Through a Glass, Darkly

I told my mom that if I were to only get one present this year, what I would really really really want would be season 2 of Gilmore Girls. Imagine how delighted I was when that was the first present I opened on Christmas . . . well, I’m pretty sure it was afternoon by then. Last night we watched episodes 1-4, giving us such illustrious lines as, “Cake is the glue of the wedding.”

We didn’t give my parents any presents this year, but they still gave us some. Most of mine were practical - pants for work, a stepladder, kitchen stuff - but she did get me Gilmore Girls as a special treat. The other “fun thing” was a book I had been wanting to read: Ordinary Losses: Naming the graces that shape us. I have been sensing a lot of loss in my life lately - loss of ideals, of childhood, of friends - so this seemed like the perfect book. I found out about it when I was checking Barnes and Noble to see if there were any new books by Lauren Winner, and saw that she wrote the forward to this book. Her recommendation was good enough for me. Unfortunately I am in the middle of a big stack of books right now, so I can’t get to it quite yet.

Meanwhile, I just finished These Granite Islands on recommendation from a lady here at work. It was good, better than I thought, but very sad. It would be a good book for my book club, but the library only has one copy, and it’s scary to choose books that no one has heard of. I at least got to talk to my friend here at work about it, and another friend picked it up and said, “Oh, I read this a few years ago.” The author’s second novel is coming out this spring, so I’ll probably check that out as well. I should be starting Crazy Love (also a recommendation from a coworker), but I’m sneaking Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim in first.

I read Katey’s post about movies and books just a few minutes ago, and I feel sad that I missed sharing the bookworm stories in Nashville. Like Katey, I have resorted to reading newsletters while eating in order to keep myself entertained, and I know I have mentioned before that I read while cooking, while cleaning, while folding laundry, while drying my hair . . . My latest story is that I keep getting in trouble here at work, because during lunch I will walk back to my desk while reading, and everyone is afraid I’m going to trip and sprain my ankle again. (Also, sometimes I don’t hear when they are talking to me. Which is rude.) Lunchtime here at work is more about eating quickly and getting back to my desk to read than it is about food.

People have asked me how the “no presents” thing went for us at Christmas. There was only one moment where I was a little sad, and that was right after church on Christmas Eve. Normally we go home and do our own presents after that, but we had no presents to rush home to. We had planned on going out to eat, but we were still full from the big lunch at my Grandma’s house. There was one of those moments of panic, where each of you is trying to figure out how to make the rest of the evening special for the other person, but it’s only 6:15 and there are still a lot of hours to fill and what are we going to do?

We ended up going home and putting on our pajamas and watching the Grinch (cartoon version for me, thankyouverymuch). And then we read for a while on the couch, and then I fell asleep and Mike turned off the light and we slept on the couch by the light of the Christmas tree. We woke up a while later, feeling rested, and looked at the clock. 10:45. So we went upstairs and went to bed. Yes, we are officially boring and old. It was nice, though, to have been able to just rest like that. That was fairly symbolic of our whole Christmas season - getting to spend more time together.

Christmas Day was nice, hanging out with my family, playing Cranium, eating a lot. Mike, my brother, and I kicked my parents’ butts at Cranium. I only say this because they kept talking about how great they were, but the three of us made an excellent team. The only bad part of the day was that when we got there, my dad was watching It’s a Wonderful Life, and he started it over so I could see it. Because he knows how much I hate it. And then, since I wasn’t in the room, he started it over again. And he fell asleep, so he ended up showing the ending twice, and when we went home it was on TV, so it turns out that I saw the “fate worse than death” scene (”Where’s Mary? Where’s my wife?” “You’re not going to like it George . . . She’s closing up the library!”) three times. hehe.

Boxing Day was spent running errands (like finally dropping my car off to get it fixed) and visiting Mike’s sister. After that, we headed to Wilmington to celebrate our friend Scott’s birthday, which is on the 27th. He turned 25 this year, and he never gets a party, since his birthday is so close to the holidays (and on his parents’ anniversary). So we helped throw him one. His wife was sick, so it’s a good thing we were there, because Mike and I ended up helping a lot with the food while she was napping.

