My Most Amazing Christmas Thought for 2009... :]]]]]

I love this very moment.

You know, I've had a lot of bad moments, depressed moments, horrible moments this year. But I can completely, truly say that at this very moment, as I write to you, fellow bloggers, that this is my very best moment of the entire year of 2009.

It's true.

It's just something about the way the Christmas lights my little sister hung around our room, and the sweet feel of the new pajamas my mommy freshly finished making for me, and the satisfaction that even though I'll probably only get five hours of sleep tonight, that all is still right in the world, at least for me. It's good to know that after waiting for 364 days to receive my portion of "Christmas spirit", it's finally here, and Jesus and joy and home culminate in this wonderful pleasure.

I wish you could experience it with me.

This is why I love Christmas oh-so-much. :]

Anyway, that's not really the reason I chose to blog tonight, on this night that has become sacred and holy for me.

I've blogged a lot this month about these lessons Jesus is teaching me about Christmas and this season for Him, but for almost a week now, I have been waiting to bring you this message that means the world to me.

I've cried a LOT this month. Not because I feel depressed or lonely or sick or lost--which I've felt a lot this year. But because of all these people who are not at home at this moment.

I've cried when I heard this Steven Curtis Chapman song. Please listen... the music didn't really hit me, but the words did. Please listen. :*(



And then this song always hits me, and makes me cry every single time. I think I promise. At least, I'm pretty sure there's never a time when I hear it that I don't cry. :*(



And then... then there's the "I'll Be Home for Christmas" by Josh Groban:



This month, I've cried for orphans, and I've cried for soldiers stuck halfway across the world, and I've cried for people who are lonely and weary and alone, and I wish I could turn their worlds upside down.

All I could do was whisper, "Baby girl, I'm coming for you... one day I'll find you... I promise. I PROMISE..." to the orphan girl who is lonely tonight and without a home that Jesus has called me to rescue, and all I could do for those military families at odds and separated from each other--all I could say was JESUS IS WITH YOU.

Because He is.

This feels like the wrong way to say it, but I don't know how to say it any other way. Jesus has been there--lost and torn from all ties to His home and confused and weary and teary-eyed. But He is with you NOW. And He won't leave you.

This is Christmas.

You could be alone, even in the middle of a million people. But you are not alone.

You have Jesus, the One who was truly alone and who blazed through the fires for you.

No matter where you are tonight, Jesus will be your Home, and you can count on Him.

Jesus is my Home this Christmas, the center of this love and happiness and security I feel--I am so blessed, but I wouldn't feel so much at home were it not for Jesus. :]

Maybe one day I'll be able to rescue 100 orphans like Gladys Aylward did, and someday I may baptize hundreds of people, like some preachers. Every day, oh world, I yearn to hold you in my arms and give you home and hope and love and liberty and safety and security, but for today, oh world, trust me and hear what I am saying.

PLEASE.

On this day, when you are lonely and weary and lost in the middle of the masses, know this. Know that Jesus is the One who holds you, the One who rescues you, the One who satisfies, strengthens, and supports you, the One who cradles you in His arms and protects you from all harms. Know that the once-homeless Jesus Christ will now be your home and provide for you every good thing that you don't have. Jesus is the One who loves you, the One who saves you, and the One who is like the Daddy who cradles His little girl in His arms when you fall and scrape your knee, or when you lost your one true love, or when life is too big for you. Jesus is your Daddy. And He is HOME.

Someday, I might know you, oh world, and someday, I might be able to rock your world so you can see, but until then... please see. Please know that Jesus can hold you when I can't. Jesus can love you when I can't reach you--when no one can reach you. Jesus can be your Healer. Jesus can be your Home.



Until next time,
Ash the (Hoping) Dreamer

exhausted...

hello.

:]

i'm exhausted tonight.

i don't think i like grocery shopping very much.

haha, let me explain. my family is hosting this annual Christmas party we have every year, and we were so busy all week we really didn't get to prepare until last night, and the party is tomorrow night... and we're gonna be at church pretty much all day tomorrow, until about suppertime (aka party time...). so it had to happen today. so after i took my last final (eek!) i did ALL the grocery shopping for the party for my mom (took me like, five hours, maybe?), and i am so tired! staying up till midnight studying and waking up at 6:30-ish every morning does that to me. :/ but i'm super excited, because i think our Christmas party is probably my FAVORITE part of the year, besides Christmas morning itself, and some years, my birthday... :]

i'm excited to start working on this Christmas story, about this special little lady named Willow, and her to-be amazing guy, Ben. And Ben's two adorable little girls, Bella and Liliana. :] it's going to be spectacularly amazing! :]

