Joy to the world…

I've been doing more baking lately - the captivity of ice storms and the push of cookie exchanges has seen to that. It's such a busy, chaotic, and even painful time of year - for lots of people, not just clergy - and there's something relaxing about putting ingredients together and waiting…waiting for them to bake, smelling wonderful smells in the interim.

I grew up baking Christmas cookies with my mom. We used the same recipe every year - a recipe she'd cut out of the Little Rock newspaper when I was very little - a cutout cookie recipe for lemon-honey cookies. Every year - the same wonderful dough that we'd mix and eat before putting it into the fridge to chill overnight. One year, we forgot to make the dough ahead of time, and we figured out we could chill the dough in the freezer for a while instead.

We'd flour ourselves up, pull out the yellow rolling pin, and get to rolling and cutting. We had plastic cookie cutters that had some detail to them - detail we never worried about too much. We had aluminum cookie cutters in very simple shapes - we gravitated more to these the older we both got. We'd eat more dough. We'd bake the cookies and let them cool and decorate them. And then for a while, anyway, we'd have this delicious pile of lemon-honey cookies that tasted the same every year.

After I moved out of my mom's house, baking these together got more complicated. Between my travel schedule and Mom's work schedule around Christmas (she was clergy, too), sometimes she'd mix up the dough and put it in the fridge, and there it would sit, awaiting my arrival.

Mom would do other baking, too. She'd put on the local classical music station that played lovely choral, organ, and orchestra pieces she adored, and she'd move around the kitchen, quietly pulling things from the pantry and putting things into the mixing bowl. The house would begin to smell fabulous, and at this busy, chaotic, sometimes even painful time of year, she'd find some peace making goodies for those she loved (and herself).

Today, I had some time and began making a batch of chocolate cookies for a cookie exchange. I began with some annoyance - it's a busy, chaotic, and sometimes painful time, remember? To bake cookies felt frivolous. And so I began slowly - I put on my own classical Christmas music, began pulling together my own ingredients, quietly moving in and out of my pantry. I put things together into bowls, tasting less cookie dough than ever before in my life. And slowly, I felt the knots unwinding.

Not lemon-honey…but still smelling great!

I also slowly became aware of an old grief re-emerging.

Even after eight years, this is the one time of year that I can scarcely believe that Mom is gone. At this time of year, her loss sits with me more heavily than any other time of year. She can't really be gone, can she?

And the grief comes back, surprising me with its force, sneaking up behind me like a thug while I'm putting towels into the washer. It crams its fist into my stomach until I am doubled over, crying. And all I'm doing is baking cookies and getting a load of towels into the washer, for goodness' sake!

And I begin to hear the words of the songs and they become more poignant than ever…

"O come, O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here…rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!"

Sometimes, I really want grab the joy and cast it away, into the outer darkness. Sometimes, the mourning in exile is so much more appealing.

And yet, the joy of God is a relentless thing. It comes to us, too, when we least expect it. It comes in the rising of a beautiful moon, or in the neighbors turning on their Christmas lights just as the darkness threatens to overtake us all.

Light, light, and more light.

Sometimes, joy is quiet. It moves around, putting things together with peace, until we realize that we are still OK, in both our grief and our joy. Until we realize again that Christ was born to make all things new, both our grief and our joy.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come…let heaven and nature sing!

The Firsts...

The extent of our Halloween candy this year.

I realized something in late October, and here it is:

I'm having a Year of Firsts.

What I mean is that I'm having my first year as a diabetic, which means it's a year of my first vacation with diabetes, my first church potluck with diabetes, and…my first Halloween with diabetes. 

OH CRAP.

I love Halloween, and I always have. My mom and I used to do some basic decorations, and we'd make these haunted houses out of construction paper and glue. I'd dress up, we'd go out trick-or-treating, and later, we'd dutifully hand out candy to neighborhood kids who came our way. 

Later, as an adult, I wonderfully fell into a group of friends that got REALLY INTO HALLOWEEN - but always in a fun way, not weirdly creepy at all. We'd have a big meal on an overly-decorated table, with cheese balls made to look like cute pumpkins and ice frozen in surgical gloves to make creepy hands. When Hubby and I had our first house, we got to a point of sitting out front, waiting for the trick-or-treaters, getting to know the neighbors in our cul-de-sac, snacking on our own candy.

Halloween and food, it seems, have always gone together for me.

So this year was a first. 

I can have a little candy, and I know that. But that's part of the problem - I can have a LITTLE candy. Quite frankly, I don't want a LITTLE candy - I want to sit down and eat half the bag of M&M's, please, and just not suffer any consequences like pesky blood sugar spikes. And so, Halloween this year became a battle of self control for me.