We came back yesterday and spent some time with my cousin and his girlfriend who were in town. Then Mike and I went to Greensboro and ran a few errands, picking up some calendars at 50% off and using some of Mike’s Christmas money to get Garden State. We went to Chili’s and had dinner (yay for giftcards!) and went home and started some laundry and put in the movie. I enjoyed it a lot . . . I was tired while we were watching it, but I can definitely see why it resonated with Mike like it did.

Today I am still a little tired and Mike woke up with a sore throat. Luckily I just have to work today and tomorrow this week, and Friday we are planning to do a back-to-back-to-back showing of the LotR trilogy on our big screen. I’m going to make vegetable soup and we’ll eat a lot of popcorn. Our Christmas was so busy; we’re looking forward to spending a day at our house just relaxing.

I was flipping through one of the catalogues here at work, looking at some books that are going to be published in March, and what did I see?

Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott

I actually said, “Good googly moogly!” in my head. This is good news indeed. (And what a great job I have.)

It’s time for one of my favorite bits of poetry:

This is the irrational season
Where love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child. -Madeleine L’Engle

That I can tell you in one word . . . Tradition!

A recent discussion about a New Year’s get-together ended in tears over the subject of traditions. As far as New Year’s traditions go, my family doesn’t have any. My family never had one particular group of friends we always gathered with, or do the same thing or eat special food. In fact, there aren’t any particularly memorable New Year’s Days. I remember a couple of New Year’s Eves here and there, but it’s just not a very important holiday to my family. My dad doesn’t like football very much, so we don’t even have a tradition of watching it on New Year’s Day.

As I was thinking about that, I wondered what traditions are important to me. I don’t feel like my family was huge on tradition, and (as I have mentioned before) Mike and I are still in the process of developing our traditions, but it’s an area where I don’t exactly know how to start. One of my friends has traditions for everything, and it sort of amazes me.

The easy ones are the big holidays. My mom has four brothers and one sister, and most of them get together on Christmas Eve at my grandparents’ house. We have a big dinner, which I am finally old enough to contribute to, and then we do gifts, which I have finally outgrown. This year I am bringing green bean casserole and chocolate pie. This always used to be at suppertime, but it is now at lunchtime so that some people can go to church services and others to other family celebrations. Christmas Eve to me was always a late night at Grandma’s house and falling asleep while riding home. Christmas morning we weren’t allowed to get up until we could hear Mom and Dad up, and we’d get up and do presents, then clean up and have breakfast. Then we’d spend the day watching movies, relaxing, playing games . . . just chilling out. Our social time was Christmas Eve; our quiet family time was Christmas Day.

Now that Mike is free from the evils of retail, he can come with me to Grandma’s and then we go together to the Christmas Eve service at our church. In past years, we have done our presents on Christmas Eve and then gone to my parents’ house to sleep. Last year we decided to just stay at our place and drive to my parents’ house in the morning, which is what we are also doing this year. We don’t have a set time to see his sister, because Christmas has been such a busy time in the past (see: Retail, Evils of), but this year we are going to see her on the day after Christmas.

Mike and I do an Advent calendar and read together for our Christmas traditions, but we don’t have a lot else. This year we tried to do more to celebrate, like luminaries and Christmas concerts. We baked cookies on Sunday, which I would like to do more in the future. My family didn’t even do Advent; our big thing was putting up our Christmas tree while listening to our Christmas records. That’s not to say that it wasn’t special or meaningful growing up. It just wasn’t emphasized or celebrated quite as much as some people do.

For Thanksgiving, again, we just went to Grandma’s. My mom and I don’t even have a Thanksgiving weekend shopping tradition. Sometimes we’d go out on Black Friday, sometimes not.

Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day - all spent at Grandma’s. The birthday traditions included getting the kind of cake and party you wanted and choosing what we had for dinner (sometimes I chose spaghetti, sometimes chili). But, nothing else. No special plates, no “birthday breakfasts.”

In thinking about it, I feel like I want to weave some meaningful pattern out of all these threads. To me, holidays are time for family and closeness, even if you’re not doing anything in particular. Time to catch up with cousins and aunts and uncles you only see a few times a year. Time to relax.