anyway, it seems like EVERY day i learn something new about Christmas and what it's supposed to be about... so today i was reading Matthew 1 (well, the part that includes the story of Jesus' birth, anyway), and it just hit me how much what Joseph accepted really meant to him. he would endure the mocking of him taking a wife that was having a baby that was not his own. that was BIG back then. it meant that he said YES to being the father of the Father of the Universe. (can you REALLY comprehend that? i can't!) it meant that he said yes to God, even when he was so scared he didn't know what to do. so i guess, today i learned that even if God's plan doesn't make sense at all, and God's plan scares me more than it comforts me, it's still God's plan. and after all is said and done, it's always best to say yes to Jesus. :]

Awesome Christmas-ey Stuff...

I was going to write a wonderful blog about the Christmas program I just got home from, but that was rather un-eventful, and COMPLETELY under par for the school that puts it on. Maybe that has to do with the stupid principal and vice principal who run the school. My sister, though, was a glowing, wonderful alto. Yep, she was the best there. No doubt. :]

I got to go up and sing the Hallelujah Chorus, which is pretty much the HIGHLIGHT of my year (silly, I know, but I just love it so much!), with all the other choir alumni from my high school, and it was splendid! :)

But that's not why I'm writing this blog...

Yesterday, I believe it was, I was doing my Bible study, and it completely took my breath away. I was soooo very shocked and awakened to the purpose of Christmas, and since this is such a monumental idea, I figured you deserved to hear it, lovely bloggers. :]

So I was first reading in Luke 2 (as I love to read the story of Jesus' birth a lot in the month of December), and I stopped myself a couple verses into it, when Luke got to the part about there not being any room in the inn for Jesus.

First of all, that makes me sick. What sort of twisted minds have the gall to deny their Lord and CREATOR a warm bed and a semi-sanitary room to come into the world? What sort of people force the Healer and the Comforter and the Lord to be born next to a pig? I mean, piglets are cute, I suppose, but come on. Do you really want your kid to be born inches from that piglet's pooh (hahaha, no pun intended, lol!)? If that doesn't appeal to you, then why in the world would someone let the King of the WORLD be born there?

Sometimes I'm self-righteous enough to think that I would NEVER have done that, but it makes me more sick to think that I probably would have resigned holy baby Jesus to be born among poop and disease and unsanitary animals to be able to keep my bed and the semblance of warmth, rather than the fact that they let this happen to the Creator of the world...

I remembered thinking, "Couldn't ONE PERSON find just one small area for a scared mom to give birth to the most precious Cargo in the whole entire universe? Couldn't one person see that Jesus was coming and prepare the way for His birthplace?"

Then, since it hit me so hard, I decided to read a psalm (thinking it might calm me down a bit), but it only emphasized the idea.

I read Psalm 23, and it made me even sicker, thinking that Jesus provides all these marvelous things we don't deserve, like peace and food and sleep and hope and protection in the midst of danger and all these things that after Jesus provides them for us, we take them for granted.

And then, it hit me, like a rock.

We STILL don't make room for the King of the world.

Gah, that hit me right where it counts, and it made me sick and I was shivering and about to cry and all this on too little sleep and almost too half-asleep to really catch it, but I saw it. I saw it, and now it won't let me go.

I've been having issues with this lately.

So it's especially meaningful for me.

I've shared on here that I have to deal with struggles surrounding depression and OCD, and right now I'm battling it more than usual. And my coping mechanism for these two diseases usually involves watching a lot of TV and going on this baby name website to give advice to help mommas choose names for their precious babies. And then I kinda lose track of my life and where I want it to be going. So I've been sick about how I put all these shows that, at the end of the day, don't matter in the long run. Chuck, Glee, Bones, Leverage, Lie to Me, Castle, NCIS, White Collar, etc... All these shows didn't save my life. All these shows didn't call me to a greater place. And yet, I find myself worrying that after promising Jesus when I was barely more than a baby that I would never have any idols before Him, what if these have become my idols? And I miss Jesus, on these days when I find time for empty pleasures instead of true purpose.

I can't speak for everyone, obviously, but I know that none of us but Jesus is perfect... But I'm getting sick of seeing Jesus being put last... This Christmas, I want to put CHRIST right where He belongs--the center of EVERYTHING.

:]

Merry Christmas everybody!

