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I have a love-hate relationship with holidays.

As much as I can be thankful for things and appreciate all the good stuff going on and genuinely love so many aspects of them, there’s an element of sorrow that accompanies each day of celebration and family fun. I can’t avoid the feelings of loneliness that always seem to surface, and I can’t seem to escape the ‘shoulds’.

On a day where you ‘should’ be surrounded by the people you love and care about the most, there’s always a void when those people aren’t there…or simply don’t exist yet. Holidays make me miss ex-boyfriends. They make me ever-aware of my singleness…especially as I’m always the fifth wheel (or, in my family’s case… the 9th wheel).

It’s a sad, pathetic story… I know. It’s probably one that some of you aren’t too unfamiliar with yourself. Only, I’m blogging about it for the world to see which makes me feel especially pathetic. I’m blogging about it, assuming (or hoping) that you might also have a love-hate relationship with holidays.

As much as they can be a reminder of what we have, I fear that they also remind us of what we do not have. Sometimes it reminds us that our families are broken. Sometimes it reminds us of those who have hurt us deeply. Sometimes it reminds us that we are alone.

I talked to a friend briefly yesterday whose parent’s are recently separated. Two separate Thanksgivings after being accustomed to one…. not two because of having to split between in-laws due to the joys of marriage. Holidays can become a source of a pain, a reminder that once was no longer is. For my friend, I felt the pang of the love-hate relationship with this holiday…aware that my loneliness and singleness was a far cry from the hurt being experienced in the wounds of separation.

I know this isn’t unfamiliar territory for many of you… many of you who have been dealing with this split for a lot of your lives. And I’ve been wondering if one of the reasons we love holidays so much is because of the hope that it embodies for us. That there’s this captivating feeling that surrounds them…maybe our parents will get back together, maybe our families will be reconciled, maybe our ex’s will want us back, maybe we will meet someone new, maybe the voids/hurts/pains that shouldn’t be there will suddenly be erased and all will be made new.

There’s something magical about holidays. Or, at least I want there to be something magical about them. And sometimes, I think our excitement for the holidays is this misplaced hope. We get more excited about reunions with family and friends than we do the real meaning behind them…sometimes I’m not even sure we care about the meaning behind them. I mean… Thanksgiving? What are we really celebrating here?

Mostly I just want to acknowledge that sometimes holidays suck. And as much as we put our happy faces on and spew out the thousands of things we’re thankful for because that’s what people apparently do on social media all day long during the month of November… if you’re one of the people who is hurting, who is having a hard time, who is angry, who doesn’t feel so thankful… I want you to know that you’re not alone.

Sometimes holidays are hard.
Sometimes they remind of us crappy things.
Sometimes, I think it’s okay for us to admit that it’s hard vs. put on the facade that we’re in the holiday spirit and everything is okay.

Mostly…I hope that the holidays move us toward a searching for a greater fulfillment. I hope they move us past hoping solely for our families, our friends, and our love lives to sustain us. As I was lying awake for a while last night, thinking about how different this Thanksgiving was than year’s past…feeling lonely even in the midst of a great family… I realized this wasn’t something they could fix. And it wasn’t something even the perfect man could fix.

Because my loneliness screams of a deeper loneliness, a deeper void that I keep trying to fill with things that don’t last, with things that don’t matter.

If the holidays are hard for you…
Let them be hard, but don’t get stuck in hopelessness.
I think there’s still much for us to hope in, much for us to hope for.
You don’t have to be a scrooge, but you don’t have to be fake, either.

And at the darkest moments of your despair and pain…at the heightened moments of your joy and happiness, I pray that you would find the hope of Jesus Christ. That you would find the redemption, the life, and the promises He made true. I pray that you would find Him faithful…even when it looks different than how you might have envisioned it all.

I love this season.
But I also hate it.
I think that’s okay… because I’m still hopeful for more than this.

Generous people are the best…don’t you think?
Especially the unexpected, out of the blue type of generosity that flows from strangers.

It’s often the little things that I tend to value a lot. The little things that can go unnoticed, but I so greatly appreciate them. They make me feel blessed…and I’m humbled in the way that others notice the little things they can do for others, both people they don’t even know and the people that they love dearly. They aren’t big things done in a prideful arrogance that beg for the world to notice them… but they are simple, they are thoughtful, they are selfless things.

