Snap By Snap

I've had a little trouble getting into the Christmas spirit this year. Keep in mind that I love Christmas - I'm the type that has six boxes of Christmas decorations in the garage and thoroughly enjoys decorating the house, having family over, giving presents, watching Christmas movies . . . in short, I'm generally a Christmas junkie. But this year my brain is preoccupied with work and my bones are feeling a little tired.

So now we have the tree up, the house has slowly been decorated, and tonight we had a Christmas gathering for our small group (or maybe it's a medium group with 10 adults and 7 kidlets?). Earlier in the day I had to work and then ran a few errands on the way home. The traffic around shopping areas was truly horrendous, complete with angry drivers looking for parking spots and honking at older drivers when they hesitated a moment too long on where to turn. Stores are packed with worthless junk, waiting for us to plunk our plastic down in order to have one more bauble under that tree. If I see or hear "Happy Holidays" one more time . . .  well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Christmas isn't really about the birth of the Savior anymore, it's a crummy commercial, to quote Ralphie. It's enough to make this Christmas junkie cynical. But here's the problem, I'm an idealist. I don't want to be a cynic.

Fortunately, the Christmas Spirit saved Christmas for me once again.

As I worked at the library today, a patron talked with me about her compassion for a homeless couple who were obviously living in their car, parked at the library this morning. She was hatching a plan for how to anonymously give them a cash Christmas gift. She'd been unemployed for two years at one point, and she knew how easy it was to lose it all.

As I walked into Kroger, I overhead a couple talking to each other, strategizing what they could do for someone who really needed help this Christmas. "Surely we could do something for them . . ."

And then as I checked out at Hobby Lobby, the young man working the register hummed a tune as he worked. The tune was "Joy to the World."  Such a simple thing, humming a tune. But of all the tunes, it was the one that so accurately describes the reason we celebrate. God's Son, sent to a sorrowing and suffering world. JOY to the world.


So maybe Christmas is all about commercialism for many people, but I'm going to focus on the people like the ones above who, whether they know it or not, embody the true Christmas Spirit. We give because He gave. We celebrate, because we've been given the best gift ever given.  If that's not worth twinkly lights and a festive mood, I don't know what is!

And just for fun, here are some ornaments with stories to go with them
First Christmas, nearly 28 years ago. I love this ornament. Every year it's the first one I look to find.
Also a first year ornament, this Rudolf (he's lost his red nose) was one of about a dozen handmade ornaments received as wedding presents from a friend who lived down the street from me growing up. For years we'd played up and down the street on bikes and in wagons until the street lights came on, and racked up endless trips to each other's front door: Can Paula play? Can Cheryl play? Through high school we drifted apart, but remained on friendly terms. Then out of the blue came this wonderful, thoughtful wedding present. About four of the original twelve ornaments have survived, and are on the tree every year.

When we first moved to Indianapolis, visiting the Children's Museum was a great treat. Every Christmas they have "Jolly Days" and when Amy was four, the three of us sat at a little table with little chairs and each made a bear ornament. We have all three bears on the tree every year. Amy's bear is my favorite, not only because of the cute scrawl on the back, but also because she made the bear's face like a doggy. Everything was a dog when Amy was little. Every preschool craft, every story character, everything.
When Amy was young, her Aunt Debbie sent her a doggy ornament every year. Amy will have a nice collection to start her tree when she gets her first place. Unfortunately the Dalmatians ornament above is a little worse for the wear. One year the mommy dalmation lost one ear. Then the other. Then one year we found a stray puppy head rolling around the bottom of the ornament box. For some reason, this is hilarious to Amy and I. It looks to us like those poor puppies just flew down that sledding hill so fast, that it blew Mom's ears right off! We have a sick sense of humor, we realize.
Our latest injured ornament used to be a star. Hannah, a little friend of ours down the street made it for us two years ago out of salt dough. Friday night I heard a CRUNCH from the front room. There was Goldie, crunching away on the sad remains of the star. She couldn't understand why I was upset, since I was the one who was silly enough to hang a cookie on the tree! We looked and found this one remaining point of the star still hanging on the tree. She ate it right off the branch! Years from now we'll smile when we look at this poor twinkle of a star, and remember our white faced doggy who still had a little puppy in her.