I want to take it a step further and celebrate holidays and people more, but it’s hard to know where to begin. Mike and I are trying to develop traditions of our own, like our Thanksgiving dinner with our friends. I think that learning how to celebrate like that is really taking me out of myself, and I am excited about trying to take those steps.

I don’t do resolutions, so last year I set some goals for this year. I thought I would like to learn how to knit and how to write calligraphy. Let me tell you the progress that I made on both of those things: zero. You know why? I investigated both of them early on in the year, but I didn’t know the right tools to buy. And money got a little tight this year, so I didn’t feel right about investing in new hobbies. Maybe in 2005 I will make a little progress on one of those. Here’s hoping. They are still both things that I am interested in learning.

Meanwhile, though, I don’t exactly feel like a failure. I did a lot of things in 2004 that are worth noting.

I went without so much as snitching a single french fry for the entire year. For the first time in my life, I have exercised regularly, and I am seeing the results. I can touch my toes. I can fit into clothes that I thought were lost to me forever. More than weight, I have a healthier body image than I have had in a long time.

At this point, I have read almost 70 books this year, with a few still in progress.

At work, I started a book club and recently started a new position.

I worked hard on my friendships this year, taking risks, sticking with them when it was hard. It hasn’t been easy, but I feel that I am making progress.

Mike and I bought a new house, and I picked out the paint colors. Which was a big deal for me, because home decorating and crafts are both areas where I feel woefully inadequate.

Mike and I have also grown closer in many ways, both of us making concerted efforts to grow in vulnerability. Every year, I feel that we know each other so much better. At the same time, I see that we have so much more to learn about one another and about our relationship. It’s an interesting combination, but we have made progress and I have seen both of us be very brave.

It hasn’t been an easy year by any means. One of the hardest yet. But I have accomplished quite a few things that I am proud of, and I want to celebrate those instead of the areas where I feel more like a failure.

What are you most proud of in 2004?

When your smoke detector goes off at 2:30 am, you wake up and pay attention.

In our apartment, I used to regularly set off the smoke detector. In the summer, it seemed to be triggered just by heat, and any amount of cooking in the oven would set it off. Just boiling water could do it. Seriously, I have never set anything on fire in the kitchen, but you wouldn’t know it based on that old smoke detector.

In our new house, the fire alarm has some newfangled feature where the one that is going off “calls” to the other ones so that they go off and warn us as well. We have one alarm downstairs and four upstairs - one in our bedroom, one in the hallway, and one in each of the other two bedrooms. That means that last night we had five alarms going off at once.

I was a bit drugged out on the NyQuil, so I wasn’t quite as alert as Mike. He ran downstairs to see what was happening. No smoke, no fire. No smoke next door. No fire anywhere we could see. No warm walls or floors or ceilings. And our detectors don’t detect carbon monoxide, so it wasn’t some dangerous gas. So we started unplugging them to get them to stop. And now we know how we can tell which one is the one that has actually been set off, and which ones are just responding. It was a valuable (if very loud) lesson, one that I hope we never have reason to use.

Just last week, Mike mentioned that he read somewhere that there are worse things than getting a wrong number at 4am. It could be a right number. I told him that I always figured that the main reason people got so angry about wrong numbers at that hour was because it frightened them, which in turn made them angry.

Last night I wasn’t really angry at the fluke. It was just one of those weird things that happens, and Mike and I were both just glad that our house wasn’t burning down. But it took us a long time to fall back to sleep. That’s not something you can get over very quickly. We lay there for a while in the dark just holding hands, thankful that we were safe, listening to the rhythm of each other’s breathing. Mike drifted to sleep a little before I did, and I slid closer to him and closed my eyes.

It’s not very fun to have the smoke detector go off for no reason at 2:30 am, but it’s better than the alternative.

Right now I am reading a book I’ve been looking forward to for a while: The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs. You may have heard of it - it’s the one about the guy who reads the Encyclopedia Britannica all the way through. It’s truly one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time. As he proceeds through the alphabet, he tells hysterical anecdotes about how he keeps trying to show off by using knowledge that he found in the EB. And he talks about how he and his wife are trying to get pregnant. And he tells really funny stories about working at Esquire and points out how much syphilis is in the encyclopedia and makes some interesting connections. I keep reading sections to Mike because they make me laugh out loud. In fact, last night I couldn’t sleep and I was reading on the couch downstairs and I kept laughing. A book has to be pretty good to make you laugh at 4:30 am. Anyway, I’m only in the H’s, but I would recommend it very highly.

