Christmas Time Is Here

Leaving On a Jet Plane

On the fifth day of Christmas Alyssa gave to me...

Three Things I learned this Christmas

1. Setting expectations; it's not just for bloggers anymore.

Two Tickets to Paradise

2. I LOVE George Bailey. It could be his height, his hair or his hats. Maybe it's his ethusiasm for travel and adventure. Mostly it's his enourmous capacity to love.



3. Dudley is my favorite Christmas Angel.

I Believe in Miracles

So This Is Christmas

Pioneer Square ~ December 7, 2011

I entered corporate America through a coordinator position in the Human Resources department of a call center. It was as cog-like as it sounds. Although, I did work with some really great people so it wasn’t all that bad. Shockingly, one of the treasures I took away from that season of my life, aside from some unbelievable stories, was a corporate practice: set and manage expectations. I’ve come to realize that most of my disappointments are from misguided personal expectations, not because of actual poor results.

When I think about it, improper expectations seem to be the story of a lot of lives. The serpent got to Eve through misguided expectations, “He won’t actually kill you…” and the whole Christmas situation is another incredible example.  Jesus’s arrival on the scene is NOT how scholars expected the salvation of the world to come. They expected a fearsome warrior, not a helpless baby born in a barn to some poor worker hailing from the backwater of Galilee.
 

Proper punctuation.
Improper expectation.

So I guess out of all the Christmas traditions, disappointment resulting from improperly set expectations is one of the more authentic. Everywhere I go I am inundated with messages about what my expectations for this season should be. I should feel like this really is the most wonderful time of the year.  I should resign myself to the fact that it just ain’t Christmas because I don’t have a one to love, however, should Christmas miraculously still occur, it will be blue.

Meanwhile back in the original Christmas story, the shepherds have left and the family is taking Jesus to the temple where they meet a man named Simeon. Now, Simeon, this is a man with properly set expectations. He was moving with the Holy Spirit and when this baby Jesus shows up he knows instantly that this is the one he has been waiting for; God’s promised salvation.

I kind of love that Simeon’s reaction was to immediately burst out in praise. In my head, this praise is a song and this song is a sweet little remix of a popular 33 BC classic.

Simeon had a super close relationship with God. In that relationship, God made a promise to Simeon. Because Simeon believed without misguided personal expectation he was able to recognize the promise when it arrived then rejoice in it. Properly managed expectations are a pretty marvelous thing.

Seasons Of Love

Christmas Bells Are Ringing

As far as Christmas movies go, RENT may be the most depressing. I love it. I’ve been thinking about this musical a good deal lately. Mostly because I find myself needing to measure how I spend my days.

I work from home and am only really accountable to myself, but, man, I can be a pretty brutal boss. Yesterday I was entering my time spent into the Excel spreadsheet I created for me to track me and began to beat myself up because I had spent a small amount of time writing. I discovered in my data entry that instead of writing, I spent my time in some really wonderful conversations with some really fabulous people. Sometimes over cups of coffee, often in laughter and always in love.

I have decided to measure my life in love.

Blame It On The Rain

I speak in sound effects and song lyrics. Sound effects are hard to convey in writing so, today, I choose song lyrics.

Portland was smacked by its first big storm of the season yesterday. It’s been windy, rainy and slightly chilly so most people with any sense stay inside except for when venturing out is absolutely necessary. Needless to say, I went for a walk along the Willamette River this morning. I needed some movement, some nature and some God. I pressed play on my Season of Singing playlist and after some Kanye West and Ben Folds, The Weepies began to play "Painting by Chagall" as a train rumbled alongside the East Bank Esplanade.

Thunder rumbles in the distance, a quiet intensity
I am willful, your insistence is tugging at the best of me

Sometimes rain that's needed falls…

Coincidence? Possibly. I mean I did make the playlist and it does rain constantly in Portland. Although, we get little to no thunder, so a train is as close as I am likely to get and the song starting as a train rolls by, well…

I am humbled in this city
There seems to be an endless sea of people like us
Wakeful dreamers, I pass them on the sunlit streets
In our rooms filled with laughter
We make hope from every small disaster

I created this playlist toward the end of March when I was creating the proposal for my book; a memoir about holding onto hope in the midst all sorts of disasters. With the book and proposal nearly finished I felt the winter was over and now it was my season of singing. It’s the end of November and my book is still a Word document on my laptop but there has been lots of singing and laughter over the past nine months. The playlist flows into Lenka’s "Everything’s Okay" as I near the Morrison Bridge.

Sometimes I need a little sunshine
And sometimes I need you

The Esplanade is one of my favorite places in the city but I didn’t step foot on it for the first six years I lived in Portland. Sometimes the things we will love are within reach, we just haven’t embraced them yet. Fear kept me from embracing the joy that is the East Bank. Fear isn't from God, hope is.

Keep giving me hope for a better day
Keep giving me love to find a way
Through this messy life I made for myself
Heaven knows I need a little

Hope for a better day
A little love to find a way
Through this heaviness I feel
I just need someone to say, everything's okay

And then the crowd resounds with:
Everything's okay!

Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly.
1 Corinthians 13:13 The Message.

Dream On

I am a part of this awesome church called The Groves.

If you know me, that sentence carries a lot of weight.
A. Because I don’t just go throwing compliments around. If I say, it I mean it.
B. Because I don’t take publicly aligning myself with people, places, things or ideas lightly.
C. Because I have a lot of opinions, some of which are about churches.

