8

Reflecting...

It's been quite a year.  It's been a very eye-opening year.  I think December hits hard, too.  You know, I was listening to the first sermon we heard at Mars Hill (first day of advent), and thinking about that a lot.  There was a line in there about how December can be a particularly tough month... that orchestrating get-togethers, juggling vacation time, wrapping up your year... that all of that can so seriously detract from the beautiful and amazing miracle we get to experience every year.  And that maybe Jesus's response would be something like, "Oh good job.  That's just what I had in mind."  And it's completely true.  Sometimes the biggest thing we dare to hope for is to get through this week.

Example: yesterday.  Yes, a lot has happened.  Yes, there are many things that made this Christmas different from Christmases past (but aren't there always?).  Christmas, for my mom, is a time to decorate and pull out all the stops and splurge and buy buy buy and wrap and listen to Christmas music and watch "A Christmas Story" three thousand times and pull out the fancy glasses and little gadgets and put out all the little trinkets that, to her, embody Christmas.  And then everyone gets together at her house and sits down, at some point, to one meal comprised of foods that no one actually particularly wants to eat at any time of year, but seems to be "what people eat on holidays."  Then everyone migrates to the living room and open things that provide a distraction from having to full-on interact with one another, and there's some movie (probably "A Christmas Story") on in the background, despite that the radio may still be on, crying out songs about reindeer and santa claus.  And then after some amount of time deemed appropriate, but without any apparent indicators, everyone scatters and heads out.
So in we walk, with our idea of Christmas.  Christmas, for us, is a time of actively searching out the distractions that try to blur out the gift of Grace, and to remove them.  If anything, advent, for us, is a more minimalist time in which we try to actively anticipate beauty and truth.  And then, when Christmas arrives, we want to spend time with family, share a meal, and just share in each other's company.  We want to slow down and catch up and let togetherness and love just talk for themselves.  We want to sit together and talk together and play silly board games together and take advantage of the time that we have no work/school/meetings/etc obligations, and just be.

Tension.

And of course, everyone thinks that their idea is the right one.  Otherwise we would change, progress, even.

So I've been trying to really focus on the things we do, and more importantly, the reasons we do them.  And I've come to the conclusion that, past a certain point, it doesn't really matter what we do, so much as why we do these things.  We can be together and sing songs about the birth of Jesus and drop some coins in the little bucket next to the guy standing outside ringing a bell, and do all this because it makes us look like good people.  Or, we can do none of that, get takeout food, and play cards with the in-laws, because we think Jesus would want us to celebrate love.
Which is more compelling?  Why do we spend so much time thinking about what we should do, instead of about where our hearts need to be?  God doesn't want our best acts if our hearts aren't in it.  He doesn't need us to write a check for an offering, or to feed the poor, or to donate to charities; He can do all that in an instant by Himself.  You think God's short on cash?  Or on food?  Or on clothes?  If we do these things to show His love, then we're talking.  If we buy a meal for someone who could use it because, well, it's not that expensive, and they're right on our way home, and there's a sale on turkey, and it's really not a big deal, then what good are we doing?  What if, instead, we showed someone who has an abundance of earthly wealth, the love of God?  Which one means more?

Back to this week.

Yesterday went far better than I would've dared to hope for.  I'll even say that it was the best get-together we've ever had with my mom.  But it was because of the things that happened (or didn't happen).  It still doesn't feel right.

I've come to seriously yearn for the kind of fellowship that actually brings growth.  We have some friends who have (somewhat) recently moved to Seattle.  I think we will end up, at some point in the next handful of years, moving across the country to wherever they happen to be.  We have some friends that live a few hours north of us, that I'd love to live closer to as well.  And they're coming to visit on Thursday, which I'm so very excited about.  And Julie has some friends that I've not met, but whose blog I've read a couple times.  It may seem crazy, but I'd go move near them, too.  It's hard, with kids.  I know it's much more difficult to un-learn things, and I know there are things they'll seriously need to un-learn if we can't surround ourselves with the right sorts of people.  I know God is working on us right now, and preparing us for big changes.  It feels like the calm before the storm, but not in a negative way.  But there's a big part of me that's having a lot of difficulty waiting for the storm.

The kids are up.  That's it for now.

7

Tristan has bounced back.  It's been a rough couple days, but he seems back to his old self again.  And Zoe is coming to visit tomorrow and staying until Sunday, which should be really nice.  I know she loves the kids, and they (or, at least, Tristan) are all about her as well, which is great.  And the added bonus is a lack of quite a bit more stress that seemed imminent.  Thank God for small favors.