I have a big list of books waiting after that, because a lady here at work recommended a few for me. I haven’t gotten as much reading done lately as I wanted, because of holiday parties and being out of town and such.

Tonight the Shearers are coming over so we can watch the Extended RotK on our big screen. I am really excited - Mike has already watched it, but he won’t give me any information about the new scenes. I know I could look it up, but I’d rather hear it from someone I know . . . which is why I got Scott to fill me in. hehe.

I’m working tomorrow since I got last Saturday off to go to Nashville. I have been confused all week as to what day it was since I had Monday off. I am looking forward to 5:00 pm tomorrow, that’s for sure.

A few weeks ago, on the first Sunday of Advent, the reading at church was from Matthew 1, which chronicles the genealogy of Christ and Joseph’s decision to stay with Mary after an angel appeared to him in a dream.

The sermon was about Joseph, how it was within his rights to put Mary away, how in fact that was the accepted thing to do at the time, and yet Joseph put aside his own rights and did what God asked of him. Because of Joseph, our pastor said, we should all be excited about Christmas, because he’s the first person in the New Testament to see things through that new lens, that new way of life that Jesus came to bring.

There’s not usually as much time spent on Joseph as there is on Mary. I like to think of him spending time with Jesus, teaching the boy about carpentry and the Scriptures. I like to think about the kind of man he must have been to be able to listen to the angel and put his rights aside. I think about how much he must have loved Mary and how scary her pregnancy and Jesus’ birth must have been. I like to think that the shepherds coming with their story of angels was secretly a relief to him - no matter how much he believed the angel and Mary, he probably had some doubts. What huge grace those shepherds must have been to him. I am glad God provided that for him.

This weekend, we saw Andrew Peterson play in Nashville, and he sang a song that talks a little bit about Joseph. I have been trying to come to terms with my skewed view of God, my cold heart that is too afraid to trust him. As we sat there on Sunday night, I let the words wash over me and I prayed that God would use them to soften up my heart, to knock loose whatever it is that’s stuck in there. It was the first time in a while that I felt able to approach God like that, to ask him for help. I can’t say that I feel any different, to be honest. But I am going to keep praying, and keep remembering a man who, 2000 years ago, put aside his rights to do what God asked him to do. I am going to remember those shepherds and the angels, and how God didn’t leave Joseph hanging, even if it seemed that way many times during those nine months.

It came to pass
That Joseph was the noblest of men
With a woman on a donkey
On the way to Bethlehem

When I think about it, all the things he went through and all the ways that God provided, Joseph does make me excited about Christmas.

This morning, in part of a conversation with Alisa, I mentioned that I really appreciated Mike over the weekend. In the beginning of my association with the .net, he was a bit hesitant about it all. When I went to Memphis last summer for my first official .net gathering, he waved goodbye saying, “I hope you don’t get murdered!” Even then, though, he created an awesome “Emergency Road Trip Kit” for me, complete with straws and Wisk and Dale Earnhardt stickers for the car (the better to summon help from good ol’ boys). And when I returned safely, he started to see the board as something not quite as sinister as he had originally thought.

Suddenly we were letting .netters who were just passing through crash at our house. And come over on a Sunday afternoon. And, in June, I finally convinced him to make that leap and visit the Hollands’ house in Atlanta. Which was a good place for him to start, since there were other couples there, so he wasn’t the lone spouse. He had a surprisingly good time playing video games (he is a pretty princess after all) and visiting the Diet Coke museum. Later in the fall, he helped plan a fondue party when Alisa was in town, and he got a blog, and he started getting all excited about the Andrew Peterson show. It’s like having a whole new husband.

Still, I was a little apprehensive about him being there. I knew that I would rather share a bed with him, but I also knew that I wouldn’t be forceful enough to claim the bed for us. Do the married people get the bed just on account of being married? Is that fair? I couldn’t decide. Which would mean that we’d both probably be sleeping on the floor. He was a good sport about it, though. And he knows I’m a little high-maintenance and therefore get up earlier than everyone else on these trips so that I can get ready and get out of the way. So he very sympathetically got up early in the mornings and went and got breakfast for us before everyone else was up and moving. Since we didn’t get our normal alone time in the evenings, it was nice to have that time to just be with him. I missed our normal discussions more than I thought I would.

