Keeping Christmas

I could have posted many, many things related to Christmas this morning. It's difficult to find my very favorite passages or sayings or carols or prayers, so instead, I thought I'd share four things I found this year that I had never heard before. These resonated deep inside my heart this morning as I sat thinking about the mystery of Christmas and how to keep it alive all year round. I hope you find them as meaningful as I do.

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

- Charles Dickens

Expectancy is the atmosphere for miracles.

- Edwin Louis Cole

 

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with the flocks,
then the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal those broken in spirit,
to feed the hungry,
to release the oppressed,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among all peoples,
to make a little music with the heart…
And to radiate the Light of Christ,
every day, in every way, in all that we do and in all that we say.
Then the work of Christmas begins.
- Howard Thurman 

Not Only on Christmas Day

Lord, this is my prayer
Not only on Christmas Day
But until I see You face to face
May I live my life this way:

Just like the baby Jesus
I ever hope to be,
Resting in Your loving arms
Trusting in Your sovereignty.

And like the growing Christ child
In wisdom daily learning,
May I ever seek to know You
With my mind and spirit yearning.

Like the Son so faithful
Let me follow in Your light,
Meek and bold, humble and strong
Not afraid to face the night.

Nor cowardly to suffer
And stand for truth alone,
Knowing that Your kingdom
Awaits my going home.

Not afraid to sacrifice
Though great may be the cost,
Mindful how You rescued me
From broken-hearted loss.

Like my risen Savior
The babe, the child, the Son,
May my life forever speak
Of who You are and all You've done.

So while this world rejoices
And celebrates Your birth,
I treasure You, the greatest gift
Unequaled in Your worth.

I long to hear the same words
That welcomed home Your Son,
"Come, good and faithful servant,"
Your Master says, "Well done."

And may heaven welcome others
Who will join with me in praise
Because I lived for Jesus Christ
Not only Christmas Day
- Mary Fairchild

The Heart of Christmas

Yesterday, I felt like a breath of fresh air swept through my stale heart and gave it new vitality. For the past several weeks, I had been feeling a little confused as to how to go about celebrating Christmas the "right" way. Now that Joey and I have a family of our own, little as it may be, I am even more aware of the folly that surrounds us during Christmas, how somewhere along the line the real reason for Christmas was hijacked by folks who saw an opportunity to make a dime. And now, all around me, I see kids with a sense of entitlement, kids who throw fits over getting the biggest, best, newest thing the world has to offer.  I'm left wondering what we will do to celebrate it, how we'll be able to raise kids without this sort of attitude, and whether we'll be able to somehow honor Christ in the midst of it all.

I have seen several blog posts discussing exactly this idea lately, and it seems that many folks are determined to set things right in their homes and basically shun anything remotely "of the world." But as I read the articles, I started feeling like a loser of a mom because not only was I exited for Addie to get to experience Christmas for real for the first time, but I also felt like a million people out there in blog land were somehow judging me for welcoming Christmastime with a fire burning the fire place and scented candles filling the room with the sweet smell of Christmas while Joey and I decorated our tree as "It's a Wonderful Life" was playing in the background.

But yesterday, it was as though our Pastor's message let me off the worry hook and gave me permission to celebrate with all the merriment that the season has to offer. He brought a bit of this merriment I'm talking about into  the service because he said that it is, after all,"the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." He showed a clip of his favorite rendition of this very song, a rendition done by none other than the Muppets. It was easy to see that Pastor was in a festive mood, thoroughly enjoying celebrating the season, but as soon as the music died down and the congregation began to settle in for the sermon, he posed this question (as if he instinctively knew there was someone in the back row sitting next to Joey and I who were vocally questioning his judgement): He asked, "So why do we have things like this at church?" He then explained, "The reason we do stuff like that around here is to offend as many religious spirits as possible. Don't get me wrong -- we're a deeply spiritual church. We're just not very religious." He went on to give a powerful message about how at the heart of Christmas is a celebration of the most wonderful gift that was ever given to humanity--the gift of the saving grace found in the Christ-child. Since we're celebrating that this season, shouldn't we be merry, be festive, and have a wonderful Christmastime?

Perhaps that's the distinction I'm trying to make in my own life as I think about what sorts of things to cut out of as well as include in our Christmas celebrations, the difference between what's religious and what's spiritual. If I don't put up a Christmas tree, if I refuse to sing Jingle Bells, if I never give another gift at Christmas -- does that make me any more spiritual than if I do? Maybe. Or maybe I would be doing it out of a religious heart, not a spiritual heart. I think in the end it comes down to the condition and motivation of my heart. 1 Samuel 16:7 says this:

The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. 