Like the lady at the store who has a million groceries in her cart and notices me with a handful of things behind her and insists on me going before her. Or the man who lets me take the parking spot instead of trying to fight me for it. Or the woman who rushes to help open the door for the stroller-pushing, exhausted mother. Or maybe picking up after your sibling, or asking for ways to help your mom with Thanksgiving prep, or spending time with your family when it means not spending as much time with your friends.

Little things.
I love when the little things become big things…. when they become day-changing things. In the good ways, of course. I love when someone else’s generosity can remind me that there’s still good in the world, there’s still hope.

It makes me want to notice the little things. It makes me want to reach out in little ways to people when I see a need…or even when I just see something that could help make someone’s day a little better.

Generosity breeds more generosity.
Pay it forward, right?
And when it doesn’t work like that… well, I think we still need to be generous, despite how it may be received.

I’ve been wondering why we don’t do it more often. Why I don’t do it more often.
Aren’t you so blessed when a stranger does something selfless for you… for no reason at all? Aren’t you so blessed when someone you care about does something for you even when you both know that you don’t deserve it? Isn’t it astounding? Isn’t it baffling? Isn’t it humbling? I did no thing to deserve such an act, and yet I’m experiencing grace in real life. Why wouldn’t we seek to extend this to every person we encounter every single day?

Lord, I pray that we would have eyes to see the little things… and I pray that we would be quick to respond. Jesus, teach us how to be selfless in our day-to-day interactions with strangers, teach us how to be bold with our words. Jesus, teach us how to be selfless in our day-to-day interactions with those we love, those we don’t like…everyone. 

As we’re in this season of thankfulness, I really hope we would be willing to consider the weight of what small acts of selflessness on our part might mean for someone we don’t know (and those we do). Especially as we shop, as we tip, as we interact with cashiers, as we drive, as we walk into buildings, as we fly… as we live life, may our eyes be opened to the ways that we can simply be a blessing to those around us. Even as you interact with family or close friends… as you make Thanksgiving feasts, clean up after others and feel (perhaps) as though your efforts are overlooked and purposeless… I hope you keep giving.

Be a blessing through generosity.
Live in such a way that places others before you all the time.
Live a life of humility.
Watch as your generosity breeds more generosity…and persevere when it seems your generosity goes unnoticed or unappreciated.

Join me in praying that prayer above more frequently… because, as usual, this is nothing we can do of our own accord.

Father, I beg that we would be a people who bear fruit wherever we go and with whomever we interact with…no matter the response we receive from them. And Lord… I pray that You would be glorified. 

Be a blessing today.

I bought boots today.
Scratch that… my mom bought me boots today. Yep. It happened. I’m that 28-year-old (one who didn’t own boots and one whose mom still buys her clothes). I lived in Texas for over six years and never, ever was tempted with such a purchase. But a move to New England at the beginning of January made it seem like a wise investment.

The problem with the boots, however, is that I feel like a fraud when I wear them. It reminds me of when I started wearing dresses.

Have you experienced this before?

I’ve probably identified myself as more of a ‘Tom Boy’ most of my life. My mom was pretty disappointed after having three boys to get a girl who didn’t like to wear frills and lace and feminine things. Instead of looking like a girl, I sought to look more like my brothers. I often sported the ‘ol two colored Umbros- remember those? They were the best.

There were a few brief stints in junior high and high school were I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to look more like a girl. Mostly it just consisted of bad make-up and terrible fashion sense. Eventually I left my girliness to school dances and formal events.

But, over the years it’s changed. Maybe it’s been my circle of friends, or the willingness to admit that dresses can actually be comfortable…or maybe just a desire to actually embrace my femininity instead of despise it.

The first few times I wore a dress (outside of a dance/wedding), I felt ridiculous. It felt like everyone in the room could tell I had never worn a dress before and it was written all over my face. I searched for validation in every possible way, eager for people to either tell me I looked great….or simply not notice the monstrosity before them. And while I now realize that no one probably cared or noticed, I know that I was having an internal meltdown as I attempted to parade around in this costume as though it were normal attire.

I like dresses a lot now…even if it took a few… years. I’ve even graduated from not wearing shorts under them every time I wear one.  I don’t wear them all the time, but I don’t feel like an awkward duck every time I do. As I move away from camp life into ‘real world’ life, I realize I can’t get away with my Umbros (shoot, if I actually had a pair of these, I’d actually wear them a lot…) and t-shirts. Or my plethora of sweatshirts. I mean, I guess I could… but I don’t want to.

