Yesterday, I woke up feeling like I was either getting the flu or had been beaten with a tire iron and just didn’t remember it. I hurt all over and my muscles were even sore. I staggered out of the bedroom into the aftermath of Christmas with a thermometer in my mouth. It looked like a bomb had gone off - albeit a festive bomb. Everyone had gone home after 3.5 days of Christmas bedlam and revelry. Blair, John Samuel, Jack, Carson, Anna Kathryn, one energetic golden doodle, one howling diabetic beagle, one beagle who disregards furniture rules and a partridge in a pear tree. All that remained were glitter, dog toy stuffing, empty boxes, pine needles and fatigue. After the thermometer beeped, I decided I didn’t have the flu, I was just worn to a frazzle from Operation Christmas of which I’d been the head coordinator and chief director for the last 4 weeks. 

We’re four days out and women everywhere are still shell-shocked and glazed over as we stand and look at the remains of Christmas. We worked so hard to make Christmas fun and memorable for our people. Our bodies are exhausted. We’re sleep-deprived. We’re full of cream cheese, sugar, and red meat. With every passing year, we feel it deeper in our bones and we don’t recover as quickly as we once did from the holiday implementation process. 

Even after the planning and execution, we all roll the footage of the holiday gatherings in our minds. We know we hit the mark on some gifts and missed on others. Some of the recipes turned out and some won’t ever be used again. Some of the Christmas moments were as magical as we’d imagined and some a good bit worse. But, another Christmas celebration has come and gone and now all there is left to do is recover. 

Davis and I worked all day and into the night putting away all of the Christmas and the house looked so empty- much like Cindy Lou Who’s house after it was burglarized. Taking away all the fluff and the shiny outer shell of Christmas makes normal look a little empty. It will all seem a little drab with lots of bare space until we adjust back to our normal settings. The full, bustling house that was a four-alarm chaotic scene, just a couple of days ago, is left quiet and uncrowded. That can be a good thing and a sad thing all at once. We crave the chaos and activity of our families and then happily collapse in the embrace of our quiet routines when it’s all over. 

We, women, put a lot on ourselves, you know? We want everybody under our roof to have a Hallmark experience. We make sure we have something everyone will eat for the 28 meals they’ll be visiting. We want everyone’s gift allotment to be even and, if it’s not, we set out to equalize. We drive all over to procure all of the ingredients for the 97 recipes we’ll be making- everything from steaks to sprinkles to heavy whipping cream and fresh rosemary. What about the stockings? Is everything wrapped? Will UPS make it with my package? It’s no wonder we feel like we’re 240 years old today. 

We do all of those things out of love. Our mothers and grandmothers did them for us and we want to love our families the same way. This way we celebrate Christmas can be a lot of work on us though. Ladies, we have a whole year to think of ways we might simplify the traditions of this holy season. We can’t forget the Baby came to lighten our loads- not add to them. It’s been an extra-special one- a time of celebration, thankfulness, reflection, joy, and love. Now, let’s get some naps in this week, girls. 

Twenty-four years into our new tradition and the 17 of us have grown into 42 of us and we can’t imagine it any other way than it is now. For the younger set, it’s the only way they’ve known. With their mother’s handwritten recipes, the sisters work all day to carry on Grandmother’s legacy of loving their family with food. As they’ve gotten a little older, they’ve started giving out food assignments, but they still do the heavy lifting by making the stars of the show- the turkeys, dressing, and most of the desserts. For 24 years, they’ve cooked the most delicious feasts- just like their mother before them. What a gift they give our family every year. It will take all 8 of us in the next generation to fill their shoes when it’s our turn. 

The holidays mean the year is winding down and we start to consider what has come of it. Like me, I bet you’ve had a lot of ordinary days this year. The ones you can’t really recall because they were pretty routine and nothing special. There were likely days that left us feeling regretful or anxious or even angry. There were also days we thought life just couldn’t get any better. And there may have been days that took our breath away with shock and sadness. We’ve worried, celebrated, cried, worked, loved, aged, hoped, rested, feared, laughed, wanted and waited. 

