My 2011 started with a kiss from someone who was wishing he was kissing someone else, a drunken night, an overnight stay in an airport all alone, and lots of tears.

This year has been challenging, difficult, upsetting, and confusing.  But this year I have also had a lot of fun, seen a lot of personal victory, grown a lot, and became an adult.  

I have learned, really learned, what hurt feels like, what forgiveness feels like, what love is, how God loves me, how to love God in return, what a relationship with God is supposed to feel like, what self-discipline does in my life, what health feels like, how freeing contentment is, what good decisions feel like, how to challenge myself, and how to have the healthiest relationships I have ever known.  

My 2012 will start with a kiss from a man who loves God and loves me, in that order, who looks at me and sees my soul, and who wishes for me to be no one else but the best version of myself.  

2011 has been, so far, the best year of my life.  I know it can't be all up from here, but I hope that doing life the way I have been and walking with God will make this year not the last year I can call 'best so far'.  

Here's to 2012.
May it find us well.  May we find health and love this year.  May we learn the lessons that sometimes hurt to learn with the people who will hurt with us.  May the good things in life be amplified this year and the bad be minimized, but may we cling to joy even if it's the opposite.  May we appreciate with gratefulness and contentment all we have been given.  May we be able to look back on 2012 next year as more grown up people who are following Jesus better than before.  May we live for the only things that will last: faith, hope, and love.  And the greatest of these is love.    

Christmas at the Flanigan's

written by Ralph, the Flanigan's Christmas tree

Every year, I get pulled out of my box and set up with relative ease, thank goodness.  What a pain it would be if I was fumbled with for hours like the neighbor’s tree.  I am dressed and wrapped with lights, sometimes with that god-awful tinsel thrown all over me.  And every year I have the same thought, "Don't they ever get tired of all this?"  I mean, it's pretty much the same thing, every dang time.  They pull me out and the big, fury one sets me up.  There I will sit for the next four weeks or so, naked as a forest tree until they hook all the shiny stuff on me, and I will watch them go through their same old rituals all performed to their same old songs.  

This year there are some new faces, but everything else is pretty much going according to plan.  This afternoon, they will all go away for an hour or two and return, their faces glowing.  I'm not sure what they do when they all go away, but they come back mumbling about songs and a message and something about candles.  Oh, just that word sends chills up my trunk.  I have always been afraid of fire.  Anyway, thankfully I don't have a taste for human food, or else I would envy all the cooking things smelling up the house.  From what I can tell, they will gather around one of my uncles who I've heard was cut down for a table and enjoy their meal by the light of more of those *shudder* candles.  

I don't understand all the things they will put around me after their dinner besides the fact that they have wasted more of my relatives to wrap the boxes, only to unwrap them in the morning.  It's kind of cruel, actually, in my opinion.  I also don't understand what happens next, and I never have, probably in large part because they don't care to turn me to watch what they call a movie.  I can only listen. 

In the morning (barely morning, still dark out), there will be flying paper and boxes.  It's as if they don't even know how many had to die for this activity to happen.  If I shared human emotion, it would probably make me cry.  

It's a funny thing, though, when all the colorful paper carnage is removed and they are left with their items, there is a sense I am not sure how to name.  I have never felt it before, and not just because I have never felt.  I think it is an emotion not many humans even feel.  I guess the best word I know for it is fullness.  

There is more cooking in the other room (is eating all these humans ever do?!), and the rest of the day is mostly spent sitting around 'ooh'-ing and 'aww'-ing over all the items.  There is also more food.  

Do you see what I mean?  Year after year, this is the drill.  I must be lacking some critical understanding of the whole spiel because they don't seem tired of these dry rituals at all.  Actually, they seem rather... happy.  

Merry Christmas, glowing humans.  At least these silly things bring you some sort of warmth.  I'm sure it will be just the same next year.  See you then.  

Today I finished a book that will now be added to my list of most important books I have read.  There are two books on that list so far, both of which I have read in the last six months: Love Wins and The Chronicles of Narnia (which I think of as one book, though there are many, since the copy I own is one large book that contains the entire series).  The book that was added to the list the second I finished today is The Shack.  I am so thankful for storytellers like C.S. Lewis and William Paul Young who are using the gifts God has blessed them with to bless others. 

I have two main reasons for loving these stories, neither of which is the storytelling itself, though I do treasure the beauty of how each story is told.  My first reason is that these stories bring me freedom.  They free my mind from trying to understand all the mysteries of God on its own.  They make big ideas, such as heaven, forgiveness, and the trinity, more accessible to my scope of understanding.  The stories, while making big concepts simpler and easier for me to understand, also bring color and life to such concepts.  This is part of what I mean by helping me to understand.  Stories make concepts tangible, and in a way they give me experiences to draw on.  Even though those experiences belong to the characters within the story, I am invited to share in them.  The second reason is that they enrich my relationship with God.  Any story about how God is interacting with others grows my love for Him, and The Shack is no different.  In fact, The Shack has especially grown my love for God. 

