So:

2010, you are just around the corner. I don't know you yet, and you are full of scary unknowns, but I hope we get along fine. I have just one resolve with which to greet you: to be happy. And not in the sort of "I-just-want-what-I-need-to-be-happy" but in the active, honest choosing of joy. Henri Nouwen said, "Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day."

I choose joy in 2010.

[I also choose to have a little blog hiatus. Life is busy in January including, among other things, three weddings in three different states of Australia! I'll see you all again in February. xx]

Daymakers

Today had some stinky elements in it which made me feel down. But then some things made me happy:



1) this video by Improv Everywhere. It filled me with Christmas cheer and also made me want to go to Manhattan immediately.

2) my cousin, Annie, sent me a little for-no-reason-at-all-except-love parcel and it hit my mailbox today, completely unexpected! It filled me with a warm glow :). And yes, I do have the world's best cousins.

3) information about my newest sponsor child came in the post, and I opened the envelope to see an adorably cheeky little brown boy staring out at me with gorgeous dark eyes.



4) this charismatic little dude singing Jason Mraz's I'm Yours, not knowing any of the words, and not caring in the slightest.

I hope your day is filled with happy.

Weekend XIX :: and a poem

We file in,
seat ourselves in ragged rows
and perch on the rims of our chairs,
expectant and perspiring.

The great building
rumbles with the hum
of six-hundred murmured contentments;
we all
bless the air conditioner.

Then lights,
fifty tiny seraphs,
blink into the overhead.

Music swells,
rolls forward,
and washes over us;
we all
bless the Christ-child.

This was the weekend when it truly started to feel like Christmas. I went shopping with my mother and sister, my little brother dragged against his will but uncomplaining through crowds that resembled a mental illness. We balanced bags stuffed with purchases on chairs while we ate a late lunch (chicken katsu over rice at my new favourite place). I failed to find shoes for my absurdly strange feet but it didn't make me cry, this time.

This was the weekend when I went to a movie with my sister and soon-brother-in-law. I felt my face frozen in tension at all the scariest spots and knew that James was groaning at the CGI effects, but I suddenly didn't care that, in being swept up by the intensity, I was not Very Grown Up -- and then, ironically, the not caring what other people think made me feel quite grown up indeed.

This was the weekend when I finally had a sleep-in, when I finished a delicious book, when I joined my family for a carols service at our church, when I was reminded of Jesus' message to the captain in Matthew 8: "What you believed could happen has happened."

What was this weekend, for you?

The air is humid and carols are playing on the radio

I know the mature thing is to start thinking Christmas is a little bit old hat. But I can't. I'm an enthusiastic, immature dork for Christmas. I like everything that people my age are supposed to groan about: the carols on the radio. Candlelight singalongs. Nativity plays. Shopping for gifts. Christmas cards in the mail (though apparently these are dreadfully out of fashion). End of year newsletters (also more corny than cool). I love it all, and I'm thankful for the one time of year when it's in style for everyone to sing praise songs to Jesus.

And now I'm in the mood to watch movies that make me all Christmas-happy -- like Elf (pure silliness) and Little Women (not strictly a Christmas movie, but full of holly and jolly and family and tears) and The Nativity. What Christmas movies are your favourite? I definitely want to know.