to face unafraid

it has started.

the slow process of packing up the ornaments and folding up the tree. of storing the stockings and dusting off tabletops. leaving that one strand of lights by the windowsill because they are whimsical. the few days after christmas are sort of a haze. a slow crawl out of lethargy and coziness. i stretched in bed this morning, only to crumple back under the covers as my body sighed against the dark.

and it's black outside my window. a slow drizzle is blanketing the parking lot. my raincoat is still on and the coffee has cooled against my hands. december 27. not quite new year's. not quite christmas. not quite anything at all really. just a chilly tuesday.

but i've got plans to take robert out for a frosty tonight. to read in my car during my lunch break and maybe take a mini nap. to hold hands with my mama across the old round table and spend an hour on the kitchen floor playing with pablo's new squirrel toy. it's exciting. in its own, little ordinary way, it's riveting..

every day can't be christmas. because that would diminish the splendor of it. but every day can be joyous, and merry. it can be full of cheer and of heavenly love. there's a sweet, sweet world waiting to be decorated. to be garlanded and strung with lights. to be adored and feasted upon. oh come, all ye faithful, and devour it.

a christmas card and a prayer

on the way to work this morning, i thought about baby Jesus. about little chubby fingers. about flushed cheeks. the way babies smell. about a tired mama and a proud papa. about hay bales and donkeys and night stars and the cold. then i thought about the cross on the hill and i couldn't bring myself to think about it anymore and had to turn on a pop song.

my heart aches for what mary didn't fully know. my spirit crumbles to pieces when i think about swaddling a savior. because it's all so tortuously beautiful. and sad and sweet and precious and wild. i pray that this realization never leaves me. that i feel just as impacted on a pretty thursday evening in the spring, under the shade trees in the front of the house with my arm under robert, as i do this morning, two days before christmas. that the knowledge of the blessing sticks to my ribs, sustaining me on nights spent kneeling and mornings spent over the coffee pot.

it's a comfortable life, typically. there are sunrises and twilights. there are hands held across wooden tables and  pillows that smell of summer. there are children laughing on hilltops and dogs with wet noses to greet us at the close of the day.

but to have this? to achieve this unspeakable beauty? it took one incredible sacrifice. but before all that. before the nails and the beating. before the crown of thorns and the bleeding.

there was one incredible birth.

christmas as an adult

 via

it's rainy and warm in north carolina. it is muggy and humid, and this weather is a fickle mistress to the corporate air conditioner. even the coffee mug under my hands is sweating.

and i've got the radio set on chistmas music. i've adorned our mantle with holly from the bush beside the porch and a nativity scene is resting on our coffee table, delicately perched upon the wood, baby Jesus shaking every time pablo knocks into it.

but it doesn't feel like christmas of old. when schoolwork ceased for a few days and we breathed a sigh of december relief in the form of cheery word searches and crossword puzzles, busywork of the best sort. when the skies were gray and cold and snow lurked around every sunrise. where the christmas tree was real, in that small corner of the living room. when i was tucked into bed beside my sister and for one second that somehow spanned into an entire month, all was well with the world. now, there are tests and papers and office work and appointments. there are days i feel like all i do is drive.

so what to do? we make our own traditions, our new little ways of celebrating. we decorate the office windowsill in lights and stay up late to watch lifetime movies under the artificial fraser fir. we put a too-heavy santa hat on pablo's head and take pictures as he paws it off. we replace the late night coffee run with eggnog and the ice cream with reindeer sugar cookies. we address christmas cards to our bosses and bring in fudge for the company kitchen.

it's not going to be the same. it never will and it was never supposed to. but to equate the magic of christmas with the magic of childhood is an unfair comparison. but that's not to say it's not a spectacular time to shed a little of our adult selves and sink into the glory of the holiday. to bring in a little of the old and mix it ever so gently with the new. to forge new paths and bridges over new rivers, one eye looking behind us at home in the distance, the other focused on the shore just ahead.

a silver christmas

 

i put up two christmas trees yesterday. a white one for robert's grandma and this one. the same silver tree that has graced my grandpa's formal living room for the past fifty years. it is shiny and the ornaments are so fragile i may or may not have cracked one. and i declare, i do love the smell and look of a good fraser fir, but these tiny trees, with their revolving, colorful bases, stir up a delight in me that is unmatched. i think it's because i can see the history in them. in the grubby hands that packaged them up every january, and the faces who would lie under the stems, watching the kaleidoscope show.

it's a red and green christmas. but every one needs a little sparkle now and again.

finding the still

it's just not going to happen.

the brownies will not get made for bible study. the whites will not get washed. and the noodles might be not be hot anymore once we bring ourselves to the table. my hair will be in a bun, one remnant of morning curls poking out the back. doggie belly rubs might  not occur until midnight, with the tree out back casting a shadow on the blanket.

tis the season of hustle. of bustle and movement. of late nights and early mornings, with a soundtrack of ripping wrapping paper and falling ornaments. some things must, some things inevitably will, fall to the wayside.

but i promise this: i will lean into, body and spirit, everything sacred and holy and still about this december. i will sing from my gut and pray on my knees. i am determined to feel christmas this year. wholly. and that means letting things slide. like the pile of clothes in the laundry room. the books on the nighstand. the dust under the bench.

and i don't know how long i can make this last. this focus, this deep drive. january? february, maybe? but it's the striving that counts. the constant reach and try. one month, one prayer, at a time.