I want to step further into my femininity in the way that I dress, but because it’s such a foreign land to me… it’s terrifying and often makes me feel like a fraud. Sometimes I think this is where you just need to take a plunge, though. Sometimes, no matter how I feel on the inside, it doesn’t mean that it’s apparent to everyone else…and it wouldn’t matter if it was.

I think these changes are hard to make. And while, yes, superficial on some level… I think the way we present ourselves can speak volumes for the way we think about ourselves. I think for so long my inability to dress ‘cute’ was a direct tie into my inability to see myself as attractive. So I avoided fashion trends and style…because I felt like I could never look as good as the other girls. I didn’t have right body, right personality…and the clothes looked stupid/were uncomfortable. I had every reason to not look like girly girls… but I think, on some deep level, I always wished I could.

Maybe it’s vanity.
Maybe none of this matters.
Maybe I could walk around for the rest of the life never wearing make-up and dressing myself in sweats and be perfectly fulfilled (ha, I have…). But I think we tap into something deeper when we allow ourselves to become more of who we were created to be, both internally and externally. And I’m not saying that every woman or man will approach this in the same way. I’m simply saying that in me, there’s always been this connection in the way I dressed and the way I thought of myself. The past few years have given room for transformation both in how I think of myself and how I then present myself.

Let me be clear- this doesn’t mean that in order to embrace your femininity that you must put on make-up, wear dresses or buy boots. There’s not a certain dress code for what this means…I think it can look different for each of us. I guess I’m just challenging to consider why you wear the clothes that you do, why you present yourself the way that you do. Is it a direct correlation to how you view yourself? Is it a true representation of who you are…of who you want to be? Is it only a representation of who you want to be and not who you actually are?

I still feel like a fraud when I wear things I’m uncomfortable with or not used to… but, I think, sometimes that’s okay. Sometimes it takes time to grow into things. And I think that’s true when we change internally, too. That sometimes we have to be willing to be uncomfortable, feel awkward… and maybe we become more of who we were created to be, both internally and externally.

So I bought boots. Tall, leathery boots. The kind of boots you wear with skinny jeans. I don’t own skinny jeans. *sigh*

I think this will be a very growing year, after all.

My mind feels too all over the place to write these days.

In a given moment, I could be thinking about:

• What type of job I’ll be able to find in January that will give me the hours and the money I need to live while in school. So, I peruse jobs on the Internet. I might be a nanny. 
• Body image. I used to think I had a very accurate perception of myself, but now I’m wondering how warped it actually it is. 
• A new life…and new friends. I can’t envision this becoming a reality, no matter how hard I try.
• The plethora of people I need to contact, respond to… love better. 
• Whether or not I should stop blogging.
• How much I think/care too much about what other people think of me. 
• Boys…men? And how being single forever seems pretty realistic. Sometimes I’m lonely, too. 
• The book I want to write.
• Family- and being overwhelmed by my thankfulness for them.
• Why the little cat isn’t cuddled up next to me right now.
• How much I hate spending money…and how much money I’ve had to spend lately and will continue to spend for the next three years. 
• Wanting to cut ties with everything I’ve known and start anew.
• How I’m glad the little cat finally decided to join me.
• God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit….Christianity… and 5,000 other things that fall under this. 
• How to relate to other people in a way that connects with them and inspires them.
• My upcoming trip to Africa. 

Yes…that’s right. I crawled into bed tonight, thankful that I had a bed to crawl into…and knowing that in just a few weeks, the bed I sleep in will probably be much different. I feel like my mind has been so many other places that I haven’t been able to really give much thought to what’s happening in my immediate future.

I’m going to Africa.
I’m flying to Amsterdam from Boston on November 30 and meeting up with the rest of my team there. We’ll catch a flight down to Uganda and remain for 2.5 weeks. We’re hanging out with orphans, we’re dedicating a children’s home, we’re putting on a camp. I don’t know what other expectations to have beyond this, and so I feel like I have none. I feel unprepared. I have some long skirts and I’m going to get some vaccines tomorrow. But, in less than two weeks I’ll board a plane with a carry-on and a passport and fly across the world.

Maybe it’s better that way. Maybe it’s better to be expectation-free and feeling slightly unprepared.
But it’s time to start praying more diligently for this trip.
Maybe you’ll join me.
That even beyond prayers for me and my safety and whatever other prayers seem to flow from our mouths when we don’t exactly know what to pray when people travel overseas… that we would genuinely just pray for God to be glorified, above all else. Whatever that means.