People judge by outward appearance, 

but the Lord looks at the heart.

(The Message)

I think this verse holds the answer for how to celebrate Christmas, how to weigh what's important versus what's not important, and how to make what could otherwise seem trivial carry deep significance.  So, after I thought long and hard about all this today, I made a decision. Instead of feeling guilty for celebrating the way I do, instead of being overly concerned with what people might think of my choices, and instead of feeling the push to buy more, do more, or be more during these last few days before the 25th, I'm going to focus instead on the condition of my heart, my motivations for my actions, and most importantly, on the greatest Gift anyone has ever been given. And I suspect I'm going to have an awful lot of fun doing so.

I sincerely hope you will join me.

On Creativity

There are so many smart people with incredible things to say out there, and when I stumble upon them (online or otherwise), I'm enriched, challenged, inspired.

This week I seemed to stumble upon things concerned with creativity. Not a big surprise; that's pretty much what's been on my mind and in my heart for the past several weeks. Here are my favorites:

1. Jon Acuff's blog is quickly becoming one of my favorite reads. Check out this post on recognizing our own talent here. As a bonus, there's a short video at the end of the post called "Obvious to You. Amazing to Others" by Derek Sivers that got me thinking in a new way about my own self-doubt. After you read/watch that one, here's a great one on ways to stay creative. A challenge, to say the least, but one worth trying, I think.

2. This post about creativity by Kath Cunningham, author of The Long Walk Home blog. She's from the UK, so her perspective is a bit different from those of us in the US, but her ideas and her heart are in sync with my own, and I love reading what she has to say.
 

3. Procrastination. It's not a word I like to use much. In fact, I sort of cringe at it. Not for reasons you'd think, though. It's not because I am overly efficient, am always early, or am even particularly organized. I don't like it because I don't like that it's true about myself. But this video helped me think differently about procrastination this week, and (shock!) I've actually gotten things done. See it on YouTube here.

Self-doubt and Creativity

Are "real artists," the painters, musicians, actors, play writes, novelists, or any number of other artsy occupations - are these the only people who are able to be creative? Are they the only ones who are capable of harnessing creativity and turning their inspiration into something tangible, something that can be seen and appreciated by others? 

I used to think so. I used to think that creativity was something only a select few were blessed with, as if it were a gift that God gave to only some people and not others. Now, though, I think that He has given us all the ability to create because He made us in His own image, and if he's the Creator, and we are made in his image, wouldn't that mean that we are given ability to create?

My husband has a talent for drawing beautiful, realistic pictures, but I have a hard time making stick figures look good. My brothers can play the drums and the guitar with abandon (having essentially taught themselves to do so), I can't play a single instrument. My father can envision a finished stage production well before he actually puts the cast together, I had a hard time putting together informal skits at junior high camp. My mom loves to sing, and she probably will until she breathes her last breath. Me? I'm certainly not a professional vocalist.

But you know what? That doesn't mean I'm not creative. I've learned that I am creative in different ways, ways in which the people I'm close to aren't creative. Because I'm different from them, I ended up misunderstanding creativity, and I let self-doubt suppress whatever urge to create I actually did have. 

I know I'm not alone. It seems to me that the most authentically creative people always battle with self-doubt, but it's when they kick it to the curb and do the work anyway that the genius begins to emerge. 

Here are a few thoughts and ideas about creativity that have helped shape my perspective, and I hope they make you think a little bit differently about whatever kind of creative passion you happen to have in your life. 

Everything in life is writable about 

if you have the outgoing guts to do it, 

and the imagination to improvise.  

 The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

- Sylvia Plath

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something. 

- Frank Capra

"Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. 

Any activity becomes creative 

when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.

- John Updike

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. 

It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. 

You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

- Ray Bradbury

I believe that an artist working for 

and representing the Kingdom of God 

should do the best of their ability to show and prove 

the depth, life, newness, creativity, truth, 

and excitement of their Heavenly Father 

through the work that is set before them.

- Daniel Smith

A New Start

Well friends, the time has come to let you in on a little secret project I've been working on. It's still in its infancy; the things that are posted there aren't well-developed yet and the new blog site doesn't have much of a collection of posts, but hey - it's started. And for me these days, that's a feat.

