I Like

Popcorn with butter and salt.
Scott.
Talia's fake laugh.
Email.
Meeting neighbours at the park.
Andrew coming upstairs for tea.
Nice pens.
Nate's run.
Saying grace at dinner, holding hands around the table.
Hope.

Being able to come up with 10 things in the middle of December.  I want Light.

Nothing

I am really struggling for a post tonight. I feel kind of funny and light and keep thinking I'm going to trip across a lighthearted tale full of hilarity but I got nothin'.  Nuh-Thin.

Maybe it's just wise to make note of the fact that Advent and Christmas and angst were not the focus of my day today.

Making the children and their neighbour friend dance with me to the soundtrack from The Preacher's Wife was perhaps the highlight, and now it's me and Glee.

All is well in the world. Tonight and always.

Dutch Christmas!

If you search through the archives, you'll find a photo of Talia playing with her first Dutch Christmas gift, a set of wooden stacking rings.  The next year, it was a hand-made, wooden fish puzzle.  Last year, a wooden dog on wooden wheels on a leash for her, and a wooden, rolling sports car for Nate.  This year, a wooden airplane for the boy and a top for T, also wooden and all hand-made.

Every year, I forget to expect this and every year, on December 6th one of us will open the door to go somewhere and trip across our Dutch Christmas wonderment.  Every year, I am humbled by the generosity of the gift, knowing as I do the maker, and the heart and time that goes into the making of each one. Every year, I am reminded that there is a miracle in being the receiver that makes us better givers somehow.

This year, obviously Advent has not been the roaring Today's Parent Magazine cover success I had planned for our little family.  We have used the box twice in six days, but have yet somehow managed to have a Christmas-almost-here moment each day. Despite my best efforts to defy history and family systems theory, I have managed to fall right into the deepest despair and bleakness that all my planning was meant to protect me (and my children!) from.  Nearby, friends' lives are falling apart in very un-merry ways and Heidi's words that Christmas is mostly a remembering of pain, heartbreak and loneliness feel all the more True, and required.

I pulled out our Advent book, "God With Us" and read up on Dutch Christmas tonight.  The feast is in fact a celebration of Saint Nicholas, about whom much is rumored, but very little is known.  In one story, Nicholas, having inherited much, hears of a family who has so little that the daughters will have to sell their own selves.  Under the cover of night, he throws three bags of gold through their window (or down their chimney?), saving them from all manner of evil.  In contrasting this giving with that of the saint's namesake, the author writes, "While Santa has his bundle of toys, the gift that Saint Nicholas gives is nothing short of freedom from poverty and desperation."

The gifts we received today were handmade in a shed about 8 blocks away.  No child was sold by her starving parents to a factory and forced to work 16 hour days in its making.  No child-poisoning toxins were disguised as colourful friends.  But mostly, a gift was given freely with great love and was received with greater delight and we got the best part of Christmas giving.  This has a hint of "freedom from poverty and desperation" about it for me, and I'll take it.

If you have read here for any length of time, you will realize that Christmas is no less fraught for me than any other time of year - my fraughtness just becomes more focused.  And every year I find myself believing that this will be the year I get it right and make Jesus proud. And every year, I learn again, one way or another, that that's not the point.  I merely get to do some receiving of the grace offered and then pass it on, just like the rest of the year.

Day Five

I don't have a lot to say tonight. I'm a bit wrung out: the Canucks' game with Karen ended in a loss that I can only assume was my fault, and I had to undo the Crap Theology/Family of Origin Shitmix that had taken over my life. Or at least part of it. 


This is where the wisdom of collecting good friends pays off.  One, Karen took me to a hockey game which is amazing and wonderful and proof that The Lord Loves Me Best. Well, that and the awesome Christmas sweaters she bought for the kids. Two, Heidi sent the following and now I'm going to post it and call it a blog entry.  I may tape it to my bathroom mirror for the rest of the year to remember Truth.  And maybe even live there.

I really know in my heart that Christmas isn't about love! joy! cheery! peace! etc.  It really is about a baby, born in a barn to backwoods parents.  Some smelly animals, some dirty, lewd and drunk shepherds show up, some weirdo astrologers show up, angels sing - but who really saw or heard them?  Christmas isn't about choirs, carolling, snow and good feelings.  It's just about remembering  - mostly remembering pain, loneliness and heartache.  A mother who raised her baby and then watched him be murdered, without really understanding what it was all for.  She just had some faith and kept going.  God-with-us is exactly that.  With us in family pain, in our all- too-real sense that things are not as they should be, in our railing against reality.  That's why he came.

I know, right?

I Need a Saviour

I don't know why I don't know to avoid the blog jinx effect.  Or to at least consider it more thoroughly before posting something.

Last post I allowed myself to believe that maybe this Christmas I would be able to let a person's best love feel like Christmas.