One of the mistakes I made in going overseas before was making it all about me. Wanting to see God move in ways that were powerful and life-changing… for me. I wanted to see the miracles I had heard about. I wanted to see…so I could believe.

So, while my mind may be jumping from one thing to the next rather quickly…I know that, right now, I need to focus more on this trip. It’s something I have to choose to do. To continuously surrender, to pray for my teammates, to pray for those we’ll be interacting with in Uganda… to pray that it would never be about me. To pray that I would have eyes to see the needs of others and I would be quick to react. To pray for boldness and courage. To pray that I would not complain for any reason. To pray that I would give…and give…and give. To pray that I would decrease so that He might increase.

Pray with me, if you’d like.

And in the meantime?
Keep sending me over the things that you’d like to read about…’cause sometimes me blogging feels a bit purposeless if it’s not beneficial or relatable to you. What do you want to talk about, read about, hear about? Let’s get it all out there on the table.

Thankful for you.

What do you need?

I love music.
Like…love it so much that it might be a requirement for the guy I marry to be musically inclined in some way. Maybe that makes me shallow.

I just think it’s powerful.
Music has a way of bringing us back to things, to people… it has a way of penetrating our hearts. It moves us deeply. It leads us into worship. It’s a way we can express ourselves when words don’t feel like enough. It’s motivating, inspiring…it’s never-ending. It caters to each of us at different times, in different moods, in different settings.

Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with my appreciation for music.

Today was one of those days where music brought me back to a moment in time. A memory that I’m not sure I’ll ever forget. It was a Wednesday night of camp and campers had just experienced ‘The Last Supper’ to the Garden of Gethsemane in full. From the Passover Meal, to the washing of feet, to the praying in the garden….each camper, each week walked through this. It included the usual gagging on horseradish and the awkward silence as counselors squeezed their way into tight spaces in order to wash their camper’s feet.

The night segued into our open-air Pavilion where all the campers would gather from their individual prayer spots. Each camper had been carrying a small rock with them for two days… a rock that represented their story. They’d each had a chance to share their story with their group. On this night, they were given a chance to surrender their life, their story, to Christ. It was a night to open the door for Christ to intersect, for Him to take over…a reminder that there was so much hope in letting go and giving it all to Him.

Their counselors collected each rock/story in a wooden trough and carried them to the Pavilion with their group trailing behind them. The idea was that they represented Christ in this big metaphor. As each pair of counselors came into the Pavilion, one in front of the trough, one in back… I would direct them to a certain spot. As we waited for them to trickle in, no one spoke…but the music penetrated our souls. By the time all the counselors were present, the shape they were in resembled that of the cross.

It was often a pretty intense night for the campers…but I was too far removed from them to really know all the details of what was going on which each of them. The thing that I vividly remember were MY ‘campers’ each week: the counselors. They’d come in carrying this uncomfortable trough, sometimes overflowing with 30+ rocks…sometimes scattered with less than ten. Sometimes I’d watch them try to hold back tears, and the unspoken looks exchanged between us told me that something powerful had just happened in their groups with one of their campers.

Sometimes they stood there for a long, long time as we waited for the last of the groups to show up. One night, in particular, seemed especially brutal. Not only was the wait long, meaning the more uncomfortable they got as they bore the weight of these stories…but there was this spiritual heaviness that seemed pressed upon them. As the music played, the words seemed to pour over us. I remember the tears that so many finally let loose, I remember the heaving shoulders, I remember seeing the desperation in their eyes as they looked up… almost as if they were pleading to God. They were prayers I never heard, but I knew they mattered.

I knew they mattered because it was as if in this moment that we all understood the urgency of the message we were presenting that night. It was the only one we could ever share that truly could change a life. It was a message of hope. And in the midst of the tears and the brokenness, there was the cross that made life possible. That makes it possible.

As my iPod randomly shuffled to one of these songs today, I was immediately taken back to this place. I was immediately back to this time where Jesus Christ was all that mattered… and I needed to be reminded of that again. I needed to be reminded that I am carrying His name…’for all of my days, in all of my ways’.

This is the only story that matters: the Gospel.
How does my own story reflect the only one that does…? How does yours?
Jesus, Your name… forever. 
Soak it in for yourself.

Today started off with a reminder of how small I am.

And it quickly moved into a day where I was reminded how incapable I am of relating to so many people. Sometimes, at the climax of my zeal, I think I can identify with every single person in the world on some level. Today I realized that it might be ridiculous to entertain such a thought.

