not burial, is our now provided comfort.

So, it seems to me that to taste our mortality is to realize that maybe aging really is our friend after all. Ultimately, aging doesn’t deceive us and abandon us to death, it introduces us to truth and life.

Well, that's what's been percolating in me lately.

Question: If you could personally interview anyone from history, who would it be, and what would you want to ask?

Your new sole sister/faith walking friend,

Tiffany

Answer:

I would love to visit with Alexander Hamilton. I am so impressed with how deeply he impacted the foundation of our country and I would like to thank him! I would ask him about the duel with Aaron Burr, was your honor really more valuable than your life? If you had it to do all over again, would you still meet him for the “Interview at Weehawken?”

Okay, I must ask for one more choice. I would love to have dinner with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson! To me they constitute the words and music of the American revolutionary generation! They were both so different from each other, had rocky years in their relationship, political disagreements, yet, ended their lives with such a rich enduring friendship. I would love to interview them together because their brilliance would be enhanced by their banter and it would be fascinating to see such unity within such diversity. And now, my friends, the "Beans" are officially spilled!

Billy Graham Association came to film my story which will air nationwide on secular TV in March. I'm exhausted after 2 full days. But I'm thrilled about the potential impact. Will you pray that God will guide the hands and hearts of those editing for the final TV broadcast.

My book manuscript is due February 15th. Will you pray that God will multiply my time and effort.

On January 9th, I film two 60 minute programs for CCN.TV and I have not prepared a thing yet.

Each month we will give away something from the JenniferRothschild.com Store. All you have to do is click on the link below, to let us know you were here. Your name will automatically be added to a random drawing to win.

 

The winner from the last issue is juleethomas@cox.net. She wins Jennifer's 3 CD Speaking Set.

juleethomas@cox.net, please email us your mailing address.

$10 Off Your Next Purchase of $25 or More

 

Wow! Pick up an extra CD, book, or bible study for a friend, and take $10 off your purchase of $25 or more. Unfortunately, we can not guarantee your purchase will arrive by Christmas, unless you select overnight shipping.

Just go to Jennifer Rothschild's Online Store link below, and use this coupon code: wow10off You will need to register (log-in as a customer) to use this coupon. Offer good through December 31, 2006. One use per customer.

I hope you'll consider being one of my faith-walkin' Sole Sisters. I covet your prayers, and appreciate so much the things you do to spread the word about my message.

Here are just a few of the small things you can do to make a big impact.

• Email Five Friends (10 points)
• Join Soles Sisters (10 points)
• Write a Review at Amazon or Lifeway (10 points)
• Email us a Photo with You and a Friend (20 points)
• More

Here are a few Quick Links you might find helpful.

• About Jennifer Rothschild
• Video: My Story
• New, Jennifer Rothschild Store
• Subscribe to WomensMinistry.NET weekly eNewsletter
• Email Jennifer

Be a Part of the Studio Audience!

Jennifer would love to have you be part of the studio audience for 2 one-hour programs she is filming for CCN.TV.

Filming Date: Tuesday, January 9, 1:30- 2:30p and 3:00-4:00p
Broadcast Date: To Be Determined
For information: Email Kim at kim@ccn.tv