If you haven’t yet, please read The Shack.  Any question I can think of that I have heard asked of God is answered in this beautiful story.  In this book, God teaches about forgiveness and healing, answers the main characters questions about why there are mosquitoes, and helps solve the problem of pain.  Here are some of my favorite quotes, including the ones I have posted on Facebook over the last few days:

“Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship.”

“So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it.  Love is just the skin of knowing.”

“Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself – to serve.”

“Do you realize that your imagination of the future, which is usually dictated by fear of some kind, rarely, if ever, pictures me there with you?”

“Darkness hides the true size of fears and lies and regrets.  The truth is they are more shadow than reality so they seem bigger in the dark.”

“Pearls.  The only precious stone made by pain, suffering, and death.”

“Grace doesn’t depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.”

“Oh, child.  Don’t ever discount the wonder of your tears.  They can be healing waters and a stream of joy.  Sometimes they are the best words the heart can speak.”

And, my favorite, “If anything matters then everything matters.  Because you are important, everything you do is important.  Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart of a life, the world changes; with every kind service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again.”

What books are you thankful were written?  Which are in part responsible for your current relationship with God?  Which have set you free?  Which have changed your way of thinking? 

Do yourself a favor, and add the Shack to your list.

This Week the Trend

There is a finite amount of words that rhyme with trend, so we're going to have to do a bit of rearranging.

The trend this week
Was to give up on my self-critique,
To find myself smiling from cheek to cheek
and realize that the future isn't quite so bleak

The trend this week
Was to give my poor attitude a major tweak
More free time and some optimism helped me see
That content is the thing I always wanna be

So I had a good week this week.  I still found myself frustrated at some things, but I had a different fix rather than staying frustrated.  I took advantage of introvert time and really took advantage of my ability to sleep in this week and relax a bunch.  Because classes ended last Wednesday, I admit that it was very easy to feel content this week.  I had fewer responsibilities and more time to do the things I actually enjoy.  Vacation from school usually makes me wish that every week was like this rather than enjoying this time for what it is: a temporary break.  In other words, I hope this time of easy contentment is a warm up for my contentment muscles.  I hope I can strengthen them to prepare for when it's more difficult to feel content.

Last week, my life was out of control in the bad way: neither God or I had control.  There is also a bad way to feel in control: feeling like you can handle things on your own.  This week, though, I think I found the balance.  Mainly since I had a lot fewer things on my to-do lists this week, I felt like I could handle my life for the first time in a while.  But whether I can handle it or not, the balance is that I still want God to help me handle it.  That's where I think contentment is.  Whether I think I can do life on my own or not, whether I am happy about the way my day to day is going or not, I want God in the middle of it.  And when He is, there is nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, nothing to not be joyful about.

The Order of Identity

I recently read a blog post in which the writer said she had always promised herself that she would be human first, female second, and Christian third.  I liked that at first, especially the part about being a human first and a woman second, but the more I thought about it the more I wondered if that was the order I would put things in.  Are we supposed to be Christians first?  Or is the only reason that we can be Christians is because Christ redeemed our humanness?  God made humans first, gender second, and Christians last, so is that God's order of identity?  I guess that is the order chronologically, but what about the order by priority?  Should I be a Christian first or a human first?  When I phrase it that way, I think of the Christians who remind me of Jesus robots.  The regulation Christians who follow rules to the letter and expect everyone else (even sometimes those who don't even claim Christianity) to live up to that same standard.  I try my darnedest to make sure that my identity is based on the fact that Jesus Christ saved my life and redeemed my soul, that it is the foundation I stand on, that it is the place out of which I want the rest of my life to flow.  Even so, I think it may be true that I am a human first.

I am wondering out loud.  Well, not really out loud, but you know what I mean.  I am wondering in type.  Wonder with me, if you will.  What do you think?  Should we live as if we are humans first, man or woman second, and follows of Christ third?  How would you say the order goes and why?

This Week the Trend

I'm instituting a segment.  Blogs should have segments, I think.  This one will run every Sunday, and I'm naming it after one of my favorite songs.  You can even sing it to the same tune and peek into my life besides.  The goal is to name my trends each week so if they're negative they don't become the trends of the whole month and if they're positive they become permanent.  Remember that lyrics tend to be more dramatic than real life.  I have poetic license to overreact when set to music.

This week the trend
Made perfection the priority yet again
I beat myself up for not reaching all the bars I set
And gave up on the rest of them

This week the trend
Wasn't to handle things but rather simply to pretend
Got too lazy to put any of the hard work in
All the while hoping things work out in the end

Had to borrow that last line.  Fit too well, both to the rhyme and to reality, not to use.  The original song is pretty negative, but I promise my weekly trends will sometimes be positive.  I forgot this week that the trends of my life are mostly in my hands.  Don't forget that you write your trends, too.  Other people have influence, but you hold the pen.