scenes from a country cottage: a borrowed christmas

 

these are the hamburger years. the years of sewing on patches and cutting coupons and drafting a new, tighter budget every other week. of washing down baseboards and scrubbing steel sinks.

very few things are ours. at this stage, they are hand-me-downs. the old round table from my uncle in the corner. the light wood desk from my aunt, repainted a happy red. the kitchen table from my parents. there are stories in my house that are not my own. rather, we live in a little collection of sorts, an family antique gallery, just nice enough to display but worn enough to spill on, leave a sweaty cup on, or prop our feet on that it doesn't really matter.

it becomes especially apparent every december, when i lug the tupperware out from the basement. our christmas decorations are mainly borrowed. our stockings were made by aunts and cousins. our tree comes from our sweet neighbors. the ornaments come from mama, who started collecting them for me when i was a baby. when we turn the lamps off, the lights twinkle against the old blinds, an orchestra of color.

it's a loaned road, filled with loaned time. and we are the mosaics that walk along it. i can look at the stockings, with their particular, perfect stitches, and remember the skilled hands of my uncle. the crocheted ornaments sing of the skill of my grandma. the baby's first christmas ornament reminds me of my parents, young and just starting out.

so if i am to be a compilation, i'm happy it's of these folks. these memories and these christmases. for especially this month, i am reminded that really, when it comes down to it, we're all just renting this space, this blessed, borrowed life.

a real world christmas

it was cold that night, and dark.

there were no rooms and people were rude. they were lost, lonely and scared.

on a bed of straw, huddled near livestock. not the ideal way to bring a savior to the world. not the ideal place for anything, really. the birth was flawed, riddled with unexpected setbacks, disappointments and heavy-hearted fatigue. in an age where lead-based paint is feared, the floor of a barn seems an unimaginable substitute for a hospital. but for all its human shortcomings, what a divine, precious perfection. it was real, hay bales and all. the face staring back a marriage of the human and the holy. yes, it was not quite as imagined, but in its very essence, the realness, the grit and dirt and sweat of Jesus' birth is what makes it endearing, special and sacred.

i find comfort in that. in the realization that God wants the soil of our lives, the grimy undercore of our souls, to plant the seed of faith. life is messy and tragic and altogether hard sometimes, but it's also so blessedly beautiful.

we took christmas pictures on sunday. from the moment i slipped on my dress, it just felt wrong. it was windy. and cold. and pablo was preoccupied with the cat running behind the deck. my hair was laying weird and i picked my skirt on the wooden bench. we argued about dog placement and portrait vs. landscape. about self timer length and background location. seven pictures later, we settled on a semi-focused, semi-centered one that will suffice, and ordered thirty.

this picture sort of sums it all up. we were frustrated, ill and tired with each other. i was tempted to send these out as the final picture, a nice detour from the typical, posed shots that line our fridge.

because this picture represents real life. it was not ideal. actually, nothing went according to plan. but it was real and honest and rooted in love. and in the end, the chaos gave way to beauty. much like that birth, i suppose.

don't let your dreams be dreams

when daylight savings time hits and the nights get shorter--too short to go on walks in the country or swing on our front porch and watch the sun go down--robert and i are forced to find other means of evening entertainment. 


this usually results in following at least one, if not a half dozen or so, new television shows. in the past, 24, LOST and desperate housewives have been our vices of choice. but recently, we have been indulging in a little guilty pleasure known as gold rush alaska. this discovery channel program follows six men who gave up everything to trek out to alaska and mine for gold. 

source

when i first saw this, my immediate thought was "this sounds like the yukon trail computer game." please tell me someone else spent copious amounts of time in front of the screen as a tween playing this fabulous "oregon trail" spin-off.


i thought it ridiculous. and foolish. and, quite honestly, crazy. 


to leave home and risk everything--every single thing--for the mere chance that riches lie buried beneath the boulders. to spend a whole three weeks not mining, but building a machine to pan for gold, to sift through the silt and mud for tiny nuggets. 


however, upon further viewing, the show turned a corner, and my feelings toward it did too. 


the men brought their wives and children up to live with them in the wilderness. i watched one wife walk gingerly off the plane, taking in the snow-capped mountains and rivers around her. i watched as her husband led her to the cabin he had built for her, and i saw his daughter playing in the sand.

source

and it hit me.


his dream isn't crazy at all. because it's his. it's solely and beautifully his, and that alone makes it worthwhile. and he's chasing it, which is more than i can say about myself half the time.


seeing him with his family cemented that for me. i saw the love in his crinkled brow wash the worry away from his wife's eyes. they understood each other. they got it. and who cared if i didn't get it? it wasn't mine to get.


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there's a piece of paper that i've been carrying around in my pocketbook for a week now. a simple name, scribbled down on the back of a take-out menu. a bra size. jean size. t-shirt size. a local woman that my bible study is sponsoring for christmas. a real, live woman, with real children, narrowed down to measurements and figures.


i've been scurrying about all week getting ready for christmas. almost every evening, i've found some reason to go to target, wal-mart or the shopping center, scrambling about for gifts and clothes for my family and friends. all the while, leaving that piece of paper zipped up. forgetting that a dream was inside there. 


a dream of a christmas without apologies to little faces. without shrugs and sighs of disappointment. without excitement shot down. without "maybe next year."


and it doesn't matter that i can't relate. that i don't understand or can't fathom. because, like the miner, her dream is singular. and it's not my place to try and identify. all i can do is help.


so i went shopping tonight. not for myself or my family. but for her. to do my part, my teeny, itsy part, to make sure her dreams.

aren't dreams anymore.