If we were playing ‘Never Have I Ever’, I think I would lose…because I haven’t really experienced a lot of things that a lot of people have.

Let’s see…
Never Have I Ever…

• been drunk
• had sex
• lost a loved one
• been poor (like, truly poor)
• been homeless
• been severely injured
• had severe health problems
• been friendless
• been abused
• been raped
• had an eating disorder
• seriously considered suicide my only option
• cut myself
• done drugs
• been abandoned by my family
• questioned my sexuality 
• gone without food

‘Do you want to get married?’

It was one of the most significant memories in a cemetery that I can recall to this day. I still blush thinking about the freudian slip while attempting to ask my best guy friend (whom I also had a severe crush on at the time) if he wanted to be Buried or cremated. We were taking an afternoon stroll through a scenic cemetery in our college town on a crisp fall day. Neither of us knew a proposal was on order, and, in my humiliation, I quickly tried to recover… I’ve probably subconsciously avoided cemeteries ever since.

But, there are a lot of cemeteries in the northeast.
I went for a short run/long walk in one this afternoon. Creepy, sure… but beautiful, nonetheless. It’s a cemetery marked by age and history, not to mention the lakes, trees and rolling hills. Aside from the occasional mind rabbit trail where I imagine the thousands of corpses under the ground that I’m treading upon, I tend to think a lot when I’m in a cemetery. Today was no exception.

When I was younger, I used to think (hypothetically, of course) of the ways that I could fake my own death. Once ‘dead’, there would obviously be a funeral for me. My grand plan was to find a way to scout out my funeral and see who would actually show up, who would actually care if I died. Would people make an effort to come? Beyond the showing up, I wanted to know what people would say about me, I wanted to hear the eulogies (eugooglies?).  If I could be a fly on the wall of my funeral…an ant in a blade of grass at my burial…then I would know if I really mattered to people and who I really mattered to.

I imagine other people have had similar thoughts. This desperation in wanting to know that we matter, to know that we’re doing something right, that we’re making an impact on more people than ourselves. It’s a cry to be truly known, loved, cared about.

I was reminded in a sermon today of how risky it is to let people in.
I was also reminded of how worth it it is….and how much we we all, deep down, desire it. We were made for it.

It’s interesting, because sometimes I get concerned with the numbers. I think about my funeral with a small number of people in attendance and it makes me feel like I failed at life. But I wonder how much the opposite might be true. That in this pursuit to be known perhaps we make the mistake of getting caught up in how many people we know versus how many people we know. Facebook friendship vs. true friendship, perhaps?

I’ve realized that my life has become far more about trying to let a mass of people know I care about them and a lot less about letting people actually know me. I’m quick to dodge questions about myself and eager to ask you questions about your life and your own struggles and joys. It’s a one-sided relationship…one where I hope you feel known/loved by me, and one where I escape being known by you. And, as I get to know more people, my ability to truly care about them decreases as my time, energies, efforts are divided. Instead of being a truly good friend to a few, I feel like I’m a disaster of an acquaintance to many.

I’m honestly not sure what this means going forward.
I think there’s something to consider as we develop relationships with other people, as we seek to go beyond the surface. Instead of focusing so much on the number of people that we are Facebook friends with, what might it look like to consider the depth of those friendships. Do you have authentic relationships with others? Relationships where people encourage you, but also challenge your weaknesses and call you to something greater? Relationships where people know you, even the ‘not-so-hot’ you? Relationships where you know you are supported, cared about…and loved… no matter what?

I don’t think this unattainable.
I just think it’s scary. But it’s what we want… whether you’re ready to admit it or not.
I have a few of these friendships, and, to be honest, they sometimes tend to be the people that I run from the most…the people that I find most annoying at times because they ask the hard questions and expect more from me. I can’t hide from them, but yet I try. They are friendships that push me toward Christ in ways that others simply cannot. They are good. They are necessary.

I don’t think we need every relationship on earth to be like this. I think that’s an unrealistic expectation. But, we need some. Even Jesus only had a few close buds.

I hope we become people who care much more about quality than we do quantity. I hope we become people who are willing to go ‘there’ with a few people in life.

Think about it.

And if, by some chance, I do get to witness my funeral? I hope I’m just thankful for those deep friendships instead of disappointed by a lack of attendance. That my significance and worth wouldn’t come from fame or popularity…but from something much greater. Being truly known, loved and adopted by the Creator of the universe…and from that, may everything else flow.