Things Keep Breaking

I seriously love this old, ramshackle apartment. It’s cozy and vintage and it feels exactly like home. But the downside to all that vintage is the way things seem to keep falling apart. The sink is leaky, the cabinet is crooked, and a couple days ago, one of the legs on the bathroom vanity came off. A little part of me went, Ugh! When will things just be perfect so that I can finally enjoy living here?

You know how much I love a good metaphor. This one is hitting me hard today. Things break. Things fall apart. That’s what they do. The car will break. The car will be fixed. It will break again. School will get harder and then easier and then harder again. Money will flow and get tighter and flow again. We’ll get sick again and well again. I could spend the rest of my life waiting for things to stop breaking and start being perfect. And I’ll be waiting a long time.

I keep breaking and am bound up again. Maybe this is what they mean when they say you should live in the moment. I am looking for the joy in the broken. It’s here. Can you see it? 

love, elizabeth

Sweetness and Peacefulness and Dreaming

My mom and I were talking about this on the phone yesterday. We both decided we like Christmas Eve better than Christmas Day. I don’t know why…but in my head, Jesus was born on Christmas Eve and then His parents got to sleep in on Christmas Day (#thelogicofchildhood). Growing up, Christmas Eve was rife with tradition. We would go to the candlelight service and sing my favorite Christmas carols like this one. We would drive home in the snowy cold (I feel like every Christmas in Colorado was a white Christmas). We’d unbundle ourselves from coats and scarves and boots. Dad would grab the snacks and the camera. Mom would heat up her cup of coffee and we’d head for the living room and the tree. Dad would read the Christmas story aloud and then we’d open presents in a circle, one at a time so that we could enjoy them with each other. My mother was the quiet conductor of all of this, sipping her coffee and nodding that it was someone else’s turn. Mom and Dad would open presents from each other last and have the annual Hunny Bunny argument (both would insist that the OTHER person was “Hunny Bunny #1” and so no packages were ever marked to “Hunny Bunny #2”).  I would sort and pile my gifts in a box and, when we had finished, I would take them to my room and set them where I could stare at them in the dark. They would stay in the box for days, maybe a week, shining up at me all new and special. I liked to horde them for a few days, to keep them new and bright and separate from my regular, everyday belongings. Christmas morning was the leisurely version of this and we’d take as long as possible to open our stockings, just to make them last to the very last toe of the very last stocking.

This Christmas Eve will be different than the ones I had as a little girl but that’s okay. It will be a day full of baking and singing and movie watching and snuggling and candle-lighting and praying and present-opening. It will mostly be just me and Kyle but I like that. Someday we’ll probably have babies and then the babies will grow up and be children and Christmases will be different. This year I am cherishing the peacefulness and sweetness and quietness. I have a growing feeling that this is a rare gift.

I hope whatever your celebration looks like, it’s wonderful and that it feeds your soul.

Merry Christmas Eve,
elizabeth

Christmas at Mirror Lake

Kyle and I have been busy crossing things off our Christmas bucket list and last night, we managed to sneak away with some hot chocolate and the camera to one of my favorite spots on the university campus, Mirror Lake. I love this place year-round but during the holidays, they light up the trees all around the water’s edge.  I’m so glad we did this. It was one of the things on the list that didn’t cost a thing and it was so peaceful and sweet to be just the two of us there in the dark and the cold. It will probably be my stand-out memory from this Christmas with Kyle.

 

As we head into the holiday, I hope you’re getting lots of quality time with the people you love.

love, love, love,

elizabeth

the formation of giant star clusters or how Elizabeth got a peaceful feeling

Source: torebunia.pl via Elise on Pinterest

 

I was listening to National Public Radio yesterday, partly because it was Science Friday and partly because I am secretly ninety-years old.

And while I’m not the science-iest of ladies, I was fascinated by this report on this gigantic new star formation called the Phoenix Cluster that’s been discovered in a galaxy far, far away. When they first started talking, I thought, “Ew, astronomy, not my fave,” but as I reached my hand  up to the car radio dial, the MIT fellow they were interviewing said, “All that a star needs to form is some cold gasses and to be left alone for awhile.” Obviously he went on to explain that it’s actually way more complicated than that (there’s like some gasses that get super-heat from the sun and then when they cool really quickly, there are a lot of stars forming at a very rapid pace and basically, science-people are freaking out with science-joy because it’s so different and interesting). And just the way he said it, it just gave me this feeling of peace about the future that I really have not been feeling lately.

And for some reason, I just knew I wanted to blog about that. I kept thinking about it all of yesterday and today, trying to figure out what exactly kept it inside of my brain when so many other relatively important things slip out like so many greased pigs on a flagpole.

I guess it’s the whole idea that this beautiful, incredible thing happens in solitude. Or maybe that it’s the stars don’t work to form clusters or even come into being. They happen. They go from being hot gasses in outerspace to stars in the sky because of something bigger than them. Sometimes it’s nice to rest in the knowledge that someone bigger than me shapes the universe. So if I go on being heated by the sun and doing my whole heated-matter-thing to the best of my ability, eventually I too can be cooled quickly and turned into a gigantic star cluster, not because of me, but because it’s part of the bigger picture I don’t have control over. And then maybe scientists will rejoice over me, too, and go on Science Friday and say, “we have no idea how Elizabeth turned into a star cluster so quickly but we’re fascinated.”

It’s a rambly kind of Saturday, I guess.

Thanks, Phoenix Cluster, for being such a rad metaphor. In my head.

love, elizabeth

God With Us

Every Christmas, I am struck by a passage in Matthew that quotes the prophet Isaiah.

'The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel'

--which means, 'God with us.'

God with us. With us in the muck, the mire, the darkness, the sadness, and the pain of life on earth. I think about Jesus, born into the darkest of circumstances. Into a poor family who seek shelter from the elements in a place where animals are kept. Into an occupied land. Into oppression and fear and sorrow. Into a world that did not recognize Him or look to protect Him.

And I think about our wish for peace at Christmas. But Jesus didn't just show up for the peaceful, easy moments, the beautiful, well-lit nativity with the gently smiling cow and the well-coifed Mary. He came for the worst and the hardest moments. And He is there in our hardest moments, as well.

This Christmas, Immanuel is my prayer. God, be with us. With my brother on a distant shore, in harm's way and homesick. With my husband in his troubled dreams. With my parents in their anxiety. With me in my trembling heart. Immanuel.

Hope your Christmas Eves are all peaceful and full of joy and love. But even if they're not, I hope you feel the presence of Immanuel, God with us, here at Christmas, wherever we are.

elizabeth

Just Do the Next Thing

Sometimes I write my blog post titles and think, Well, now no one needs to read the actual post. This might be one of those times.

It's easy for me to feel a little panicked with the Monday dawn. Sometimes the whole being-a-PhD-student-thing accompanied by the married-woman-thing and the volunteer-advocate-thing with a heavy helping of the being-a-grownup-thing is a tad on the overwhelming side. Sometimes I want to scream, WHO GAVE ME ALL THESE THINGS?? THERE ARE TOO MANY THINGS!

Source: earmarkinvitations.com via Elizabeth on Pinterest

In an occasional fit of panic, I call my mother who gives me the advice I now know by heart. It's very good advice. And very comforting to a worried worrier like me.

"Just do the next thing," she says. "Not ALL the things. Just the next one."

So today, I am trying to focus on "just the next thing."


What about you? What helps you cope when you're feeling overwhelmed?


love, elizabeth