God is a Tremendous Author

I know that everyone and their mother is decorating their tree today because of Facebook.  It told me so.   And while I will not put up a picture of my own newly decorated house there, I will write about it here.

Hiaitus officially over. 

Today I welcomed the Christmas season.  Gingerly, because it's a slow and gradual warming I feel towards the hype of December after what is blissfully silent in November.  I took my tree and box of decorations out today and lit my pine scented candle (hello, apartment living) and then inevitably thought about the story of my life while unpacking the ornaments. 



Lately I've been thinking about life in story.  More than usual.  It's becuase I'm trying to trust that God is a tremendous Author, and that it's very ok to be in the middle of so much.  There is intention and purpose, but these days I feel like a very tiny person in a great big thing.  God as Author helps.   God as I AM helps too.

There are certain things that are really special in life, and then others you wouldn't mind giving away to Goodwill NOW.  I wonder why that is.  What I think no one told me when I was little is that lots of times the special things are bittersweet.  I feel this about Christmas ornaments every year.

A few years ago, a student, one who was really troubled and struggling in my class, gave me a homemade snow globe right before we all left for Christmas Break.  I put it up every year and think about this person, and pray for her life for wherever she is now.  She is not at our school anymore. 

When she gave it to me, she was so proud, and I was so floored.  I remember getting it from her very vividly.  It made me feel like this profession I was getting myself into was a very big thing.  I began to see that middle school teachers get gifts that are sometimes etched out of struggle and this deep down care that they certainly can't show you at the beginning of the year.  I've gotten really beautiful and expensive gifts from really wonderfully generous people since I've begun teaching.  I am floored by those things too, but in a different way.  This snow globe was made out of a peanut butter jar and has two little girls inside walking down a street carrying packages.  It feels set apart and I don't know why but I just go with it.  I have put it in the same place every year. 

I have this affinity for red things at Christmas time.  But I do NOT like to wear red.  This apartment is red at Christmas.  And white and brown too.  My aunt and uncle just came to see us this weekend for Thanksgiving, and mentioned that we seem like Northern people.  (Northern people?)  They explained what was right in front of them.  Silly little things, but that Jenna and I look like Scandanavian people (the braids and the slippers and the winter style) and we live just far enough north for it to seem bitterly cold.  

My mom is little with dark brown hair and dark eyes, and Jenna and I are not.  Until your aunt (who looks just like your mother) tells you this, it is easy to forget that people don't dress like they're in the northwoods all of the time.  They don't own snowshoes and all of the gear you need to actually trek through a snowstorm and get there in one piece.  Last year when I was at Epcot in Florida, the Canada gift store was the only place that felt really truly like what I knew.  It kind of freaked me out.  

I guess my Christmas decor goes in that direction too.  Twig and cranberried star tree topper included.

When I moved into this apartment, there was one tiny pinhole in the ceiling of the cut out.  Every Christmas since then, I have hung a Norwegian decoration from a great-aunt in that place.   And tonight when I added a 5th dent, it felt significant.  All year I rush by that place and live so many other things near it.  It's such a small thing, I always look past it.  But when I hang it up, I think about the passing of time and how strange it is that I've been in the same place for 4 years and have liked being here so much.  It's this very personal thing to this Stillwater life I am living.

And then there are these Danish hearts on the tree.  I would not have thought I would put red and white paper hearts on the tree, but it suits the season.  It reminds me of a part of my background that is very often overlooked.  I am NOT just Dutch, but you wouldn't think it to hear my famiy talk.  I think about my mom, crafty as ever, pressing on to finish what I so artfully love to leave.  I am NOT hands on with crafts.  These came from the year she wanted to have a simple Christmas.  We didn't like that in high school, but I love that thought now.  I like that my mom is so wonderfully simplified in her taste and what she stands for.  Not just at Christmas either. 

And then there is this small accumulation of ornaments that I trudged through the snow in downtown Stillwater to get myself.  In this very singular and 'on my own' and independent time of life.  Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it's awesome, and the ornaments are my memories of owning this, and stepping away from my sometimes all-consuming job.  Every year I've been here, I've gone to the Stillwater shops in the first week of December to buy a new ornament for my tree.  Something special, something I like that no one else has to care about or like.  I leave the grading and the desk for an afternoon.  It is fun.  Downtown Stillwater this time of year is fun.  You should go.

Last year I got a painted back drop for a nativity scene from Heather's mother-in-law.  I saw it the year before when I visited the twins, and loved it.  It's a Mankato thing coming into my life, which I love.  Awesome as ever, Heather remembered it for my May birthday.  Then she brought it to me for the next year for Christmas.  One of my own.  It is a windy evening, with lots of stars, and a town looking awfully like Bethlehem in the background.  It is truly lovely.  I'm keeping it forever.  And someday when our little Bible study doesn't look like it does now, I'll still think of it in our current form.  And this whole current and future and past thing going together being a really nice thing to keep coming back to.

It sounds like a good story. 

Tonight I will enjoy the preparations for December.  Pine tree scented candle and everything in the middle included.