We just returned from a trip to Las Vegas, baby. Not really our kind of town, but we did really enjoy spending some quality time with family and spending a little time with the newest member of the family, Eric's beautiful wife Sara.

Eric, for those of you playing the homegame, is the first wonderfulness (Carolyn uses this term of affection for each of her grandchildren - in order of arrival they are the first, second, and third wonderfulnesses).  Eric has always had a great smile. But his grin widened by at least an inch when he met Sara about two years ago. We knew she was the one.

This has been the year of weddings! I wish I had photos of them all. First, we flew to California to see my nephew Cody wed Cassie, then our friend Kelly married her hubby Dan here in Indy. In October, Mark's old friend Greg (yes, our age - old people get married, too) was married, and then Eric and Sara wed in Las Vegas earlier this month. Each of these eight people had that silly grin. Happiness just spilling out all over. I remember that feeling. My face hurt from smiling by the end of our day:

In March, Cody and Cassie had a table at their reception with the wedding pictures of each of their parents and grandparents, which I thought was a really nice touch. There I saw a picture of my Mom and Dad's wedding that I had never seen before. So I took a picture of the picture (sorry for all the reflections on the glass. If you look closely, you can see my brother Gary's suit in the glass).

My Dad once told me that he married my Mom sooner than he would have, just to help her out of a difficult living situation with her family. But they both sure look very happy. I love the hat! And I love the cross in the background. Most of my memories of my Mom were from a time when she was sick and battling cancer. I love seeing this young, hopeful, beautiful woman looking straight at the camera!

Mark's parents were married in 1956. I asked Mark what the date of their wedding was, and he wasn't sure. So, in a fit of google addiction I typed in "Howard and Carolyn Dobbs wedding" (not expecting any results) - and do you know what??? Their wedding pictures are on youtube! You could have picked me up off the floor. Evidently a cousin digitized his parent's photos or slides and there was a batch from Howard and Carolyn's wedding. Wow. We live in an amazing age.

Be sure to compare the look on Howard's face with the look on Mark's face walking up the aisle with me. It's not a beaming grin. It's more of a completely pleased expression. Cute! Here's a still photo I had of Howard and Carolyn's wedding, and below that is the youtube of wedding pictures from their wedding . . . 54 years ago.



I love seeing those smiling faces. We were all probably naive, and certainly had no idea of what life would throw at us in the years ahead. And, if you had come up to any one of us and told us every bit of bad news we'd get in the next years, we'd still have grinned and gone forward. Because in that moment we all knew what Eric told us just after his wedding. He held up the new ring on his left hand, and said, "This is the best feeling in the world."

What is it about a moment like that? A moment that just instantly changes your perspective. The busy-ness fades and you slow down. Is it the bigness of the horizon? The constant and comforting routine of sunset and sunrise? Or the knowledge that all of our distractions really mean nothing in this larger picture. Somehow it's harder to gain perspective in the city. Why is that?

Take a drive. When we lived in Santa Barbara we could drive into the hills or along the coast. Here we have country fields and farms. In Los Angeles it was a little harder to get away, but it could be done. Get to the quiet. Find a vista that will give you perspective, and listen.

At the end of a too-busy week, Mark and I took a road trip. We were travelling to Cincinnati to participate in the wedding of Mark's boyhood friend. We took the slow road (52) to Cincy, and enjoyed every bit of it. I snapped some pictures with my new iphone, using my Hipstamatic App, which makes even boring pictures look kind of cool and old.  Yesterday it was dry and mostly brown, but the hipstamatic improved the shot quite a bit with its funky filters. The sky, however, was just as beautiful as pictured. Blue and full of cool fall breezes!

I almost just deleted my previous post (9/14/10). Mostly because I was thinking it didn't jive well enough with my "snap by snap" blog theme. Not enough about pictures - too many rambling thoughts. But then I re-read it and liked it again, so it stays. It's my blog, so I guess I can do that, right? Re-reading my ramblings led me to some other ramblings by a much more profound thinker - C.S. Lewis. My steps feel weary lately, and this quote from Mere Christianity was just exactly what I needed:

The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back, in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through. He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder - in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

We are so easily distracted by our list of to-do's every morning, that we fail to come in out of the wind - to look for the quiet. To choose it.