Not only did he take good care of me over the weekend, he also made a real effort to hang out with my friends. He let me have some quality time with Rhonda while playing the movie game with Michaela and Jason and I don’t even remember who else. He awkwardly hugged lots of the guys and had fun playing video games and got me to fill him in on some of the group dynamics he wasn’t sure about. It was really fun to have him along and to get to be a sort of tour guide for him.

It’s a very different thing to do one of these weekends with a spouse than it is to go it alone. Instead of just looking out for myself, we were a team. It completely changed the way I related to the group and approached large group situations, but that’s not to say that it wasn’t a fun time, because it definitely was. It was even better to have my other half there, for him to meet my friends and for them to meet him. And I am glad to be able to welcome him into that part of my life.

I could give all to Time except — except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There
And what I would not part with I have kept. -Robert Frost

I love the feeling of reading a book and enjoying it so much that I don’t want to put it down. Yesterday, with just ten minutes left in my lunch break, I started the next chapter of Crossing to Safety but only got halfway through before having to stop. For the rest of the afternoon, at least half of my mind was in my tote bag with the book, wishing I could be reading instead. Mike was away last night, so I had a couple of hours of uninterrupted reading, and I finished it on my lunchbreak today.

I tried yesterday to explain to a friend what the novel is about. Two couples, I said, and their friendship over a long time. It’s good, I said, but I can’t quite put it into words. It’s not about plot as much as it is about the characters and how their experiences and relationships have brought them to where they are. The author even says that about two-thirds of the way through: “How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these?”

The two couples are Larry and Sally and Sid and Charity, respectively. The story is told from Larry’s perspective, and the four of them meet when Larry and Sid are both professors in Madison, Wisconsin. Charity takes to Sally right away - they are both pregnant, due at the same time - and they become fast friends. Sid and Charity have money, and Larry and Sally have none. Larry and Sally need very little encouragement to step into the larger, brighter world that the other couple offers.

“Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting . . . Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?”

I found that I related most to Larry and was most irritated by Charity. What’s interesting about that is that they are, as Sally pointed out once, very similar. They are both sure of what they want and how to get there, although Charity is definitely more stubborn in that sense. As I was starting, a friend said that one of the themes of this book is Charity’s stubbornness and will. In many ways she seems cruel to Sid - bossing him around, freezing him out when he “disobeys” her. The biggest example of this was when she would not allow him to write poetry, which he loves, because she believes he needs to write articles for publication so he can get promoted. Larry points out at one time in the book that, if Charity would just treat Sid like she treats everyone else, there wouldn’t be a problem.

And yet, I can’t quite shake the feeling that, no matter how much I don’t understand the relationship between Charity and Sid, that they both need each other. I have at times looked at relationships of people I knew and wondered how that worked. Maybe people wonder that about me and Mike. Perhaps what makes relationships really work can’t be seen from the outside.

Normally I am not big on quotes from books, but I marked several pages (not by writing in them - this is a library book after all) with quotes that stuck out to me. That’s how I could tell that I was really enjoying it - I kept tearing off pieces of paper and marking the pages. Before I turn it back in, I need to write the quotes down somewhere.

As complicated and frustrating as the relationships could be (I was concerned there might be some kind of adultery or trading of spouses, because what else would a novel about two couples be about? I was wrong, however, and that was fortunately not a theme of this book), I can see how valuable it was for them to have these consistent friends for such a long period of time. This is the kind of book that makes me feel as if we have so much life yet to live, so many things to experience. It makes me want to share life with my friends. I don’t know if Mike and I will have a friendship like the one in Crossing to Safety, one that spans half a century. But the book reminded me . . . those relationships are to be cherished, when they come, but not idealized. They are as hard as anything else in this life, but that doesn’t take away from their beauty.

Apparently twinsets are out. Did you know that? I didn’t know that twinsets ever went out of style, but the stores I was in last night did not have any. Maybe it’s more of a summer thing for stores to carry. I sure hope so. If not, expect my one-woman campaign to bring back twinsets, because I have a lot, and I need to be able to keep wearing them.