All that being said, I love my church. Thanks in part to some excellent sandwich board marketing I stumbled into a Groves Sunday service a year ago today. By the time I left that afternoon, I knew I was home. Since I moved here 8 years ago, my heart has been for my neighbors in downtown Portland. I want them to know what true, unconditional, never-ending love is, that, that love is God and through his son Jesus, brokenness is transformed into good. The Groves shares my heartbeat.

Dream+Weaver

Yesterday in our Sunday service we continued our journey through Genesis and read about Joseph’s dream. And while I tried hard to get the vision of Donny Osmond in a technicolor dream coat out of my mind, Paul and Sunia spoke about God dreams. Here’s my take away: Joseph’s dream eventually came true but this was after his character was developed enough to catch up to it. A number of people scoffed at his dream and were pretty mean about it. But you can’t hold a good God dream down. Mary the mother of Jesus had a God dream, too. She was a little more reserved in whom she told and found encouragement in her cousin. Over time God prepared both Joseph and Mary for the actualization of their dreams.

The Groves Church is full of dreamers. I am one of them. Sometimes I encounter scoffers, oftentimes my scoffer is myself. Lately lies have tried to swoop in and snuff out my dreams. But, yesterday, I was once again reminded that I can’t let them. A couple of weeks ago I began a practice of beginning my day with dancing. I get up, turn on some tunes and shake out the lies. It’s a good time my friends. You should try it. One of my favorites, Florence + the Machine, sings it well, “It’s hard to dance with a devil on your back, so shake him off.”

The Shot Heard 'Round the World

Yorktown Battlefield ~ October 4, 2011

Sometimes I deny my inner history nerd. Then, one day while traveling across the country, I find myself totally engrossed with every little thing the tiny village of Yorktown has to offer and I realize I LOVE HISTORY. Well, really, I love a good story and that pretty much is what history is. It is a little over a month since I took a National Parks tour of the Yorktown Battlefield and I find myself on the Library of Congress website reading a few of General George Washington’s letters.

I blame it on the entertaining and informative National Park Ranger who told us that six months before the United States’ victory at the Battle of Yorktown, George Washington declared in a letter that, “…we are at the end of our tether, and that now or never our deliverance must come.”

Now, having read a few of Washington’s letters it appears that the man could be quite the Debbie Downer. After five years of writing about this brutal war, I imagine him hunched over his desk trying to find a new way to describe the state of bad he was currently in and choosing “end of our tether.” It is quite the dire description when you think about it.

I never realized how overwhelming it must have been for Washington and the men of the revolution. They were in the middle of something where, for the most part, the outcome was not in their favor and, by many accounts, was fairly foolhardy. They had absolutely no guarantee of success.

Nonetheless, Washington and his men tenaciously held on to that tether and six months later saw the tide turn in their favor when on October 19, 1781 General Lord Cornwallis of the British Army surrendered in Yorktown. With this victory United States independence was secured and the course of world history was changed significantly. Two years later the war officially ended and Washington became the first president of this baby nation.

So, I’m in the middle, or maybe more accurately in the second third, of my history and, Mr. First President of the United States of America, you inspire me to hold on. I wonder if you also inspired the ladies of Wilson Phillips.

PS: Veteran’s Day is Friday. You should thank one.

Ch-Ch-Changes

Sometimes, when the clouds and fog are just thick enough to blur the tree lines but not enough to block the sun, I believe I am in a fairy tale. I'm at the beginning of a good one - one that is brimming with possibility, I just know it.

This optimistic attitude is rather new for me. I've lived much of my life believing the lie that this now, my current present, is the best there is, was, or ever will be. I recently met a bunch of folks across the United States many of whom also feel the pressure of this lie. Sometimes, we forget that this current present, whether good or bad, is only for now. We forget that tomorrow, or even our next moment, is full of possibility. Driving through the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia during my recent four week road trip across the U.S. the concept of "for now" became as vivid as the leaves I viewed from my passenger side window. The leaves were changing and so was I.

I began 2011 with the goal of living in joyful anticipation, an idea based on Romans 8. After many months of my typical ridiculous anxiety, I think I am finally living an adventurously expectant God filled life full of joyful anticipation.

Express Yourself

Last year I wrote a book. No, it’s not published, but that does not discount the fact that I wrote it. It’s not perfect but I do think it should eventually be read by lots of people. So if I really like you or if I really want you to represent me, I’ll let you read it.

This year I’m writing a blog…and eating crow. Part of the blog creation process is picking out a profile photo. I chose a photo I took on my way back from the Oregon coast a week after my 30th Birthday. I was trying to capture a particularly profound moment. I tried smiling then I tried laughing. I ended up with the photo you see here:

So this photo I took: I don’t know how often I make this face or what I was thinking when I made it or if I think the same thing each time I make it. But, I have a feeling my friends and family might know. They see me, sometimes, much better than I see myself.

I think that’s why God gives us relationships, so we can better grasp reality. My version can be quite skewed sometimes. Thankfully, I’ve been given a wonderful collection of people who enable me to see the world through their various relationships with God and me. It’s a beautiful thing. Not a one of us is perfect or even close to it, but, together, we are working life out.

That’s what I think this photo is: a singular point in time when I knew truth. And that truth is captured in my understated expression: “This is me. This is it. I am currently certain of almost nothing in my life…but I am working life out.” That is what this blog is – life working itself out.