Today I decided someone's best love was a shitpile and that it could only make me feel angry and ugly. And even this evening as I try to process it and find the truth and get to good and mostly just get over it, it all feels impossible and I wonder why Jesus even bothered to come and do what was done if He can't even cure me of this.  It's not like he hasn't had several years to work on this particular problem.

Writing that, I realize that I might sound a tiny bit self-involved, a bit selfishly convinced that the blood that was shed was merely to help me get over a petty rage. And I know that there were bigger fish to fry: you know, that whole Lost Humanity Loved By the Father. The poor, the lost, the last, the least - those are the ones the Saviour came to redeem. The Kingdom is for such as these.

But in the tiny, dark corners of my heart, there is a secret hope that maybe the redemption would also work for petty rage.

I think I have to quit before I annoy myself even more. But know that this Advent, I am aware that my best efforts are falling short. Crap theology though it may be, I know how badly I need the gift that I wish was being offered. 

My Best

My favourite thing about Advent is being allowed to play the Holiday Playlist. All day.  Christmas songs make my heart glad.  Really, really glad.

I have so many favourites, I can hardly stand it. And on the list (long list) of favourites, are most of the songs from A Muppet's Christmas Carol (my favourite Christmas movie).  And my favourite tonight was this one:

IT FEELS LIKE CHRISTMAS
From the Muppet Christmas Carol


It's in the singing of a street corner choir
It's going home and getting warm by the fire
It's true, wherever you find love it feels like Christmas

A cup of kindess that we share with another
A sweet reunion with a friend or a brother
In all the places you find love it feels like Christmas

It is the season of the heart
A special time of caring
The ways of love made clear
It is the season of the sprit
The message if we hear it
Is make it last all year

It's in the giving of a gift to another
A pair of mittens that were made by your mother
It's all the ways that we show love that feel like Christmas

A part of childhood we'll always remember
It is the summer of the soul in December
Yes, when you do your best for love it feels like Christmas

It is the season of the heart
A special time of caring
The ways of love made clear
It is the season of the sprit
The message if we hear it
Is make it last all year

It's in the singing of a street corner choir
It's going home and getting warm by the fire
It's true, wherever you find love it feels like Christmas
It's true, wherever you find love it feels like Christmas
It feels like Christmas
It feels like Christmas
It feels like Christmas

I think I like the idea that if we're doing our best for love, it feels like Christmas. 

Maybe it lets me remember that some of the Christmas I don't like is still people doing their best for love.

Maybe it reminds me to do my own best to make it feel like Christmas. 

Real Advent

Day One was Putting Up Grandma's Advent Calendar. A chore I have typically done late and with perhaps a bad attitude. But this year, it went up on time and both children hung an ornament on the quilted tree.  Well, Talia hung the ornaments and Nate directed briefly. Before returning to his other, more interesting play. Then Talia wanted to hang all the ornaments and flipped out when said request was denied. She ended up in her room with the dire warning that she could stay there all night if she wasn't willing to speak respectfully and kindly.

It was so beautiful.

Sometimes I have a really vivid picture of the Lord sitting on the edge of the Lord's throne, just looking down and shaking that Lordly head in that amused, really? way the Lord has.

Probably there are deep life lessons here about how we come to the Kingdom like little children, petulant maybe, but enthusiastic too and for some reason, that's the preferred approach. Probably I could think about that and be comforted and feel wise and successful.  Probably I won't do that.

But I will enjoy that the bar for success was so low that I still feel good about our first day of Advent this year. All we had to do was get that wall hanging up.  There were no rules about doing it happily, or deeply, or memorizing a Bible verse.  It just had to get on the wall.

Check.

Wading In

I'm not altogether clear on the why of it yet, but as Advent Advent gives way to Advent, I find myself full of a pleasant, quiet anticipation.  Not a manic, desperate anxiety that has often hovered around the edges of the season, but an easy, here-we-go gladness.

I think partly it's my Box O' Advent.  Tomorrow morning, the kids will wake up and the box will be in the middle of the dining room table. We'll open the first envelope together and read that this morning we hang up Grandma's Advent calendar. In doing this, we have of course, The First: that first action that launches us in to the Adventing. However, we are also setting the tone, establishing the Hope and remembering the point.  We will honour Grandma J. and we will do something we've done before and we will instill tradition and family and anticipation. And some of this we will do in faith.  I will believe that even if the Good is small and dwarfed by the Not-So-Good in my heart, that nonetheless, the Good is what will live.  In me, and in my small people.

And every day there will be one small task to be done together that hopefully reminds me every day that that is True. Good lives.