I made it through a whole Trunk-or-Treat and only ate one tiny package of Skittles. I stayed at my in-laws and ate two tiny boxes of Milk Duds and one tiny Kit Kat over three days. I came home, and Hubby had purchased peanut butter cups, which I can't have anyway because of a peanut allergy. I've been dutifully been ignoring the unopened package of Mint M&M's in our pantry since the day before I went into the hospital last March - went into the hospital dehydrated, with extremely high blood sugar, after binge-eating Mint M&M's. And thus began my journey with diabetes.

Halloween this year was a little different, but it was more than OK, it was wonderful. We went to visit family and had a lovely dinner out with dear friends, one of whom we surprised for his birthday. And so there was still this beautiful sense of celebrating and fun, but without bowls and bowls of candy sitting around my house.

The next set of firsts will be tricky ones - Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday…but it's all OK. I've made it through firsts before, and I'll make it through these, too.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.............

Have you ever eaten so much soup that you feel like you're sloshing all over the place after you eat it?

Yeah - I was there after dinner tonight.

[SLOSH SLOSH SLOSH walk out to the car SLOSH SLOSH drive here, drive there SLOSH SLOSH SLOSH walk in from the car ETC.]

I had already determined before dinner that I was GOING TO WALK TONIGHT DAMMIT. I actually determined that this morning as I was thinking through my day. And so, with that determination, I headed upstairs to tackle at least a mile and a half on the treadmill. It's not my favorite way to walk, the treadmill, but with air quality alerts out the wazoo and itchy, red eyes, I decided that inside was the way to go.

I grabbed our tablet so I could watch some "West Wing" while I walked (and ran!) and, as I started, I realized that each episode (without commercials) is about 40 minutes long...and that walking anywhere close to a 20-minute mile, I could cover two miles easy-peasy. So, that became my new goal.

What I've discovered about myself is that treadmill walking doesn't feed my soul in the same way that walking outside does. It seems more utilitarian, walking on the machine - like something to plow through as fast as possible.

And then, there was the issue of the continued sloshing.

[SLOSH SLOSH SLOSH walk SLOSH SLOSH walk walk SLOSH run run SLOSH SLOSH walk ETC.]

Eventually, the sloshing feeling passed. I got past the point where I felt like I might fall off the treadmill and onto my face, and I pushed myself to get in just over two miles. I felt rather triumphant, actually.

And then, lying on the floor, stretching, I looked up at the underside of a wooden high chair made by my father, and I saw this:

Those are my initials at the top: KEI. Under that is the logo of the kit he used, then the year: 1974. At the bottom are his initials, his mark that he put on everything from books to LP's to the furniture he made: RCI. And he died three years after he made this chair, so the RCI things in my life are quite precious.

I had forgotten. How often do you look underneath your furniture, anyway? And so, I had forgotten that, of course, my dad signed this, as he signed everything. Of course, he left these marks here for me to find years in the future - I guess almost 40 years ago, now. It made me smile to see these marks again - and all the sloshing around on the treadmill tonight, so that I could end up stretching, so that I could see this again - totally worth it.

Much Like a Sausage

Once upon a time, a friend got engaged and asked me to be a bridesmaid. I agreed and, dutifully, went shopping for yet another bridesmaid's dress. 

This was in 2003, and the trend then was for brides to pick one fabric and let their attendants choose the style of their own dress. How innovative, right? How trusting, too. 

Off I went to get measured at the bridal store, about six months before the wedding. For reasons surpassing understanding, the style I chose to wear was a halter top (OK) and a column skirt. Now, really. I thought it looked so cool, and it certainly was different than the A-line and quasi-poufy dresses I'd worn in the 1990's!

Problem 1: When I tried the sample on, it was in a dark color, which - let's face it - is just slimming. 

Problem 2: There were way too many life changes going on in between the measuring and the wedding. Weight gain was inevitable, and I didn't allow for it.

So, to the first problem we go...The actual color of the actual dress I got to wear for the blessed event was not a dark color. It was, in fact, the opposite of a dark color. It was, in fact, LAVENDER. 

Which makes the second problem all the more unfortunate. In between the month I got measured (January) and the month of the wedding (July), I...

• Began planning a wedding of my own.
• Moved across the country to begin seminary.
• Moved away from my new fiancé and my dog, leaving them across the country temporarily.
• But couldn't move into my own place right away, and so I traveled and stayed with family and friends.
• Had some of my belongings lost in said cross-country move.

It was quite the time for me: gut-wrenching, spirit-bending, mind-blowing. Yeah, I gained weight. And so, by the time my friends had their blessed wedding day, the bridesmaid attire made me look like...well, a big lavender sausage.

It was quite hideous.

