Time Travel

I'm pretty much blown away at how easy time travel is. I know, it's also impossible. But you'd be hard pressed to convince me of that once the tree gets into place...a few lights, cinnamon in the air, a nip on the breeze and I'm back in childhood. Not just memories, but all the wonder, excitement & hope comes rushing back. I know the New Year is a great time for reconnecting with the true cares we should be focusing on, but I believe it's the recapturing of our childhood dreams at Christmas that has us convinced at New Years that we CAN tackle all those impossible dreams.

I love Christmas. I am so thankful it's not all year long because Christmas is the prime example of why delayed gratification is always 1000 times better than instant gratification. My poor sister is a lizard - she has to talk herself down from full-scale panic every year when the summer starts to give-way to fall. But that's when I start to count down to these feelings.

I've yet to have kids, but I'm sure that I'm bound to go through all the same phases of pregnancy that millions of women have traversed before me...however, I've got a heads start on many I know as I go through the nesting phase every year for at least a month. Not only do I feel like baking and cleaning and cooking anything that takes forever and fills the entire house with homey smells...I even dive into organization projects that have sat all year nagging at me. I used to think it was a begin-the-New-Year-right sort of a thing. And I think most people would think it's just my organized nature making room for the stuff that's bound to come through my doors during the gift exchange process. But it's true nesting. It's all about creating a home. Even this year as I'm single and my housemates are too busy to decorate the tree...it doesn't matter if I'm ALL alone, I would still do this exact same thing.

Here's something I love about my particular design...there are just some things that no matter if I'm in a crowd or alone, the fun in it remains the same. For me, Christmas is one of those. I would, for sure, prefer to be with my family on Christmas (all of them), but if I ever found myself alone on Christmas, I would still find a way to have a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, festive house, warm smells and time for sentimental thoughts.

So Merry Christmas to you wherever you may be, whomever you may be with or without...may a simple thing like a baby born in a barn bring you great hope, may the story of that Baby's mother's love bring you comfort, may the story of that Baby's success bring you courage and may you find a way to pass those qualities on to others in the days to come.

Merry Christmas!

So I had this day...

Today was a Wednesday. It's a low-maintenance sort of a day. The kind of day where I usually block out a few hours in the morning to work on the weekly Nutshell for New Life. The kind of day that I book appointments in because it's typically low key & sort of quiet. The kind of day that I might be able to tear my eyes away from the immediate & get a grip on the 'coming'. The kind of day where I sometimes forget that if I put TOO many things on a low-maintenance Wednesday, that it becomes the most chaotic day one might imagine and loses the very nature of a Wednesday. Today was that day.

One of the things I love about my job is that it holds a tiny bit of everything - it uses the utmost my anal nature has to offer, it taxes my creativity, it stretches my management skills, it utilizes my routine-creating brain, it draws on my people skills, it develops my heart for the lost, etc...I am NEVER bored. But there are those days when my job requires ALL of those things at one time. Those are the days where I leave the campus & wonder what I accomplished and what sort of mess I might be returning to in the morning.

I'm learning to handle these days with more dignity & finesse - they used to make me lose my character and all my friends. But I'm taking things more in stride - so much so that it was 3:30 today before I realized I hadn't yet had a chance to pee and somehow had missed my 10:30 snack alarm AND my noon lunch alarm. At 4 I realized my Crystal Light powder was caked to the bottom of my water bottle because I'd poured it in there (somewhere around 11:30, I thnk) with the intention of refilling the water & instead couldn't get a break to get TO the water dispenser. The kind of day that you have a line of at least 2 people waiting on you 65% of the time. The kind of day where the church gets its money's worth out of me.

These sorts of days come probably 4-5 times per month (yes, I realize that means that sometimes it's more than once a week) & I can't tell you what a relief it is to not feel like the day after these kinds of days is going to be filled with apology emails & phone calls :) Hooray for maturation & development!

I'm not quite to the place where I end these days with anything but massive prayers for a miracle to happen tomorrow that erases the back-log I created today & keeps the pattern from repeating tomorrow... :)

The Wonders of Technology

I feel about a hundred years behind the times for just setting up my first blog. Heck, my sister who is a mother of 3 young children, a major ministry leader, a superb wife & gardener extraordinaire finds time to blog (and keep a separate website for her kids' sake...). I'm a complete moron. But I've tackled FaceBook and I love what it's doing for my social life. So I'm biting the bullet and tackling blogging. Who knows, once my pride is no longer dinged from being the only person in North America who doesn't regularly blog, I'll find it's not the thing for me. But for now, for this nanosecond, I feel caught up with the current trend in technology.

Putting My Dancing Shoes On

Since I was a little girl, I remember cranking the music up & prancing around in what I thought was a graceful manner. Graceful was apparently defined by the use of large arm strokes through the air & had very little to do with how I looked or keeping the time or what my feet were doing. In fact, it probably had the most to do with the goofy look my face would assume...the eyes closed, the eyebrows & chin lifted, the air of sophistication. I loved to dance.

Somebody talked me into taking a Swing Dance class at the senior's center my freshman year of college. Why the heck not? I loved every minute of it. Then it was on to Basic Ballroom. Then Advanced Ballroom. Of course, 'advanced' for the geriatrics unit was a relative term, but I was in my element and sadly at their pace.

So 2008 began with a hair-brained idea to put more intentional effort into activities that refresh my spirit. Dance inevitably came to mind and with a willing (albeit naive) partner in tow, I find myself back in dance lessons. And loving every minute of it. I hate the mirrors around the room for many reasons, not the least of which is that I look like someone stuffed an awkward jungle monkey into a pair of heels, but I love every minute of it. When I get to heaven, I'm going to have grace and dignity and poise. But this side of the gravestone, I leave a lot to be desired.

It's a strange thing to know you're not good at something and yet still get incredible joy out of doing it...about pursuing it...about researching it...about FEELING it. But that is exactly what dance is/does for me. I never want to tell people I take dance lessons because I'm always afraid that some day they'll actually SEE me dance! But it comes up all the time because I enjoy it so stinking much.

There is something that explodes in my chest - starting somewhere in the vicinity of my upper stomach - when certain dance moves change the direction of my momentum. It's well-known in class that once I get the giggles I'm completely useless and perhaps that's not much fun for the partner I'm paired with at the moment, but it's pure joy exuding off me whenever I get the tiniest taste of actual dancing - no thinking, just feeling - dancing.

You're never too old to learn. You might be too old to excel. You might have too much pride to try. You might be too nervous to let loose...but you're never too old to learn. Maybe it's true that we mature with age & some things we thought were splendid as kids lose their luster with time...but sometimes our maturity just talks us out of our childhood dreams. Shall we go on chickening out so that our fears may increase? May it never be! Go find your inner dancer...