Till next time,
Ash the (Ashamed) Dreamer

merry Christmas...

i just did my Bible study, and every Christmas Eve, i always read the part of Matthew 1 with the story of how Jesus came to come on this earth. it always surprises me what Christians assume about the Bible.

you know, when you think about it, really, why WOULDN'T joseph plan to divorce mary secretly? i mean, what in the world are the odds that a teenage girl engaged to be married to a man would be carrying the King of the Universe? i mean, think about it. billions of girls have been engaged to be married to billions of men. what are the odds that mary is the one to carry Jesus? i mean, i can imagine that every girl that ever lived always hoped that she would carry the King of the world, but who would have dared to expect that it would be her?

and why do we wonder why joseph was about to send mary away secretly? stories like these have become more like a mathematical equation we have come to expect rather than a story we have heard for the first time. how sad.

this week, i've been struggling with a relapse of my depression. i dealt with it a lot while i was at union, so i'm really afraid that things will just return to how they were when i go back january 4. i have to go, though. i have the ticket, i'm registered to attend... i just have to figure out classes and finances. and i remember reading one december post of matt hammitt's--it was so cool. i'm sure the words aren't exact, but i would love to memorize them soon. he says something to the effect of "Lord, the gift of Jesus will always be enough, but if i can ask for something more this Christmas..." matt goes on to ask for the gift of wonder, like he sees in his young daughter, emmy. not me, this year, though. this year, my prayer is "Lord, the gift of Jesus will always be enough, but if i can ask for something more this Christmas... Lord, give me the gift of joy." i've been praying this a lot this season, not because i lack it all the time, but because i have lacked it in my life, and i don't ever want to lose sight of it again. Jesus brings so much joy to my life, and i want to live that joy out throughout my whole life. i want Jesus' Christmas joy.

it's so amazing to me to imagine that the improbable happened to a girl who hoped but never thought her hope would come to fruition... hope came to a girl who always dreamed, but thought she was destined to be a dreamer. nothing else. when hope came to a world who only hoped and never believed, when hope saved the world... it wasn't this night. it wasn't the 24th of december, but this is the day we celebrate it. at least some of us do. and i just want to have the joy and hope this night that i know mary and joseph and the world received over two thousand years ago.

merry Christmas, everybody.

this Christmas...

this Christmas has been interesting this year... my grandmother is in the hospital with cancer and pneumonia, my parents are really stressed, and i have been so busy with finishing up my semester in public school and working at taco bell and getting ready to return to my Christian college that this Christmas season has been different. and not in a good way.

i was told i couldn't say merry Christmas at work. every time i said it to a Christian, they just about blew my head off. then i had to explain to them that i went to work with this one girl, this other guy was my teacher in high school, and so on. SOOOOOOOOOOOO annoying. now i just say have a good day, because it makes me seethe inside to have to say happy holidays instead of merry Christmas. *sigh*. i still sometimes forget and say it anyway. i saw a lady with a pin that said "it's okay to say Merry Christmas," and i smiled. i wish i had a chance to tell her Merry Christmas.

this Christmas, i am learning more the "reason for the season". i always knew it was supposed to be Jesus, but it never really hit me here, deep in my heart. i've been learning about that. every year it becomes more important, and, this year, i think i would be okay if i didn't get any presents. sure, i really want that new purple iPod and a bunch of new books and that different version of the Bible that i don't have, and one of the sanctus real songs that i still don't have in my possession, but if i didn't get any of that... if i didn't get anything material, if my family didn't celebrate Christmas... i don't think i would pass out. i've been thinking about Jesus a lot. about how beautiful was His love when He came to sacrifice Himself for me, and what it must have been like to be Mary or Joseph. i like that. that i am seeing this season the way Jesus wants me to see it, whether or not this was when Jesus came to this earth.

the past two days i worked, there was this family that came in to taco bell. every time i see them come in, i'm excited to take their order, because they're deaf. the father has a cochlear implant, so he can talk a little, but the wife and children don't talk at all. it's so interesting to watch them use asl as they eat. they can talk with their mouths full! (haha, lame joke, but it was an interesting observation when i made it!) but it's always been a dream of mine to meet and talk to someone who is deaf... (i really want the conversation to be in asl, but for now, i will have to deal with this.) so what does this have to do with Christmas? i am not sure, actually. i guess it just teaches me to have more of a servant's heart. i realize i treat them with more love than a lot of people i serve.

tonight i made some pretty cool ornaments while i watched "the inn of the sixth happiness" (about gladys aylward) for family worship. i'm pretty stoked about that. i'm gonna collect them so i can use them on my Christmas tree when i don't live with my parents anymore. :)

see?



that's about all i have to say right now. Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (cuz i can say it here!)

till the next time,
ash