Twelve

My baby turned twelve today.

My sleepy 7 lb. 3 oz. newborn of 12 years and 12 hours ago has grown into a 5 foot 7 inch (and growing) pre-teen. At this moment, he's sitting on the other side of the room playing a new computer game he got for his birthday. The kid knows about a hundred times as much about computers as I do. His hands and feet indicate that he's going to be a six-footer, at least. He plays trombone in the school band and has a fantastic anatomical anomaly with his hands that allows him to do a trick that has Cami's high school friends jealous. He hugged every member of the family this morning when we surrounded him for gift-opening at 6:20 AM. He keeps us all laughing with his wittiness and can crack his knuckles and put away pizza like no one I've ever seen. He reads books, draws comics, goes cheerfully to school, helps me bake, and has irrepressible joy for anything he delights in. He cheered on the Cougar football team in the middle of the crowd at Qwest Field in September, performed with the school band onstage in December, maneuvers through the crowd of 250+ 6th graders at school every day, and went on all manner of rides at Disney World in May. He's learning to play electric and bass guitars, talks to people at church and orders his own food at restaurants. He wore a Santa hat to school today and his Cougars shirt on "Rivalry Day" despite being in the huge minority to those in Husky garb. He signed up for chess club, all on his own, and goes every Monday after school. His best non-family friend is Logan, and they hang out together at school every day. He's trying to decide whether to take jazz band or woodshop next year in 7th grade. Yeah, he's talking about next year...at school...no hesitation, no complaints.

Nate, you've taught me so much about living. I love, love, love you.

You've come a long way, baby.

He Came

My apologies for failing to keep you posted on "30 Days of Gratefulness". Suffice it to say, it was a fruitful time for our church and for me, personally. I hope your Thanksgiving season was colored with many remembrances of God's gracious hand.

With Thanksgiving now past, I couldn't help but take a sneak peek at one of my favorite Christmas Scriptures - John 1:1-18 ("In the beginning was the Word..."). It got me thinking about the phenomenal nature of the Incarnation; not just Christ's ability to become flesh and blood, but His willingness to do so. I thought for some time about what it must have been like to leave heaven's glory for the life (and death) Christ would experience on earth.

I thought, and then I wrote.

He Came

He came
To dust and sweat,
To anger, tears, and unspeakable pain.
He came
To calluses,
Aching feet,
And blazing sun,
To the filth of a stable and of sinful souls,
To chaos
And clamor,
To a world devoid of hope.
He came
To HIS creation.
He came
To HIS people.
He came
To that which was HIS OWN,
Yet they did not –
Would not –
Receive Him.
He came
To discomfort,
To rude shelters and rhythms,
To humanness.
To ornery,
Self-centered,
Unknowingly desperate people.
He came
From His Father’s side,
From unspeakable glory,
From light,
From praise,
From prostrated hosts
Of brothers and sisters;
The generations of His inheritance
And His fellow heirs:
Those not deserving glory
But having gained it
Through Him.
He came
Not to condemn
But to save,
Not to throw away the keys
But to loose the shackles
And free sin’s prisoners.
To redeem a traitorous, rebellious race
And to make them His family,
His ambassadors,
His friends.
He came
Willingly
And without complaint;
Without argument,
Without reticence,
Without regret,
Without looking back,
While keeping His eyes firmly fixed on His Father.
He came
TO sinners.
He came
FOR sinners.
He endured
The indignities,
The injustice,
The inconvenience,
The sacrifice.
He came
So that I might LIVE,
Truly live.

I hope you'll take some time this Christmas to consider Christ, who came to earth, and to consider why He did. May this be another blessed season of remembrance for you and your household.

Blessings,
Megan

30 Days of Gratefulness

I'd like to explain a little about the "30 Days of Gratefulness" emphasis at my church that will, hopefully, help give context to any posts I may make on the subject. Being a part-time staffer at the church, it's been extremely exciting to watch this focus develop and blossom.

As the staff pondered the Thanksgiving season, we began to recognize that, although giving thanks to God is an extremely biblical concept, we'd hardly begun to scratch the surface of this subject over the years. We realized that, often, we urge people to THINK about what they're thankful for, but haven't encouraged or given sufficient opportunities for them to EXPRESS their thankfulness.

And so we're embarking on the grand adventure of challenging our congregation to recognize the goodness of God and praise Him, to report the goodness of God to those around us near or far, and to reflect God's love by freely sharing the goodness we've received from Him. We're urging our church family to declare God's praise privately in their hearts, and publicly in their words and actions - not to bring attention to themselves, but to the One who alone deserves it.

This is going to be a very exciting month. I'll keep you posted.

I'm Back

It's been WAY too long since my last post and I've been missing the time I spend mulling/writing oh so much. Life has just been really full. The delightfully good kind of full.

In my last post, I vowed to spend more time contemplating, philosophizing and writing. Well, we all know how THAT turned out! So I guess I'll just take it a day at a time and see what happens. Getting a blog post out on a regular basis happens to be one of the least of my "worries", even though it's most often a highly enjoyable proposition for me.

I'm very excited about a special focus at church this month that we're calling "30 Days of Gratefulness". I HOPE to pass along some thoughts that come out of this emphasis.

Thanks for not giving up on my blog, although you've had every reason to do so. Hopefully we'll be keeping in touch, blog-style, really soon.

A Lot of Living (and not much writing)

I can't believe my calendar.

Every day since school started, my calendar has had SOMETHING on it. At least one item, but more often two, three, or even FIVE.

I'm not a fan of this kind of busyness. And our family has A LOT LESS going on than most. How ever do people do it?

Needless to say, I feel like I've been doing a lot of living and not a lot of writing. It's OK - I know it's a phase of life and I don't regret or resent it at all. A lack of writing, for me, though, is representative of a lack of time to think and process...my writing tends to flow from my musing. I guess that writing is a bit of a healthy hobby for me: what golf or scrapbooking or tinkering with cars may provide for someone else, musing and writing provides for me.

So I guess I've just talked myself into leaving a little time for pondering, for "doodling" with my words, so to speak. Maybe in cutting short the "living", I'm really making time for the kind of living I need to do. The kind that keeps me fresh and contemplative and grateful.

Thanks. I feel much better now.