I'm working and writing in a new place, a place that will be similar to this place (in that it will be me doing the writing), but it is a place where (hopefully) my writing will be a bit more focused.  The blog was inspired by Philippians 2:15, which says this:

"Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night..." (The Message)

When I started the project, it was a collaboration between myself and Sam Inman (who I'm sure most of you know), who asked me if I would start blogging for Harbor Light, specifically. Posed with this question, I immediately felt intimidated and flooded with more self-doubt than perhaps I've ever really felt. And yet, despite all that, I found myself excited and ready to take on the challenge.

And then, my excitement turned into dread as I began to research blogs that had a similar "feel" to the one that I was beginning to envision. I felt like anything I did would just be a copy of someone else's work, or worse, that I wouldn't be able to make myself seem like I had any right to say anything at all, as if  I couldn't fit my voice into an authoritative box.

So I didn't work on it for months. And I've been away from this blog for over two months as well. Fearing I had nothing of worth to say, I didn't say anything at all. (A self-fulfilling prophecy indeed.)

But little by little, ideas came. As I forced myself to write, I discovered a reason to write again.

Something that helped me was a blurb about being creative that I read not long ago, a quote which now I can't remember exactly (or at all), and I can't even remember who said it. But I remember the main point of it, which goes something like this:

Don't create art that you think people want to see, hear, read, etc. Instead, create what's in your heart. Say your words, your way. Be authentic. Be artistic in your own way, and risk not having anyone notice. Before you know it, people will.

And so friends, I'm risking doing something new for the sake of being authentic. If you want to check out what I'm up to, head over to www.shineslikestars.com.

I'll still pop in here from time to time to give updates of a more personal nature, perhaps. Pictures of Addie, things that don't really belong over at the other site. But for now, I'm going to be pouring myself into developing that site. I hope to see you there.

Thank you for encouraging me, reading me, challenging me, and sticking with me. I appreciate it so much more than I can say.

Much love.

52 Projects: Project 29

Well, I finally did it. I took the 52 Projects plunge.

I found out about 52 Projects a few months ago from Kaitlyn Patience of isavirtue.net. (She is a paper artist with a really cool blog.) She does the 52 projects thing and I found it to be really fun, interesting, a fairly easy way to integrate creativity into my everyday life without making me feel like I was taking on some huge, expensive new hobby (like painting, which someday I'm actually going to try. I've always wanted to. Never have, unless you count painting with watercolors when I was a kid, which I loved.)

Anyway, choosing which project to start with turned out to be more difficult than the project itself. (Isn't that just like so many other things in life? Psyching ourselves up for starting turns out to be the bigger task. We sure do get in our own way, don't we?). Anyway, when I read over Project 29, I knew that was the one to start with.

52 Projects: Project 29

Get a regular-sized envelope. Address it to someone special. Then, stuff it with as many things as you can: a letter, photographs, ripped out magazine articles, photocopies of poems, a short story, or passages from a novel, recipes, clipped newspaper articles, art work, poems or stories you’ve written… Anything that can be folded up and put in the envelope. Make sure to stuff it so full that you need to use tape to keep it sealed. This envelope should have serious heft. Once it’s sealed, get the proper postage put on it (definitely use stamps) and mail it off.

An easy enough challenge, right? The only real change I made to the project is that I included stamps on the inside and instructed its recipient to compile an envelope of her own and send it on to someone else. Why not pass it on, right? It was so much fun to be on the lookout for interesting tidbits to send to her. Recipes, articles, old pictures, inspiring quotes--so much fun.

So, who did I choose to send this envelope to? A dear friend of mine was in serious need of some encouragement. When I first read the description of this project, her name popped into my head immediately. The embarrassing part is that it took nearly a month and a half to compile and send that envelope.  This stack of things sat on my kitchen counter for nearly four weeks before I finally sent it on its merry way. The good news is that God's timing is so much better than mine is. Although I meant to send the envelope weeks before I actually did, as it turns out, my friend received the envelope on Thanksgiving and she read it during a difficult moment during that day. (Isn't God so cool?)

What an easy way to brighten someone's day. I love receiving real mail. I think this might just have to be something I do on a more regular basis--I mean, why not?

A Heart at Peace?

I seem to be avoiding writing like the plague these days. And this disturbs me.

It's a very disconcerting way to live, you see. Avoiding the thing you've been made to do. Making excuses for doing something else--anything else--rather than sitting down and doing the thing that makes you feel alive. It makes me feel as if a part of my very spirit has withered away beyond the point where it can be revived.

I used to crave moments when nothing else in the world mattered more than getting out on paper the thoughts that were percolating inside of me. Not that they were sweeping, life-altering, earth-shattering things, but they were mine, and to put them into words made everything feel . . . right. 