More pictures next time . . .

I've been thinking a lot about change.

Progress.

Development.

Growth.

Improvement.

Maybe it's because I'm working on the strategic plan for work and seeing how far we've come (and how far we have to go). Maybe it's because our strong willed daughter will be 19 tomorrow, and I'm so proud of how far she's come. Maybe I'm just weird and think about things like this.

The Journey is . . . the not-so-exact science of transforming a life, a job, or a family into what it God created it to be. And oddly enough, what keeps coming to my mind is the phrasing from one of Amy's Read Aloud Bible Story Books (highly recommended, by the way).


These particular books are written for preschool age children, and so they have a lot of repetition and simple wording. Instead of saying "The  pharisee was coming down the hill," the Good Samaritan story in Amy's book allows us to hear with the ears of the poor, beaten man . . .who's steps are coming? Will those steps lead someone here? Or will they go the other way?  Simple, right? When we speak to children we understand the need to reduce story to its most basic elements. At it's most basic, every journey is made of steps. But as adults, we see journeys as leaps. We fly here or there, we drive here or there; most of the time we think only of where we want to arrive, not how we will get there. We forget that all of our journeys, all of our progress has been made of steps.

Mark has a saying that I love. In parenting, he says, "You aim for 25."  It is a journey, and the steps are important. Take the steps that will bring you to the day when you are able to look at your 25 year old and know they'll make it in the world. Remember this when your 15 year old is rolling their eyes at your. Your goal is not a perfect teenager. Thank heavens, right? This saying helped me to value steps in the right direction over perfection in parenting.

We want perfection, but we can't have it. Instead we are given the journey.

Step, step, step, step.

When I was a teen, my youth group went on "wilderness trips" meant to help us on our spiritual journey. We backpacked, we canoed, we spent nights alone in the wild . . . and we ran. One trip we did a ten mile run.  I was pretty much a couch potato kind of kid (shocked, aren't you?), but I ran. I was 15. We were running out in the middle of nowhere on some road with beautiful mountains running alongside us. I remember looking at those mountains and thinking, praying, "If God can create those incredible mountans, He's strong enough to help me take one more step, and one more, and one more." I managed to keep moving faster than a walk all the way to the finish - - and I just about died. Something changed in me that day, though. In that very basic, physical test, God had shown me that he indeed could help me, and that I could accomplish with him so much more than I could alone. I still think of that run when I begin to be discouraged, or when I want perfection and instead I am given a long journey. He's still the God who made the mountains, and I'm still the couch potato counting on His strength when my steps falter.


Step, step, step, step.

There's a lot of contentment in the steps, if you are willing to see the meaning in them. When you start to see them add up, you see the substance they have. Seeing our daughter maturing, seeing our marriage deepen, seeing a workplace transforming - - all of these things are made of steps. Trusting or weak, faltering or striding - it is absolutely amazing to see what a step can become. I have so many more steps to take.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin that so easily entangles us, and run with endurance the race that God has set before us.  Hebrews 12:1  

My mother-in-law introduced me to a saying: Get the stink blowed off! This is defined as the need to shake things up, get out of the house, and do something different. I'm convinced that if I had a strong enough microscope, I could look at my husband's DNA and see a gene engraved with the blow the stink off trait engraved on it. That man is always ready to get out and go do something different the usual routine. And so it happened this past weekend that we did just that.

Most of August it was stinking hot and dry (even the weatherman uses this terminology. It's the only fitting descriptor for 94 degrees and 90% humidity with no precipitation), but Saturday was only in the 80's. Practically balmy. So we picked up Mark's parents and drove towards McCormick's Creek State Park.


We have driven all over the country the last two summers and seen all kinds of terrain, but a drive through Indiana's countryside is still breathtaking. The seed corn is drying on the stalks, the grass is mostly brown, the soybeans are deep green, and the trees are a beautiful green - even where they have begun to fade toward fall.
Before we got to McCormick's Creek, we turned at the sign for Cataract Falls  - a place we'd never stopped before. Did I mention that we'd had a drought for the previous four weeks? Cataract might be the wrong name for this time of year. The picture above is what it looks like normally (not my photo). However, the picture below was what it looked like on Saturday. We obviously need to go back n the fall!