When I was shopping with my mom last night, I was honestly kind of disappointed. It wasn’t very crowded, which isn’t really surprising for the middle of the week, but it’s probably the only time I will be out “Christmas” shopping. I wanted to fight over the last sweater! Knock someone down over the perfect pair of khakis! Snake someone for the closest parking place! Instead, there was tons of open parking, and the stores weren’t crowded at all. So unfair.

On the way home from shopping, I called one of my friends. She has just recently gotten back from a two-year stint with the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan, and this was the first time we had gotten to talk on the phone since her return. We have been friends since we were in the first grade, so there’s a lot of history there. It’s great that we always seem to be able to pick up where we left off. She is dating this guy who sounds great for her, and I’m so happy that she’s happy. We joked a bit about how much her parents love me (”The daughter they tried four times to have”) and how much my parents love her (”You realize that the real test is whether my dad approves of him”). We talked for 45 minutes, and we could have gone on talking for hours and hours, but my phone was dying and I hadn’t seen Mike all day. It’s a good feeling to connect with an old friend.

You know that song, “Baby it’s Cold Outside?” The one in Elf? Neither Mike nor I had heard that song before we saw Elf a few weeks ago, but suddenly it’s everywhere. On the radio, friends mentioning it, even a lady singing it as she came out of Petite Sophisticate last night. How does that happen?

I have been a little stressed this week with our impending trip to Nashville. Packing and changing plans and wanting to make things as convenient as possible for Jason and Alisa. I’m really excited about going, though. Last night Mike and I were talking about the trip, and how in general we have a rule that we don’t go out to eat in a group larger than six, because it stresses me out. And takes forever. But that kind of thing doesn’t really get to me when I’m hanging out with my .net friends. There are a lot of reasons for that, like not worrying as much about what they think and feeling more secure about my place within the group. In some ways I feel as if I am the most “myself” around my .net friends. So, even though it’s a little stressful to think about actually getting to Nashville, I am just going to try to enjoy myself this weekend. I feel like this trip is our Christmas present, and I plan to live it up as much as I can (which means going to sleep earlier than everyone else, because I don’t want to be grumpy, so if you are planning on making fun of me for going to bed, well, just don’t. hehe).

“And when Jesus raises up the dead and gives sight to the blind
You say now there’s a man that I could get behind.” -Waterdeep

Lately, when someone has asked me how I am doing (the implication here being spiritually), my answer has been something along the lines of feeling fairly unloved by God, both because of things that have happened in the past and things that are currently happening. The Bible says one thing, and my circumstances seem to say another. I know we should believe the Bible over our feelings or what’s happening in our lives, but that’s harder right now than it ever has been before. I have never been one to see God as a harsh dictator up in the sky, but that’s where I suddenly find myself.

Last night in Bible study we were reading John 5, where Jesus talks about his relationship to the Father. I realized that I really like Jesus. It’s just God that I have a problem with. Even though it says that Jesus only does what he sees his Father doing, I imagine Jesus sneaking around doing nice things like healing people, while God doesn’t really know about that. So when one of the questions asked us how we saw the relationship between Jesus and God, I said that I see it as “good cop/bad cop.”

In some ways, I feel that the predicament in which I find myself is my punishment for years of telling people to “just trust” and not really understanding the nuances of their struggles. Looking back, I can see how I was pretty insensitive, and I regret that. I wish I could go back and be more sympathetic and less . . . hard nosed.

Anyway, it’s clear that what I need is to learn how to align God and Jesus more closely in my mind, as well as coming to terms with what I see to be happening in my life vs. what I see to be true in the Bible. Those are huge paradigm shifts, because it’s not as if I just woke up this morning and decided that I would believe that God is mean and has no interest in me. There are a thousand little (some not so little, now that I think about it) things that have happened that brought me to this point.

I don’t have an answer for this, exactly. I have some ideas as suggested by my pastor. One of them includes some journaling about a few different things, and as this is the only journal I am currently keeping, I might try to flesh some of those thoughts out here.