Lucy is crawling now.  Crazy.  She's so fast, too.  She just seems to have figured it out and taken off.  And she's trying to stand up off the ground.  She's got it figured out.  She climbed a step today, which is potentially pretty scary.  We'll see.  Tristan loves that he has a whole new Lucy to play with.  Now it's all sorts of interesting.

I'm having a pretty hard time focusing, though.  I think that's it for now.

6

The kids have been sick for a little over a week now.  Man, that's difficult.  I want to just be able to help them, but there's so little I can do.  Lucy, on top of that, has cut two teeth (her first two), and is quite close to two more, so her mouth has been a mess, too.  Poor girl.  I think about what it's like when you cut your gum, and how it just stings and aches.  I'm glad we do this first teeth thing when we're too young to remember it.  And then Tristan is just so tired.  He falls over and stumbles and consequently hits his head on everything.  One corner of his forehead is currently green from healing bruises, but he does well with it. I just can't wait for them to get better.

On Sunday, Julie went to visit Ashley and Sunil.  I think it did her a lot of good to have a kid-less day, too. And it was really nice for me to be able to spend that time with the kids.  It's a shame they were sick, because that does make things more touchy.  Smaller things seem to turn into bigger things more easily, and that can be rough.  But they did great, and there was nothing (except bedtime) that was terribly difficult. 

I have my last final tomorrow morning, and it's for the class that I'm least concerned about.  I do plan to run practice problems during naptime (which just started), and then while Julie is at orchestra tonight, so hopefully that will be sufficient.  It's not a class that I'm having much difficulty with, but I still do want to be prepared. 

Some time ago, we bought an old desktop computer from GRCC, and the other day, we bought a flat monitor to go with it.  They have these online sales where they get rid of stuff that's been updated, so it's a really good price.  And we just got the computer set up today, with the monitor on Tristan's desk.  He loves it.  He likes that the mouse lights up blue, and I think he's just mostly excited to play Word World and Curious George and Super Why games, but that's good, too.  They're simple games that are pretty educational, so what more does it need to be?

I think Lucy just got up, which means naptime has been cut short.  I know Julie could use the sleep, and she'll have a pretty late night tonight.  Hopefully the kids do well with bedtime and then sleep very soundly until Julie gets home.  I'll need to use the time better, that's all.  Well, that's it for now.

5

It's been a little while now, it feels like.  Between homework and an exam (and a final tomorrow), let alone the rest of life, I just haven't gotten around to this.  But here we go.

Julie is playing a concert tonight in GR, which means I am home alone with the kids for a handful of hours.  And this is a nice time, too.  It's a chance to spend one-on-one time with the kids, and while it may seem silly, I do love to do that.  The difficulty was that both kids are sick, have some sort of eye infections, and neither (apparently) wanted to sleep when bedtime rolled around.  Well, maybe that's not entirely true.  Both kids wanted to sleep, but they alternated being upset, which kept both of them up.  And then Lucy pooped.  So it goes, though.  We just had a few minutes of all sitting together in Tristan's bed and asking God for patience and strength and for two big helpings of sleep.  He delivered on all three, and nearly instantly.  It was honestly no more than fifteen minutes from that point until both kids were full-on asleep.  I know they both had a big day, with going to the doctor's and then playing at the mall and being sick and such.  Poor kids have been absolute troopers.  I'm so very proud of both of them.

And then Lucy cut two teeth yesterday!  Her bottom two front teeth have poked their razor-sharp heads through, and she is so interested in chewing anything that she can with them (including anyone's fingers that may stray too close to her mouth).  Good for her, though, because I know she's been working on them for quite some time.  It was the same with Tristan, too.  He went through all the motions of tooth-cutting (excessive drooling, head cold, fatigue), but then no teeth for quite some time.  Then he suddenly one day started pushing teeth out two at a time.  I kind of think that's what Lucy's doing, too.  But she's becoming more and more interested in the food that everyone else is eating, so it may be the right time for it.

I think we're all anticipating break just a little bit.  There's been a definite shift in the dynamic in the last week or two, and maybe we're all just sliding into break mode.  It'll be so nice being able to be home more with Julie and the kids.  It's pretty hard leaving for school every day, but, for grad school, I am getting probably much more time with my beautiful family than I should be able to, so there are no complaints by any means.  And this next semester, it looks like I have Wednesdays (mostly) off, which is excellent.  That should divide up the week pretty well.

I should get back to studying.  I wanted to take a short break and post something quick, which I've pretty much accomplished, I think.  Maybe I'll post more later tonight, but either way, here's something, at least.