We hit a breaking point. We were so tired of rushing from house to house; we had truly begun to dread holidays. It was time to make a change for our family.
Has Hobby Lobby entered the world of emotionally persuasive holiday short-form cinema? It would certainly seem so! And their Christmas ad effort is 100% geared toward what is undoubtedly their most loyal customer: busy (exhausted, out-of-time) moms.
None of them asked for this year’s hottest toy, or another video game to add to their collection. No, the children who filled out these tags listed their “innermost dreams”—things that should be part of everyone’s childhood.
I stared at her and she held out her arms for me. Me. The scary monster. She wanted me. The same person who frightened her, she was seeking comfort from.
During an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in 1969, when many public swimming pools still were segregated, Rogers invited Francois Clemmons, the show’s black police officer, to soak his feet with him in a kiddie pool on a hot day.
"I know that you question if you’ve done well, and let me tell you something: you’ve done so, so, well. You’ve done better than I could have expected. You have been my best and my favorite surprise."
"It is 10 degrees and freezing cold. I look at his car and see his wife in the front seat covering her face and 2 teenage girls both cuddling under a blanket in the back seat."
The flowers die. The chocolate and meals get devoured. And the surprise getaways happen, and then they’re over. But it’s in the moments that you can depend on (over and over and over again), well, that’s where the love is found.
She can tell that even though you are present, you aren’t really with her. God gave women the incredible gift of emotional intelligence, and they have this gut instinct that is sometimes freakishly accurate.
"It took a few tries, and I don’t count them all as failures. I see them as seasons of growth, seasons to fall, seasons to bring me to where I am today."