So that this entry isn’t a complete downer, I want to include a funny take on the relationship between God and Jesus that Mike and I both enjoyed. It’s from the most recent of Sarah Bunting’s Girls’ Bike Club series of essays.

Wing Chun: I love Jesus.

Sarah: This I know. For the GBC tells me so.

Wing Chun: Okay. He’s in.

Sarah: That’s what I’m talking about.

Wing Chun: But doesn’t Jesus have better things to do?

Sarah: You’d think so. Then you’d look at the election results.

Wing Chun: That’s kind of what I mean. He seems pretty busy hating gays these days.

Sarah: Oh, we can’t blame Jesus for that. I bet he’s under the bed totally mortified that people are using his name to pull this s*** down here. “I died for this? Gah!”

Wing Chun: And God is tapping at his bedroom door all, “Jesus? Honey? Are you okay in there? I heated up some Bagel Bites, do you want some?”

Sarah: “They’re pepperoni, your favorite. … Jesus?”

Wing Chun: Aw. Our God is a snacky God.

Sarah: That’s what I choose to believe.

Wing Chun: I wish he’d make me some Bagel Bites.

I don’t see God or Jesus like that, I’m not endorsing those political views, blah blah blah disclaimer cakes, but, hysterical nonetheless. I laughed until I cried when I read it. “Our God is a snacky God” is my new motto for life.

I have been told that this post needs another disclaimer, and as much as I dislike disclaimers, I would rather avoid confusion. I know that Jesus is also God, so generally when I refer to “God,” I mean, “God the Father.” So take your finger off that send button. I don’t need any nasty emails. hehe.

The thing that makes this Christmas so different than those in the past is that Mike and I are actually getting to see each other and spend time together. I didn’t dread Christmas this year, because it didn’t mean that Mike would have 60-hour work weeks. He doesn’t have to work every Saturday, or Friday nights, or early morning sales. This is a precious gift. Saturday night we took advantage of our newfound freedom by going to a luminary display at one of the parks in Greensboro. We were there for a little over an hour, just walking around, sharing Christmas memories from our childhood. In some ways it was quite the comedy of errors - we saw on the program that there were Christmas carolers at one gazebo, so we walked over there only to find out that they were little kids singing only in Spanish - but it was still quite fun. There was also a man playing the bagpipes and a man playing a harp and they were selling hot chocolate and cider and hot dogs. We stood there listening to the harp and smelling the cider and the hot dogs, standing close together for warmth. As we walked away, Mike said something about how out of tune the harp was, but I had been so caught up in the moment that I hadn’t really noticed. I had just been thinking about how nice it was to stand there under the stars with the candles all around and white lights on the walking bridge nearby, letting the music envelop me.

We went home and ate dinner, and I put on my pajamas so we could curl up on the couch and watch a Christmas movie. After much debate (”National Lampoon’s?” “No.” “It’s a Wonderful Life?” “No.” “Miracle on 34th Street?” “No.”), we put in A Muppet Christmas Carol.

Earlier that day, I had put our flannel sheets in to be washed. We decided to put a different set of flannel sheets on as the replacement, but they had never been used so they also had to be washed. I mentioned that I was concerned about them having enough time to get dry, but Mike assured me that he thought we had enough time. When we put the movie on, I checked the clothes that were in the dryer, but they weren’t quite dry, so I put the dryer back on. I then went downstairs, planning to listen for the dryer so I could put the sheets in later.

As I am sure you have guessed, I passed out on the couch just after Marley & Marley made their appearance, so I didn’t get the sheets in the dryer. When I woke up, the movie was over, but it was still pretty early and Mike was conked out, so I put the sheets in the dryer and came back downstairs, where I promptly fell asleep again. Unfortunately, the sheets have to be dried on low, and one cycle wasn’t quite enough. So when we woke up just after 1:00 am, we still couldn’t make our bed. So we did something we’ve never done before - we slept in the guest room bed. As we climbed in, Mike made a joke about how, since it was my bed from when I was growing up, I would probably be confused when I woke up. “Where am I? Who is this strange man in my bed?” I was worried that I would have trouble falling asleep, but apparently I only managed to take one sock off before passing out again. I woke up sometime very early Sunday morning with only one sock on. I remember taking one of them off, but it’s hard to believe I was so tired that I forgot to take the other one off.

