christmas greetings...

Merry Christmas! It's hard to believe the holiday has come and gone for yet another year. The commercialization of Christmas has started taking over even before Thanksgiving these days, but sometimes it takes me some time to get in the true Christmas spirit. It always helps once I get home and this year I was able to get in a couple of last minute shopping trips along with some baking bonding with my mom to help out. Sometimes I struggle just grasping the true gravity of it all. It can become a bit of a ritual, another religious thing we do without knowing why we do it. I try to imagine what it was like then... what it means for my life now. I love having an excuse to spend time with family and friends but even without all of the people in my life, the birth of Jesus is what counts. I feel like Christmas is just the foreshadowing of what will come in a few months when we celebrate Easter... With that said, I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas.

My mom bought me Shades of Blue, a Karen Kingsbury book for Christmas. I had to finish the book I was in the middle of last night, but I read Shades of Blue today. I'm a huge fan of Kingsbury's work... a Christian fiction author, her books are easy reading that let me escape into another life that I dream about for myself. I first read her 9/11 books, One Tuesday Morning and Beyond Tuesday Morning, and have read everything else since then. On the surface, Shades of Blue would probably be described as a book about abortion, but it meant so much more to me. The main character had to close one chapter of his life before he could move onto the next and I think when you dig deeper it was really about forgiveness.

I think I've said it before, but I'm an expert at holding grudges. Once you've hurt me, I tend to put up walls to try to protect myself from getting hurt again. I keep trying to learn to let go, but I think it's harder to forgive and to let go when the "offender" doesn't apologize for his/her offense. It's easier to walk away. In today's society, it's easier to send a text message or an e-mail then to deal with issues head on. Easier doesn't always make it better, but I keep finding myself finding your wrong rather than dealing with what I can control and movimg on. In Shades of Blue someone apologized 10 years late. I don't want to be 10 years late for any apologies I owe... and I also don't want to sit around 10 years waiting for an apology. 

Luke 6:35-36 "But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back... Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."

transitions... safety...

This would be what I traditionally refer to as a transitional period. The fall semester has ended, Christmas is on its way and I even have a bit of a break between athletic events when I don't have to be at work. I'm not always good at transitions because they usually infer change and I'm definitely still trying to be better at change.

I taught my first college class this semester, but it wasn't really mine... at least not from the beginning. I'm looking forward to setting the tone in a couple of weeks for a class that I can really call my own. I want to be good at this... Sometimes I'm afraid to really go after something I really want because I don't want to fail. If I don't try then it's easier to explain whey I didn't get it. I'm determined to try. I want to work at this... I want to be good at this.

I closed on my house May 2, 2008. For most of the first year I had three other people living with me or at least paying rent. By this past summer I was living by myself and loving the freedom but at least a bit more conscious of safety. I'm not a big fan of people complaining about Fayetteville being unsafe. I like Fayetteville and I've never felt unsafe. There's crime there... I'm not denying that... but there's crime everywhere. I never felt like I was at more risk in my neighborhood than the country club neighborhood. At the same time when a traveling salesman rang my doorbell one day this summer trying to sell APX alarm systems, I took him up on it. I was going to be spending a lot of time traveling over the summer and figured it couldn't hurt. They convinced me to put one of those annoying signs in my yard and gave me all of my equipment free. Five hours later, I had a working alarm system. I googled the company after they left and they have a ton of complaints listed that gave me some concerns, but I haven't head a problem in the six months or so that I have been with them. Most people laughed at my "purchase" and told me it would be cheaper just to put the sign in my yard. Over Thanksgiving a couple of guys that work at school and live a couple of streets over were robbed. They didn't have an alarm and their house was trashed but the cops told them, even with an alarm, the robbers were so quick they couldn't guarantee an alarm would have stopped it. Even so, they installed an alarm system.

Less than a month later and I got a call from a friend/co-worker. She asked what I was doing and then told me my house had been broken into. She had to be kidding. The alarm system had tried to call me but my phone was charging in another room and I missed it so they called her. Her husband had gone to my house to meet the cop since I was home with my family. I had just driven 13 hours through a blizzard to get home... hadn't been home 24 hours and was having nightmares about having to drive back down to a wrecked house. I know they are just material things... it's a house... not my life, but I have never felt so violated. Through a series of phone calls I eventually learned the person or people broke through my side door, but when the alarm went off they ran off. They never made it in the house. The sign in my front yard didn't work... the alarm system I pay for every month did. That's not to say that it always will. I'm not so naive to think an alarm system works miracles... but tonight I'm grateful for APX alarms.  I'm also grateful for my friend and her husband for taking care of things Sunday night. I also have the best cousins in the world... they went over and repaired my door for me all within 24 hours.

This time next week I'll be sleeping in my house by myself with an alarm set praying for safety... and thanking God for another night sleeping in my house.

it's that time of year...

I had every intention of writing a Thanksgiving blog, but before I knew it, Thanksgiving was gone and I feel like I just keep playing catch up. I was so grateful to be able to go home for a couple of days over Thanksgiving. I hadn't been home since late July so it was a much needed visit. Tuesday night my parents took me to dinner and Wednesday my mom and I went Christmas shopping before I had dinner with my older sister and her family. We intended to have sibling movie night, but Kelsie couldn't make the trip and Adam was a no-show. Mindy and I were talking about Kelsie celebrating her first Thanksgiving married and Mindy and her husband were reminiscing about their first one. Evidently my mom was having a miscarriage and my parents dropped me off with Mindy and Jamie while they went to the hospital. I didn't remember hearing this story before and it broke my heart... broke my heart to think of my mom going through a miscarriage... and broke my heart to think that is the memory of Mindy and Jamie's first Thanksgiving as a married couple. There's no telling without the miscarriage, Kelsie may not be here and I'm so grateful for her but I've spent the last couple of weeks mourning my other sibling I never had the chance to meet. 

Since returning to North Carolina, I feel like things have been full speed ahead. Christmas is less than three weeks away. I taught the last class of my first semester teaching and will give my first final exam on Friday. I've been contemplating my future career steps and praying more and more for guidance. I recently spent a weekend in Newport News, Virginia celebrating one of my former college teammate's weddings. It was crazy reminiscing with people who were such an integral part of my life 6-9 years ago. 

I'm still in a place where every day I wake up and fall asleep remembering the same day the year before. I had such a strong support system.. fellowship, accountability.. I made the mistake of thinking it was forever. I'm still trying to adapt to change and be grateful for that period in my life while still looking expectantly at the coming days.

I'm trying to become a more consistent prayer. I was reading Lamentations 3... Jeremiah is talking about the struggles he went through during the destruction of Jerusalem. Lately I'm holding on to 3:21-24...

"Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.'"

David Crowder's "All I Can Say" covered at The Ridge Fellowship in Leander, TX: