Snow, etc.

I finally made it to Missouri today. Drove something like 25 hours in the past few days, and made it to Kansas City just two hours before the ice/snow storm began! A few things on the drive interested me: 1) The numerous LARGE, and I mean LARGE!! free-standing crosses that appear every so often to the side of the highway. 2) There are SO MANY FM Christian radio stations in the Midwest! 3) Most male Christian singers seem to use the same vocal technique: breathy, raspy, high larynx. I wonder when that became the preferred style? I like some of this stuff, and I don't mean to criticize, but the radio offers almost no variety! It all started to blend together after a little while.

All that to say, I'm not in New England anymore!!!!

So. Kansas City. Everyone else in the house is asleep, I should be as well, but I'm sitting in the living room, staring at the beautiful Christmas tree and the blustering snow outside. This is the last Christmas I'll spend with my family for at least a few years, and I seem to be having one of those this-is-my-life-in-review moments. I've done so much thinking the past 2 years, trying to discover who I am, what I was created to do. At the moment I'm comparing my prior expectations for what "grown-up" life would be like, and how things have turned out. I'm 30! I'm not sure how I expected life to be, really, I think I just wondered about it. So much safer to simply wonder, than it is to draw up plans that could, possibly, become reality. My primary response to where I am in my life, and what, Lord willing, I will be doing and where I will live beginning in March, is, "huh." Not a quizzical "huh," more a "huh" that says "well, how about that!"

Such an interesting time. My current lifestyle contains neither structure, nor predictability. It really is a take-it-as-it-comes time, which is a blessing. A blessing, that my day-to-day experience mirrors the reality of life. As my friend Judy often reminds me, life, trying to live with/for God, is like chasing a wild goose! From our perspective, anyway.

The past 7 months especially, have changed me. I know we're always changing, but I feel as though I'm finally growing up. In my spirit, I mean. I'm certainly not "growing up" according to most definitions of that term. I don't own a condo or a house, I'm not even earning an income! And yet I feel calmer (and for me, that's saying something!). I feel like my heart and mind and arms are open wide to whatever might come to me in life. I've been, and continue to be, the grateful recipient of such love and generosity, from God and from so many people. When I ask myself what I have to offer the world, I think that's it. I can offer that same love and generosity to others, in abundance, as it was offered to me. It's quite something, to know that what you have to give the world doesn't belong to you, didn't even come from you. You can simply give as you have received. And even the act of giving is a gift!

Speaking of gifts, tomorrow (well, today I guess, since it's 1:30 AM!), as my family opens gifts, it's unfortunate for them that what I have to give them right now can only come in the form of re-gifting and hugs! But, we give what we have. :-) I hope they see it the same way I do!

Merry Christmas, everyone!