Preparation. Restoration. Celebration.

These three things sum up my holidays nicely.

Preparation...I love the season of Advent. The season of preparing for Christ's birth that is often overrun by Christmas and forgotten by the best of us. I arranged my vacation so I would spend most of my time at home during this time of preparation. And prepare we did. Decorating the tree, filling the house with beautiful Christmas candles and snowmen (of course), baking cookies, wrapping presents, shopping, wrapping presents some more. I thought about how we often let the time leading up to Christmas day be a time of hurry and busyness. We turn the preparation into back breaking, slaving work rather than joyful ritual. I thought about how the Church is a very busy place this time of year and all going to plan, at this time next year I will be in a church somewhere through the preparation. I concluded that the decorating, baking, shopping, wrapping does have its commercial element, but if I new Jesus was coming to my world, to my country, to my house...I'm pretty sure I would spend weeks preparing just as we did for Christmas. Only the best, most beautiful, most tasty, most special for my Savior. And the preparation at home was so relaxed...day by day doing what we decided felt right and fun for the moment. I hope I can keep that spirit of preparation for this year...this year which holds a bundle of changes and transitions to people and places unknown. I hope in Advent 2008 I will remember how it felt to prepare this year...that it felt like communing with God. As it should be.

Restoration...All this preparing was restoring to my body and soul. I slept late into the mornings, I napped into the afternoons, I laid on the sofa watching movies into the evenings, I lounged through football games and winter storms. My body and soul rested in a place no one expects anything more or less. The warmth of blankets, the scent of the candles, the roar of the fire (and/or the winds outside), the twinkle of Christmas lights on the tree, the joy & laughter of my niece, the silliness, the unique kind of silence when it's snowing...it all filled me up to go a little further. I enter the new year restored.

Celebration...Perhaps this one seems obvious. I did indeed celebrate Christmas and a Happy New Year as I hope you did. But the celebration goes deeper into my soul...to the places where preparation and restoration take place. I celebrated with close friends of family, with family, with children, with strangers, with friends, with a cloud of witnesses. I celebrated the coming of Christ into the world. Singing the familiar hymns and hearing the familiar yet still so powerful words of grace and joy. I celebrated the nearness of my ordination...so close I can taste it. I wondered if I might mourn the reality of being in a different home for Christmas in the coming years, but rather than mourn, I celebrated the possibility of new & changing traditions, the anticipation of being a part of a congregation during this season of hope & joy, the promise of things new & old combining in a way never known before. I celebrated the coming of a new year...a year that could be very scary & intimidating...a year that is so full of unknowns I ought to be running for cover...but for now, a year that holds great promise and childlike excitement.

Preparation. Restoration. Celebration. I can say today...and will probably need to reread this often, perhaps daily, to remind myself I actually believed it at one time...

2008. Bring it on. I'm ready.