It was just a nice Christmas-y Saturday night. Most people take that for granted, but I certainly do not. I treasured every minute of it.

Since Mike and I aren’t doing Christmas presents this year, it doesn’t really feel like December. With the chill in the house in the mornings, the frost on my car, the general drudgery of the days, and the sun being down when I leave work, it feels more like January than just before Christmas.

My family has never been one for huge amounts of Christmas presents. But I have to admit, it gives me a little twinge to know that Mike and I are not doing anything. I like both giving and receiving presents, and it’s weird to feel completely out of touch with the rest of the country. All those ads, all that shopping? I have no reason to go to Target or the mall or to Friendly Center. People keep asking me if I’ve gotten my shopping done, and I’m like, “Yeah, I guess so!” Shopping? It’s not really on my radar right now.

We’ve been enjoying the regular Christmas things, like putting up the tree, reading for Advent, drinking lots of hot chocolate, and listening to Christmas music nonstop. I piled Christmas books under our tree so that it didn’t look so bare. We hung the stockings on my card catalog even though we’re not putting anything in them.

I hate to admit that presents are such a huge part of my Christmas routine, but it appears that they are, because their absence leaves a hole in the season. Not an enormous hole, but a hole nonetheless. I hope I will be able to look back on this Christmas with joy and a new understanding of the Incarnation. I hope some of my materialism ekes away. It’s hard to face up to materialism, especially when money is tight and all you can see are things you can’t afford. Most of all, I hope that somehow this year will allow me to reflect on what I have and be thankful for it, rather than focusing on what I don’t have.

Spoilers for the book and movie below.

A couple of weeks ago I read Chocolat to see if it would be appropriate for a book discussion. Most of my reading these days is geared that way - “Help, help! What books can my group discuss?” I picked up Chocolat because I had seen the movie and wondered if the book would make an interesting discussion. I’m not a reviewer by any means, so these are just some thoughts.

I only saw the movie once, and what I remember is that it was beautifully done, the chocolate looked amazing (as did Johnny Depp), and that overall it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I had heard that it was a movie that brought up good issues for Christians to discuss, but it seemed to me that it was focused on bashing authority and encouraging excess.

When I started the book, one of my coworkers said, “Oh, I read that!” I asked her what she thought, and she hemmed and hawed a bit before I said, “I saw the movie and didn’t really care for it.” She then said that she hadn’t loved the book - that Vianne’s free spirit was a little too flakey for her. I thought, though, that a book that inspires passionate dislike can make for a good discussion, so I was excited to see what I thought about it.

Overall, I agreed with my coworker’s take on Vianne. I enjoyed the revelations we had about her life and her mother, but the way she kept packing up and moving places and changing her name made her someone I couldn’t really relate to. I felt as if we were supposed to romanticize her character (at least in those aspects), but I couldn’t quite do that because I felt sorry for her daughter (and the new little one on the way), having to move around so much and never getting to stay in one place.

The priest (I think it was a mayor in the movie) was more sympathetic in the book than I remembered in the movie. More sympathetic in some ways and more vicious in others. Part of the book (maybe about 1/3) was from his point of view, which I really enjoyed. The scene at the end, where he’s broken into her shop and starts stuffing his face with chocolate was, I think, a bit harsher in the book. Despite his narrow-mindedness, I hate to see someone shamed like that.

The Judi Dench character was just as great in the book as I remembered from the movie, and I enjoyed picturing her sitting at the counter drinking hot chocolate with her grandson.

But, of course, the best part of the book was the magnificent descriptions of the chocolate - the way it smelled, how she was making it, the displays in her window, the purchases people made. It made me want to eat and eat and eat.

In the end, the book left me with the same feeling that the movie did - slightly uncomfortable with the main character’s excesses. I haven’t decided if I’m going to use it as a discussion book yet. I couldn’t find any discussion questions anywhere, and while I could write my own, it’s nice to have a starting point. As it’s set during Lent, it might be a fun book to discuss just after Easter, with lots of chocolate and candy to snack on while we talk. It’s definitely challenging, though, to think about ways that I hold people to certain man-made standards like the priest did, and ways that I overindulge like Vianne. And where the healthy balance is in between.