Tag: Christmas (Page 3 of 4)

The Chorus of a Bleak January

January 14, 2013 /

I’ve been doing something weird lately.

It’s January and I think most of us are feeling a bit schizophrenic.  Relieved to get back to the predictable routine of catching the bus to work, and grocery shopping, hair cuts and t.v. shows and recycling.

But there’s also the let down of ordinariness and a bleak winter (for those of us in Minnesota at least) stretching out interminably and we’re thinking it would be kind of nice if there was one more gift to unwrap that was forgotten in the rush.

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So I’ve been listening to Christmas music.  In January.  I’ve left my Pandora Classic Christmas music station on, and it’s been like with all the noise of other Christmassy stuff muted til next November, God’s voice has a chance with me.

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2013 and Packing up Christmas

January 2, 2013 /

Dear Friends,  Happy New Year!

As we start into 2013 I want to thank you, many of you who have stumbled across this blog or had someone forward it to you and you kept coming back over this first full year of “Awake My Soul”.  Thank you to those of you who have commented, or FB messaged or texted or emailed me sharing your thoughts or how God may have used a particular post.  We’re all in this together, and although our individual stories are unique, the grand themes of God’s story in our lives are what we hold in common – hope, fear, brokenness, redemption…

My goal is to get better in 2013…to post what is more God-honoring, compelling, encouraging, smile-bringing to you so that you look forward three times a week to stopping by, or opening your email if you subscribe.

If you have suggestions or feedback I’d love to hear from you.  Other than that, I don’t want to sound too Holy-shmoly but I’m truly aware of my dependence on God for writing material.  Today, since many of you are newer, I’m going to repost a favorite from last year titled Packing up Christmas.  

Blessings,                                                                                                                         Laura

Daughters Katy and Maggie have gone back to D.C.

It finally snowed here in Minnesota (righting a cosmic wrong).

And I ‘m sitting by the fire in our kitchen at dusk with a cup of hot chocolate as I write this.  Maggie insists I call it hot chocolate instead of cocoa.  No idea why.

The Christmas decorations are packed away til next year.  Ornaments made with chubby hands and glue of love.  Unusual baubles brought from far flung places.  Decorations marking special times.

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As I pack up Christmas I feel so conflicted…

I love and hate this time of year.

I hate it that it’s the end of my favorite season.  The end of twinkle lights and anticipation, shining stars and awe-struck shepherds.  Putting things away is such a mark of endings, while Jesus is the celebration of new beginnings that I love.

Jesus.  Every-day grace and fresh starts.  Every day.  Not just at Christmas and not just at New Years.

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One More Gift…or Two

December 27, 2012 /

At our house the carols have been sung, candles lighted, cookies eaten, snuggling done by the fireplace.  The tree has been given multiple compliments so that it feels secure in its loveliness, and bags of festive crumpled wrapping paper and shiny bows carted out to the trash.

Yes, the gifts have been opened and oohed and aahed over, but there are a few more…A couple I didn’t get delivered to friends and tennis coaches, and Christmas cards still to mail.  Maggie’s fiance, Austin arrives today and his gifts are still waiting under the Christmas tree.

All this gifting focus has prompted me to think about several other gifts that are there every day, but may sit around un-given or unopened in the new year.

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Squashed

December 24, 2012 /

I’m really am a Christmas girl.  I love it all.  Well, almost all.  The snow and twinkle lights and candles and cookie-baking.

But Christmas also means more people.  Family and guests visiting, more traffic in parking lots, more people at parties.  And I’m an extrovert, so that’s ok except that when people are extra busy they’re stressed and not the best version of themselves so it’s easy to get squashed in the crush of “me” and “my” and “this is what I want”.

Basically we’re all a pretty opinionated and selfish lot.

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Pregnant, part 2

December 12, 2012 /

This week I’m thinking about Mary and three spiritual practices that may help us prepare for Christmas.  You can read the first in the series here if you want.

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As I write this I’m in a lovely setting, looking out over our snowy Minnesota – an outward picture of peace and calm that is definitely not what I’m feeling inside.  In my fingers and toes and stomach is… fear – that indefinable tingly, insufficient, I can’t get it done emotion.  I need to do, to create, to produce and I don’t have it in me.  I’m not enough.

Is that feeling more common at Christmas than at other times of the year?