This becomes a quiet rest because this year there is no having to find a Quiet Time, or Retreat, or Do Something Meaningful to stop hating it all. There is just having to open the envelope in the morning and do that One Small Thing that hints at the Heavens and reminds us Who we're waiting for, this month and always.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Not So Special

You may remember that time I discovered I was A Writer! oh, what a great day that was.  I so enjoyed beind singled out for my unique wonderfulness, a singular talent in a world of dimmer lights.  It was nice while it lasted.

Today, two friends wrote.  Frankly, had I been asked two weeks ago to make a list of my friends in order of their Writerliness, I would not have put either of these two near the top.  Not because I knew them to be bad writers - just because I don't think I had given any thought to their writerliness one way or another.

But today each of these people wrote, and I got the Double Rainbow! Oh My God! A Double Rainbow! writer's moment.*

It was too much goodness in one hour.  The first blog was just delightful in its thoughtful delight in goodness and family. And not incidentally, written by a man-friend. That a male peer has decided to make known his heart in a more public way that Glorifies God (he has not promised to do this, and yet does it every time he types I think) I find terribly moving and hope-making.

And then I open an email from my retarded friend Karen. You know, the slow one who does too much (see below for a reminder)? She has written a story for my sweet girl, based entirely on one random facebook post.  It is long and wondrous (again!) and the kind of story a girl (and her mother) will love forever and it reminds of us that indeed all things DO work for good and if it all doesn't work out in the end, it's not the end yet. It made me weep to know that my daughter gets to be loved not only by her flawed parents, but by her parents' retarded friends who still do too much, but are perhaps understandably addicted to leaving a wake of goodness and grace behind them.

I don't fully understand why I enjoy such an Abundance.  But I remain, as ever, full of Gratitude.  This feels like a pretty ideal ending to Advent Advent, or beginning of Plain Old Advent.

Praise be.

*I will share a link to the blog when/if granted permission by the writer, and will forward the story to those interested, again, when/if granted permission by the writer.

Light

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Our home is still in Advent Advent, and will switch over to Advent on the first, but I have enjoyed the beginnings of the season as friends begin their own writing and note-making.
 
If I was a candle-lighter, I would know what the candle is for tonight, and would probably have a lot to say about it.  But since we are choosing a flame-free celebration this year and we missed church due to cough and cold, I'm out of the loop. Happily, two friends mentioned Light in blogs and on facebook so I at least have a theme, if not the right candle.

I like Light - I like that darkness is only the absence of Light, and yet somehow darkness is required for us to notice Light. I like that Leonard Cohen lyric about how there's a crack, a crack in everything; that's how the Light gets in.

But today I found myself thinking of the other Light that we're promised by Jesus:  the kind of light that means 'not heavy'.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is Light.  (Matthew 11:28 - 30)

My friend Karen is retarded.  I mean that in the kindest, most accurate-use-of-word way.  However, somehow her reading about Advent Advent got her doing and planning More.  Even though I know, know, I said the point of Advent Advent was Less. Now, in fairness, she is extremely capable. She does more because she can. But of course, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.  A lesson she has yet to learn. That she's slow to learn.  S-L-O-W.


What I know she does know though, is that the problem with More is that More becomes heavy.  It weighs us down, slows us up - it becomes a burden. Part of the discipline of Less at Advent Advent (and presumably through Regular Advent) is a self-reminder of the promise that this journey is meant to be Light.  The awesomeness of this discovery for me today was that the pain of the holidays is all the More:  more money, more errands, more food, more work, more family. The pain of it though is required I guess, for us to know more deeply how desperate we need the Saviour who arrives with the promise of Less.


As we ease into Advent, I like remembering that the darkness and the more are difficult, but necessary for the Light, the Less to be known.


I guess that means that Karen may be slow, but probably she'll see and feel the Light all the more keenly. Maybe not so slow after all...

TwoFer

Last night I had a whole Thanksgiving post planned, but then life intervened and posting just did not happen. And I was trying to be okay with that, but in my heart, I wasn't. I have like the dailiness of this process and missing a day felt... bad.

But no sense in living in bad feelings, right? I'm so evolved.

I can't really recapture yesterday's thinking, but I do want to make sure this part is written down: I really loved my twenties.  Anytime Scott and I consider feeling discouraged about how little we have to show for ourselves as we creep in on 40, one of us will say, "Well, at least we loved our 20s".  And it's true for both of us - we had a great time being young and took advantage of that decade where the options are endless and the responsibilities few.

That said, me in my 20s isn't my favourite version of me.  And most of the time, I know this is preferred, to look at our own evolution over time and see it moving towards what is hoped for - the alternative would be worse, I'm sure.  But sometimes, when I think about my younger self, I just cringe with embarrassment. I was just so... young.

Okay, so I just wrote a whole long paragraph about my memories of American Thanksgiving and describing how amazing they were, juxtaposed as they were against my awfulness but realized that a) I don't need to post my flaws on the internet - they've been public enough as it is, and b) the stories are only half-true when I write them that way.  Suffice to say, those who were there (GSH, I'm thinking of you and our road trips to Indiana - I always had so much fun, and remember them fondly, but holy cats, you certainly knew my flaws too!) (And to the entire Chicago clan, that you were witness to the early years of my exploration of adult-faith and my lack of diplomacy and grace explaining it - well, there aren't enough sorry's in the world).

I am tempted to delete this whole post, but I really don't want to go two nights with nothing and I don't want to start over, so we'll just have to live with this one. 

It's always good to have a day where that leaves room for improvement available in the day ahead.

Where Does My H(ope) Come From?

Does it come from the mountains? noooo... it comes from You! The Maker of Heaven! The Creator of the Earth!

I don't do a lot of Jesus-ing in my day-to-day. No morning devotions before the kids are up, nor bible verses over breakfast. I am loathe to fast, and chincy about giving. And despite my not-so-secret fondness for Micheal W. Smith praise hits, we hardly ever worship together in the singing kind of way. There was a time in my spiritual life when I would have considered this a sign that my soul was adrift and would have believed that The Lord Was Not Pleased.

Happily for me, that time has passed and I hardly ever worry about these things. I have decided to believe that Jesus thinks I'm awesome and the parts that are less lovely, He's down with and has plans for. And so I keep on in my undisciplined ways, (fairly) certain in my faith (yes, I see the contradiction there) that All Will Be Well regardless.

This said, one discipline I'm rather accomplished at is the Pray Without Ceasing bit. Or maybe I've just relabeled my anxious thoughts and called them prayer.  But whatever.  The point is, when things trouble me, I just assume that the terrible thoughts that rise up are actually my heart reminding Jesus to Do Something! For Christ's Sake! Do Something!

Today I heard two friends' heavy-heartedness and one of them is the kind of friend I can just pray for right there on the phone. The other, not so much, but still, as I'm listening, I feel myself redirecting all the angst heavenward on their behalf.  Because what else can be done? I am useless, most of the time.  But the Creator of Heaven! The Maker of the Earth! that One is listening and has promised to be our Hope and our Help.

This still stops me in my tracks.

And we get to celebrate it all month! Oh, I just love Christmas.

I Need a Writing Group

I like the discipline of blogging daily. It has been a good challenge (thank you NvK) and has at least carved out 3 - 6 (or 10) minutes of reflection every day.  I'm not sure what good it does the world, but exercising my brain in this particular direction does me some good, and given my Passion for Me, this is really all that matters, right?

However, all is not sunshine and light. Because through the course of a day, I think of 17 things I want to write about. Some of them are bloggable, some of them are low-grade pettiness, and from time to time, some of them are worthy of more serious time and investment. The latter are fun to imagine writing about, but aren't necessarily ready for public review a la blog. But the more I blog and enjoy the fruit of pushing meandering thought through to type on the interwebs, the more I dream of space and time to explore these larger wonderings.  But then if these things are not blogged, how and where do I get the feedback that is actually the motivation for continuing on with the discipline (remember the Passion for Me? it is fed by hearing about how great [or at least interesting] Me is)?

So I think I need a writing group. Ideas?

Down Time

One perk to marrying a firefighter is having two nights alone every week. Of course, this means having to feed and bed two children on my own two nights a week, but it also means being able to have the same dinner two nights in a row and sitting in a toque, scarf and puffy slippers watching trashy TV without anyone interupting to you know, relate.

I always think that I will do my deep thinking on these nights.  Catch up on my particularly intense wonderings about the meaning of life. And maybe do my nails.  But here it is, 11pm on night one and I've got nothing done except some extreme facebooking and craigslist browsing (Dear Universe, please let the woman with the trains email me back).

Maybe tomorrow night?

Life Sucking Things

Really, only one thing: criticism.

I was going to write a pretty thoughtful entry about something I think is true about parenting. I think it would have been a great little post, especially for those who parent small people.  Maybe one day I'll write it.

But just as I started to type, SJ asked a question or something that made me want to figure something out. So I figured it out and sent it to him and while he was appreciative, he also asked if there wasn't a better way to figure this thing out.  A reasonable question, particularly since it turned out he was right, but it Set. Me. Off.

Like, I'm so mad I can't even change the TV channel. And it's a pretty terrible hockey game (also making me mad) so that's saying something.

I'd like to think it's my birth order, or maybe just the nature of All Humanity, that makes any questioning or coaching feel like an assault on my character and person.  But I think it's just pansy-ism. And perhaps that pesky Passion for Me that makes any hint of weakness in Me a bit ...passion-wrecking.  Which is understandably upsetting for a person who took so long to trip across a passion.

I'd take hints on how to get over this, but frankly, they'd just make me angrier.