A lot happened as we flipped the calendar through 2025 and there will be families, like ours, who’ll come together for the holidays with a fresh void that will sit in every corner and hover over each conversation. It’ll be at the door and on the hearth and in the kitchen- everywhere they turn. Whether they saw the void coming or it took them completely by surprise, it’s there just the same and it may be most pronounced in the sentimental flurries of the holidays. Maybe your family will be one of those this year, too. I pray God will be close to you. I pray He’ll be felt at the door and on the hearth and in the kitchen- and anywhere else you feel the absence of someone you love. The Bible says God is near to the brokenhearted and those whose spirits are crushed. To give thanks with a broken heart may be the hardest thing of all, but God is so faithful and true to us even on the darkest days which are inevitable in this fallen world. I hope everyone who mourns will find Christ, our Savior, sitting near to them this holiday season. 

God bless you and yours this Thanksgiving. 

Joni 

                 Ben 11/26/74- 10/10/25

                 So loved and so very missed. 

With that being said, it’s late November and we’ve had one cold snap which was so nice- all 46 hours of it. You’ve never heard such groaning as the summer people let out when they had to share the weather pattern for almost a couple of days. Here we approach the Thanksgiving holiday and the dawn of the Christmas season and cue another Mississippi heat wave. How I do love the South, but it makes it hard for its cold-loving citizens to attain the holiday spirit. 

With just a week to go, women everywhere are starting to feel the pressure of the Thanksgiving dinner. The shopping and dicing and baking and arranging. You’ll be squeezing card tables in corners and pulling chairs out of the attic and scoping out unsuspecting plant materials for your centerpieces. With your Karo syrup, french fried onions, and sweetened condensed milk at the ready, you think you’re just preparing a big meal for your family, but you’re really cementing core memories for the younger generations who will sit at your tables. You’re setting an unattainable standard by which future Thanksgivings will be judged long after you’re gone. You’re creating a permanent snapshot in younger minds of a beautiful moment in time- one they’ll wish, over and over, they could relive as their years accumulate. Their memories won’t just be of the food -which is the thing dreams are made of- but it’s the home, the greeting at the door, the candles, the special touches, the voice saying the blessing, the familiar smells, and the feeling of being enveloped in love. It’s the warmth of a crazy, wonderful mixture of generations, personalities and relationships together in one place and the feeling of belonging there. 

So, as you traipse around town in search of the right bird and the perfect napkins, remember what you’re doing is so powerful. You’re not just feeding bellies, you’re filling their memory tanks with loving tradition that will warm them when the world feels cold— and even when they’re your age, they’ll still be able to feel the warmth of what you did while you thought you were just making a nice dinner. Carry on, ladies. You’re doing important work. 

JONI 

If the holidays don’t make returning to a life of productivity a big enough challenge, add a first grandbaby in the mix and you’ll really have trouble finding your way back to fruitful function. First, let’s get the most important business out of the way. As a new grandmother, it is my sworn duty to share recent pictures of my grandson. I may be new at this Punkin thing, but I do know that picture-sharing is one of the fundamental benchmarks of success in grandparenting. It has been since the dawn of photography. It may look diffferent than it once did, but the concept is still the same. Our grandmothers carried our Olan Mills pictures around in the plastic photo insert that came with their wallet and we continue on with the tradition in our more sophisticated technological ways. But, I mean, really. I could just stare at him all day. 

It’s coming up on a year since we lost our Otis and, today, I wanted to talk to you about how I’m still learning from his life. It’s a couple of weeks shy of a year since he died and I still cry for Otis a good bit- sometimes when I’m driving or taking a shower or falling asleep at night. A flash of a sweet memory will come to me and my eyes will flood with tears. They’ll roll off my chin or wash down the drain with the shampoo or soak into my pillowcase. You might not understand that- especially if you’re not an animal person- but the bond I had with that stray dog was something I can’t explain and he was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to let go. 

About two months after Otis died, Blair and John Samuel found out they were having a baby. A baby was the one thing we’d all been praying for for years and God had answered that prayer in His time and in such a miraculous way that glory could go nowhere but to Him. As the months of her pregnancy progressed, Davis and I decided to purchase a townhome in an area near where both of our kids live. Not a primary residence, because neither one of us wants to move, but a place to go when we want to visit or one of them needs our help. It’s perfectly situated- 20 minutes in one direction to one child and 20 minutes in another direction to the other and now Carson’s significant other, Anna Kathryn, lives 20 minutes in another direction as she’s just started her student teaching there. I don’t think we’ve ever felt more peace or validation about a decision as that one. There have already been so many situations when we’ve remarked to each other how thankful we are to have it.  