I could walk, but not gracefully. I couldn't really sit down. Dancing was possible, but I'm fairly certain I looked like a lavender version of that dancing hot dog they show at drive-in movies.

Again, hideous.

So, the other night, I returned to my walking routine. I was in a huge hurry to get out there, trying to beat the onset of dusk, which is coming earlier and earlier now. I have a pretty set collection of things I wear when I walk, but a girl's gotta have some rules. So here are mine:

• Baggy bottoms? Tighter top.
• Tighter bottoms? Baggier top.

Simple, right? Foolproof, you might even think. Except for the evening when I'm in a big hurry and get dressed for my walk without really thinking. The result? A tighter bottom and a tighter top. Worn together. As in, simultaneously. 

I didn't even realize it until I was outside, and by then, there was no way in hell I was going back inside to change. COME ON. 

Problem is, I felt kinda sausagey again. I wasn't physically uncomfortable and the clothes aren't really THAT tight. But it was out of my comfort zone, for sure.

So, here's what I discovered as I walked dressed like a multi-colored bratwurst: GOOD POSTURE HELPS. So, what that means is that, first of all, every woman over the age of 90 has been right all my life. My grandmother. Your grandmother. "Stand up straight," they say, "it just looks better!"

What it also means is that I walked better, too. I began to find more confidence, rather than less. And by the time I reached the main road, my playlist had gotten to Madonna singing about how beautiful she feels when she Vogues. And...I felt a bit beautiful, too.

"If you see a faded sign by the side of the road..."

I will begin by making my Big Announcement for this week:

I GOT A NEW PHONE!

Like, finally. Like, it's about damn time. 

My old crap phone has been the subject of many discussions and much laughter among my friends, and the subject of some frustration and cussing on my part for the past six months or so. The thing really hardly functioned as a phone, let alone doing anything else these supposedly-smart things are supposed to do.

So, I finally had an upgrade available and so you better believe that I was all over it. With fervor, baby. Send me the iPhone and do it quickly. 

The happiness of owning a phone that actually functions is quite profound. I had forgotten what it was like to have things like Facebook and Twitter actually, you know, work on my phone. I had forgotten what it was like to punch a button on the screen and have the phone call actually, you know, end. Craziness, I tell you.

Imagine my joy at being able to load apps onto the phone that don't make it freeze up or make the battery fizzle out. Imagine my joy at thinking of ways to integrate this new little thing into my life, my routines, my ministry, and - now - even my workouts. SUCH GREAT REJOICING.

I ended up settling on an app that lets me program in different routes and then helps me follow them (remember - still learning my way around some of these places!). Using the computer, I quickly created six or seven different routes based on distances, and when I checked my phone - there they were! When I want to go for a walk/run, I hit "START," a voice confirms that I'm starting, my MOVE! playlist starts, and off I go!

I tried it for the first time tonight. I've had a long day. I mean - long. Fabulous and filled with stuff I loved, but long. How fantastic to be driving home, thinking, "Oh, good! I'll be home in time for a good walk around the neighborhood!" What a change from, "Oh, good! I'll be home in time for...[insert TV re-runs here]!" And because the phone still has that novelty thing going for it, I was excited to try out this new app along with my walk.

The playlist was also a new one for me: newly-set-up this week, not broken in yet at all. I had found lots of good, upbeat music for my playlist and it did, in fact, propel me. 

Until...ugh...I hit a point...

It's hot. It's humid. My leg is starting to tighten up. The mosquitoes are biting. Ugh.

I kept going. And at one point, when I thought I might just fall over, a new song started, a song that instantly made me smile because it took me so. far. back. Like - to LP's, my friends. Because, I did, indeed, at one point, have a long-play record of the B-52's singing "Love Shack."

The song is really quite hilarious. It makes sense and doesn't all at the same time. And there I was, walking along through suburbia, trying not to sing at the top of my lungs, smiling like some crazy person because I remember so many times of belting this song out at the top of my lungs in my room. At school dances. Later, at wedding receptions of friends. 

It lifted me. It seems silly, I realize, to say that about any song from the 1980's. But that song was followed by "Money for Nothing" by the Dire Straits, and I flashed even further back, to the genesis of MTV, the beginning of cable television. And those memories took me all the way home, to my back porch, where I stretched a bit before heading inside.

That's what I'm learning in all this, I guess. Motivation comes from one place, but also a thousand places. It comes from inside, but also a thousand outside places. It comes from my own spirit, pushing me forward, but also from great music, fun memories, supportive friends and family, a helpful phone, and a thousand other places. 

"If you see a faded sign by the side of the road," there I'll be, walking past it, trying not to sing "Love Shack" at the top of my lungs. And smiling like a crazy person.