Van Gogh said, "I only feel alive when I paint." It's as if he felt that something in the world wasn't quite right unless he did the thing he was made to do. And look how greatly he enriched our world. Would the world have continued on if he had sat idly by, letting his inspiration evaporate from him? Sure it would, just as the world will continue to spin even if any of today's artists cease to create. The world, to survive, does not need artists to create.

But it seems to me that for the artist to survive, he must create.
 
For a long, long time, I did not think of myself as an artist of any sort. When I was very little, I enjoyed painting with water colors, coloring in coloring books, reading whatever book I could get my hands on, and singing in the shower. I'm not sure what changed any of that. I haven't picked up a paintbrush (other than to paint a birdhouse or a bedroom) in years. I don't remember the last time I just sat and colored. And singing in the shower? The last time I did that my brother knocked on the bathroom door and mimicked the song I was singing. (I've always remembered that and never recovered from the embarrassment.)

I grew up in a home where art and creativity was in our blood. Performing arts, specifically. I was in church musicals, Christmas pageants, school plays and the school choir all throughout my school years, many of which were directed by my father. When I was quite young, I really enjoyed it, but as I got older, I began to realize I actually didn't like performing much, after all. Being creative, yes. Being in front of an audience, no.

But after high school, I felt like I was spinning. Without a creative outlet to call my own, I felt lost and insecure and anything but an artist, though deep down inside of me I desperately wanted to be one. While I was in college, I spent far too much time majoring in things I thought I "ought to" major in, instead of the things that spoke to my heart, the things that moved me and excited me. These were the things that scared me.

I ended up getting over myself and changed majors. A few years in, I finally found my way to the English department, and I spent the next two years immersing myself in the beauty and mystery of the written language. I shied away from creative writing (one step at a time, right?), but I found something within myself as I spent the next two years studying literature. I found something to which I felt called.

But here I am, five years later, and I'm struggling to find my way back to that place, the place where I feel inspired and alive.

Today when my daughter went down for her morning nap, all I wanted to do was crawl into my own bed for a mid-morning snooze. I snuggled in, flipped on my iPad and started checking out the Facebook news feed. A Facebook friend of mine was announcing that she'd just published her first work. Now I hardly know her, to be honest, but it felt like a personal jab, like somehow I'd missed my chance to do the thing I know deep down I'm supposed to do. She clearly hadn't. To make matters worse, she has an infant daughter, works full time, and is involved at church with her pastor husband. Me? All I do is stay home to take care of my 13 month old little girl.

In that moment all I wanted to do was hide under the covers, away from the rest of the world. I asked God, "Why her? Why not me?" And then I thought, "This isn't fair. How come it's so hard for me to get through the day with one child, while she clearly has no problem? And, it's not like things are going to get easier for me--baby #2 is on the way now. As much as I want this family, how will I ever be able to have my other dreams, too? Do I have to give it up? Was I wrong to dream the dreams I've dreamed? This is just so... unfair."

That word--unfair--made me realize that I was experiencing a searing bout of envy (envy: painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage). I felt bad about that, but it was as though I couldn't help it. I know the Bible warns us about envy, but in that moment, in all honesty, not one verse came to mind. Not one. (That's incredibly embarrassing to admit.) So to my Bible I went, and of all the verses that were listed in the concordance regarding envy, here is the one that stuck out to me:

"A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones." Proverbs 14:30 (TNIV)

Clearly, my heart is not at peace, not if I'm resentful of another person's success, all while desiring it for my own.  So, how exactly do I get this elusive peace? I actually thought perhaps I had some. I was wrong.

Isaiah 26:3 says, "You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you."

And there it is: my mind hasn't been steadfast. I have wavered between doubt and self-pity, envious of others who seem to have what it takes to actually do the thing their heart screams for them to do. It's not to say that I haven't trusted in the Lord. I have trusted in him for many things, but I haven't trusted him with this lately. I used to trust him completely with this part of my life, but I think somewhere along the way I took it back again. And as a result, my mind is not at peace.

Van Gogh said a lot of really poignant things, and today these few are resonating with me. Perhaps they'll resonate with you, too:

"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced."

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.” 

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” 

So today, armed with a new self-awareness, I apologize to this Facebook friend for being envious of your success. Congratulations on a job well done.

And finally, I apologize to you Lord for not trusting you with this part of me. It is yours. I am yours. Use us as you will.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight." -- Proverbs 3:5