With the going back and forth- from here to there- before and after Jack’s birth, one thought kept coming to Davis and me. None of that would be possible if we still had Otis. He would have been a nervous wreck and completely unnerved by the constant movement and changes. After all he’d been through, he just couldn’t deal in back and forth and this and that and to and fro. It had to be one way, all day, every day for him to feel secure and comfortable. It became apparent that these new changes that came with the baby we’d prayed for would have made him miserable and also caused us a lot of stress of feeling torn. In retrospect, we saw that, sometimes, letting go of something may help us to fully receive something else. That’s what we felt like we’d done. Not that God caused our loss but, in it, our lives were better able to accommodate the very thing we’d begged Him to give us. During the several months chase for Otis when I first became so attached to the dog I’d never even touched, I prayed over and over for God to spare him from dying alone without ever feeling love. He answered my prayer and gave me the desire of my heart. He allowed me to show him what love felt like even if I only got a little time to do it. He did answer my prayer, but letting go of him made room for another most wonderful answer to prayer - the desire of our daughter’s heart to become a mother. 

For the last three years, I’ve been praying for God to reveal what I’m supposed to be doing with my time and ability. A ministry, a need, a person, a project, a job. I don’t know if I’ve ever prayed for anything more consistently as I have that and I seemed to mostly just hear silence in return. Not that I’ve just been sitting idly on my duff while praying but I’ve been asking while following the leading of the Spirit in my day to day schedule. There have been a couple of answers He’s given me and I’ve followed through with those ongoing assignments but nothing that matches the amount of time I have to give. I still felt like I could be doing more. 

For the last year or so, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to continue the blog. In three weeks, it will be 11 years since I pecked out my first blog post and 962 of you read it. I’d never been more sure of anything than I was of the call to start that writing venture and it has been a blessing that has been more fulfilling than any other project I’ve ever taken on. For the last year, I’ve really ramped up my prayers for direction of what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve not gotten a clear assignment yet, but the story of Otis keeps emerging in my mind whenever I pray. Sometimes, God gives us something for a season but we may have to let it go in order to receive what’s next. I like to know the plan and what’s coming up, so I wanted my next assignment before letting the blog go, but I feel like He’s asking me to make the first move. Obviously, it’s not that the blog has consumed a large amount of my time lately, but it’s the weight it’s carried with it over the last year or so and the mental energy it consumes- wrestling with what to do with it or what to write or how to possibly begin to part with something that has meant so much to me- something that felt like it defined me. I’ve tried to tell myself the struggle was menopausal brain fog and a scarcity of content that we haven’t already covered in 11 years, but I think He’s just let me flounder so I could get to this point to trust and walk away from this thing that’s so dear to me. I’ve finally decided it’s time to let go of Motherhood and Muffin Tops, this sweet, sweet gift God gave me so many years ago to be ready to receive whatever it is that He will send next. It may be writing on another platform or it may be something totally different, but I hope you’ll pray for me to know it when I see it. 

You’ve come along with me as I’ve limped through the letting go process. I know you’ve likely felt this coming. Some of us are just more stubborn than others and that’s always where I fall. What precious companions you are. What devoted prayer warriors you have been. What faithful friends you’ve become. I started this journey as a 46 year old with a 14 year old and a freshman in college living at home. You’ve walked with me all the way to a senior discount at Michael’s, nightsweats, and Punkinhood. What a privilege for me to have you by my side for 11 years and I’m not willing to let you go cold turkey. If we’re not already friends on Facebook and Instagram, I’d love for you to send me a friend request- to Joni Neal Miller and also Motherhood and Muffin Tops- so we can keep up with each other. After a while, I may post more frequently -especially on the Motherhood and Muffin Tops pages to keep in touch. The blog site itself won’t go anywhere and if you’re new-ish to the scene, you may want to go back and dig around in the archives. 

Thank you. In case you’re wondering, it is possible to cry and feel relief at the same time as I’m doing right now. 

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. 

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4

We have done all of those things together. 

Thank you for the good times, my friends. 

With much love, 

JONI