Another Christmas Miracle

I must confess... this year I have found it a quite a bit more challenging to get myself into the Christmas spirit than usual.  My closest family and friends will find this absolutely shocking.  After all, I tend to listen to Christmas music all year long, although a little more infrequently than in "the season."  Heck, my name even SCREAMS Christmas cheer if you think about it.  Why did I find it so hard to get in the spirit this year?!?!

How can anyone resist Christmas lights? -- Disney's Cinderella Castle draped in lights when we visited Magic Kingdom in 2007

I must confess that I've gotten caught up in the "busyness" of everything lately and it really has weighted me down this season.  At the suggestion of Gretchin Rubin to her readers late in 2010, I picked "momentum" as my word to set the tone in 2011.  I even wrote a lengthy blog post about how I intended to use that as motivation this year.  Well, 2011 started out great... it's been an awesome year and we've managed to accomplish a lot.  But lately I've been feeling like I've run out of steam and started feeling rather "stuck."  The minutia of life sometimes just gets to overwhelming and unending.

Even after giving myself "permission" to skip the annual Christmas newsletter mailing and keeping decorations very minimal, I've still just not really felt very "Christmas-sy" until a few days ago.  One night I left work a bit later than normal.  Earlier that day I was able to get out at lunchtime to go for a run in the beautiful warm Florida December weather.  However, by the time I left my office a cool front had dramatically dropped the temperatures and brought a steady, dreary type of rain with it for the evening.  Christmas music played through my car's radio and the words to a beautiful version of "O Holy Night" really caught my attention.  The chorus kept powerfully reminding me... "the weary world rejoices..."  Imagine that... the weary world rejoices.  How hopeful is that sentiment!  Even in my most weary moment, I have so much to be thankful and hopeful for...how callous of me to forget.  Music always has a way of speaking to me and it transported me back to a few Christmas celebrations in the past where I was really in tune with the real reason for the season.

So I had to do some catching up online and it looks like Knoxville's Wallace Memorial Baptist Church's Living Christmas Tree is under construction again this year.  It brings back so many wonderful memories of a very spiritual Christmas awakening I felt one year in my earlier adulthood years on my own. 

It was my 2nd Christmas on my own as an adult and I had just moved to Knoxville, TN from Johnson City.  I became very involved in the young adult ministry at Wallace and especially in their wonderful choir and a small singing ensemble called "Cornerstone."  The Living Christmas Tree is an annual tradition at that church that is not to be missed.  I was blessed to be a part of it in 1996 when I first moved to Knoxville, singing alto in this awesome choir.  Practices for the program were intense and I was very busy then too, but for some reason I felt very in-tune with the coming Christmas season.  At the same time that season I read "Two From Galilee" by Marjorie Holmes for the first time.  It was such an amazing account of Mary and Joseph and the Christmas story, a true love story unmatched by anything I had ever read before.  There was probably more than one choir practice I was late for just because I could not put the book down.  Reading that particular account of that story made performing in the Living Christmas Tree all the more of a spiritual awakening for me.  Never will I now be able to hear the words to "Mary Did You Know" without having chills run up and down my spine.  I'll never forget singing my heart out on that 3rd bottom row of that tree (stage right), wondering if the congregation felt the miracle of the Christmas story as I felt it at that moment.

So, a few nights ago I was hoping and praying for a similar awakening like I felt so many Christmas celebrations ago.  I know my to-do list isn't going to get any shorter and there will always be work to do and that's fine.  I just needed a gentle reminder of what it is all about to empower me to keep moving forward.  I needed to become unstuck.

This morning I was blessed to get that reminder from our kids at Chapel by the Sea as they performed their own Christmas program.  From the wonderful symbolism of the advent wreath... (it dawned on me the only pink candle symbolizes "joy"... no wonder I love the color of pink), to our kids who surprised Scott and I with thoughtful gifts we weren't expecting, to the message of the program they presented....I find myself with such a happy heart tonight, learning from the children.

Santa's chair awaits behind Chapel by the Sea's advent wreath

So I'm happy to say I think I've been found by the Christmas spirit this year, although a bit later than usual for me.  Now just to transfer that positive energy to my to-do list and any work to be done, continuing that sense of momentum into the new year!  Happy holidays everyone!

2011: My Year of Momentum

I absolutely love this time of year!  Not just because of all the holiday festivities, but also because we draw near to the end of another year and the promise of a new year arises.  Whether you are diligent in the creation of  New Year's resolutions or just winging it, this is a great time for reflection and planning.  Gretchen Rubin recently challenged her readers to choose one word to set the tone for next year.  I find this to be a compelling idea and have given a lot of thought to what word I choose to focus on during this coming year.

My word for 2011 is going to be... MOMENTUM.

Without getting into a complex physics lesson I surely don't understand, here's a simple explanation of momentum.  Momentum is the product of the mass m and the velocity v of an object.  It is the power that an object has... the amount of force one object can have on another.

Momentum is more challenging to deal with than energy because as a vector, it has both magnitude AND direction.  Forces in one direction can affect momentum in another direction.  A body in motion tends to stay in motion.  A body at rest tends to stay at rest.

The Law of Momentum Conservation states

For a collision occurring between object 1 and object 2 in an isolated system, the total momentum of the two objects before the collision is equal to the total momentum of the two objects after the collision.  That  is, the momentum lost by object 1 is equal to the momentum gained by object 2.

What important truths lie in this mini-physics lesson?  Well....

1. Momentum changes abruptly when you hit a "brick wall" or get whisked away by some dramatic event or circumstance.
        It's bound to happen sooner or later... a project that was going along smoothly gets completely derailed... another project may seem so overwhelming that you don't even know where to start... yet another project may have many events fall into place so fast that you can't even catch up.  It's all enough to make you want to throw your hands up and give up sometimes.
   So..... what to do about it in 2011?  BREAK IT DOWN!!  My Dad used to (and still does) tell me that I really don't need to try and conquer the whole world in a single day.  One of my key goals in 2011 will be to crystallize big projects into smaller, more manageable pieces... to pace myself better.  Like the old joke goes... how do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time!  I've got a lot of "elephant-size" projects waiting out there for me, so it's time to get myself started on them one step at a time.  With my goals in more manageable sizes, and keeping planning systems in order, I should be able to get a good start on building some momentum.
   
2. Energy, or momentum, can be conserved by paying careful attention to the direction and speed of things around me.  Then I have a choice to adjust my direction and speed accordingly and lessen impact of any potential collisions.
        My husband often jokes with me that I am not an overly observant person.  I'm a strange sort of person that can get so wrapped around some crazy detail, but then totally miss out on the bigger picture or broader headlines.  As I get older, I'm beginning to realize I need to try and find ways to adjust for this natural tendency of mine.  How often I've been going about my own business, minding my own details, only to glance up and... (BAM!) ... hit that "brick wall" I referenced in the previous bullet.  If only I had done a better job of looking up from time to time to keep in tune with my surroundings more often, that painful collision probably could have been avoided (or at least lessened).  Those collisions, or breaks in momentum, consume an extraordinary amount of energy.  It's often hard to recover and get back on track.  So, 2011 will be a year where I'll be striving to improve my sense of situation awareness to assist with better decision making.

So, I've said all that to say this... It's time for me to just get on with it and build the momentum... conserving energy to pay attention to the things around me that matter most.  Cheers to a great 2011 to come!

 You owe it to us all to get on with what you're good at. ~ W.H. Auden