One plus for Cataract Falls is that it boasts a covered bridge. I never get tired of these silly things. Maybe because they are on the list of things I didn't see much of (or any?) in California. This one was built with $2000 worth of supplies. Major wow. Can you even build a deck for that now? Another interesting fact was that the reason they covered bridges was because covered bridges lasted much longer than the naked sort. I always thought it had something to do with the snow! Silly California girl.

Every road offers a different mood - remote, dangerous, romantic, scenic, historic - even the everyday roads you travel have stories to tell and hold a promise in that elusive vanishing point. You just have to get off of auto-pilot and travel them with new eyes.

Next up: Skies!

I realized fairly early in Amy's life that she had Opinions. 


When I wanted her to sleep, she wanted to play. When I wanted her to eat, she was full. If I gave her peaches, she wanted squash. This is not to say she was stubborn . . . exactly. But she had Opinions, and was not easily swayed. This was the process of getting to know the very real personality inside this small person that did not yet talk, or walk, and smelled of milk and powder. It was delightful. 


One day when Amy was 10 months old, I picked up her brown stuffed dog, and made it bark for her. Her eyes lit up and she gave a great belly laugh. I didn't know it then, but Amy had found her first passion in life. Dogs. It was an epiphany. 




In the coming years, Amy spent a lot of time learning all about dogs, reading dog stories, creating dog songs, and generally being a dog. I mean really, she was a dog. She was a four year old method actor: Completely immersed. She drove her Sunday School and preschool teachers to distraction by insisting she actually was a dog. A few tried to argue her out of it. Needless to say, Amy loved this, and never gave an inch. Others viewed it as pure disobedience. Amy most decidedly did not love this - and again, never gave an inch. Strong will was (and is) an understatement when it comes to Amy. 






I'll be the first to say that Amy was, ahem, a challenge during the early years. But we loved her imagination and were so curious to see where it would lead her. She taught herself to read at three, to type at four, and constantly produced stories, drawings, and songs. God made her to be a passionate, imaginative, and intelligent person - it wasn't our idea, it was His. Our job was to train her up in the way she should go. It wasn't easy, and it isn't finished yet. 



If you are a parent, an aunt, a grandma, or a close family friend of a child who is "more" - more demanding, more imaginative, more creative, more emotional, more intense than the average child (if there is such a thing as average), listen to their heart. Who did God create them to be? Encourage it. Train them in it. Help them with it. This is where the promise lies:

Train up a child up in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it.   Proverbs 22:6

Most people read this passage with an emphasis on the word "should" instead of on "he." As if we, the parents, get to decide the way our children should go. But they are not ours, are they? They are His. 


Celebrate those opinionated babies. Encourage those strong willed children. The promise is not for an easy road, but for a child who grows up with a solid identity rooted in Christ, not merely in the dreams of their parents. 

Considering how often thunderstorms roll through Indiana, it's a good thing our family really likes them. Mark and I both grew up in California and thunderstorms were not very common -even rain was an event. But here in the sweltering summers of the Midwest, the sky is alive with boiling thunderheads that tower 50,000 feet into the sky. They are spectacular.
We've been known to stand outside to watch and listen to the storm (under cover, of course). Or sometimes at night we'll open the blinds, darken the house, and watch the lightning punctuate the horizon. A couple of yeas ago, Amy and I went next door to chat with our Spanish speaking neighbors for a Spanish class project she had been assigned. As we talked about our families, they asked us if Mark had a hobby. Evidently, they'd seen him taking pictures of lightning, and had decided that he must be looking for aliens, which they thought was hilarious. I mean, who would take pictures of a beautiful storm, right? So now, watching a storm is generally referred to in our family as "watching for aliens."

Tonight, we went for a walk at a local park, enjoying a break in the summer's high temperatures and humidity. I took my camera, like the nerd I am, and snapped pictures of flowers and scenery. As I walked back up from the lake after taking the above photo, a lady walking by said, "what's down there?" Judging by the look on her face, "Pretty flowers" seemed a ridiculous answer.

Are we looking at the same world?

Here are a few more pictures the alien hunting flower lovers took tonight -

And God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.  -Genesis 1:31