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Hungry for More Than Christmas Cookies

December 5, 2012 /

Today I was supposed to go to Weight Watchers.  Instead I made Christmas cookies.

And by that I mean I made Jeans Bars, so named because they’re guaranteed to make your jeans tight.  Yeah.  I know, I know…

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But, it got me to thinking about the food I need far more than Christmas cookies.

And the God who has given to all of us who are hungry and thirsty for that “more”…

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An Advent Sunday Morning

December 2, 2012 /

As I write this it is the first Sunday morning of Advent.  It’s foggy and ugly outside my Starbucks window, but I live in Minnesota so I know snow is right around the corner which makes me so happy.

I’m an early morning person, but I know many are just now lumbering, hustling, shivering, or springing out of bed.  Some to get kids dressed and combed.  Some, bumping around a dark empty house or apartment alone.  Getting ready for worship.

Some will be driving to church with an attitude of habitual going-through-the-motions resignation.

But for me…and for most I think, there is always a glimmer of expectation.  As small as a twinkle light, but it’s there for sure.  A tiny bit of hope that we’ll meet God in that worship space and hear a whisper from Him.

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Christmas Lists

November 30, 2012 /

I love making lists.

And I’ve been making a lot of them lately.

To-do lists, grocery lists, lists of goals, and especially Christmas lists of gifts, and party planning, and elf-like stuff.

I think one reason we make lists is because we like the illusion of control it gives us.  It says “I have a plan!”  We get to check things off, accomplish things (and yes, I’ve been known to do something and then add it to my list so I could check it off).

But sometimes those lists are the very thing that threaten to leave us clutching a bottle of Advil, wondering “How in the world did I get in this mess and how many days til January 2nd?”

And then I imagine Jesus saying, “Come to Me all who are weary with Christmas and give me your lists.”

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On Mary and Getting Ready

November 28, 2012 /

It’s coming on christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace.

Joni Mitchell’s been singing those lyrics in my brain today.

It’s coming on Christmas…

and we’re in “getting ready mode”.

John’s been gone at meetings in Houston so I’ve been using the time to get the house ready for Christmas.

And, as I wrote last week, our daughter Maggie got engaged and would like an early summer wedding, so we’re getting ready for that which means constant g-chats and texts with the girls in D.C., and phone calls to check dates with…well, everyone.

And then over the weekend the “to do’s” of Christmas hit me.  You know, like when you’ve noticed that it started snowing but then you don’t look outside for awhile and when you look again you can’t believe how it’s piled up.  There’s a lot that I’ve promised to do that has snuck up on me like a silent snow drift.

And I’m grateful for a full life, but I need to get ready for all of it.

This morning, in between doing all this getting ready stuff there were several distinct moments of silence and solitude when it felt like God said, “Hold it.  Shhhh.  I’m here.”

And in those moments I wondered what getting ready for Christmas really looks like.

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Packing up Christmas

January 2, 2012 /

Daughters Katy and Maggie have gone back to D.C.

It finally snowed here in Minnesota (righting a cosmic wrong).

And I ‘m sitting by the fire in our kitchen at dusk with a cup of hot chocolate as I write this.  Maggie insists I call it hot chocolate instead of cocoa.  No idea why.

The Christmas decorations are packed away til next year.  Ornaments made with chubby hands and glue of love.  Unusual baubles brought from far flung places.  Decorations marking special times.

As I pack up Christmas I feel so conflicted…

I love and hate this time of year.

I hate it that it’s the end of my favorite season.  The end of twinkle lights and anticipation, shining stars and awe-struck shepherds.  Putting things away is such a mark of endings, while Jesus is the celebration of new beginnings that I love.

Jesus.  Every-day grace and fresh starts.  Every day!!  Not just at Christmas and not just at New Years.

As I was taking decorations down and wrapping up the creche I got to thinking maybe I should keep the baby Jesus out as a reminder.  Maybe not pack Him away.

It made me think of this Frederick Buechner quote:

“Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of us. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in the least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there, too. And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully.”

Isn’t that great??  “no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there, too…”

The decorations that have heralded Jesus’ birth may be packed away, but He is not.  He’s here!  Among us and in us and around us…holiness invading and redeeming the ordinary and the ugly and the broken.

Today, an “after Christmas” day, a back-to-routine and back-to-work day…How are you feeling?  Where might you see Him?

“Steep your life in God-reality, God initiative, God-provisions…Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now…” Mt. 6 MSG

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