christmas break

I’m finally adding an entry to this blog, which I so ambitiously began by telling everyone I’d write every week. Laughable, I must say.

Anyway, here’s another go. I’m in Colorado now and will manage to be here a whole week, which is much longer than I would have thought this time seven days ago. The original plan was to fly out on December 20, for pre, mid, and post-Christmas chilled-out-ness in good old Monument. Then yesterday we were supposed to leave for a road trip to LA for New Years, via Durango and the Grand Canyon (which I’ve never seen). Both plans were cruelly foiled by back-to-back blizzards of “Monumental” proportions (we like to call the Crowley house the epicenter of said storms—it seems as if the clouds prefer to hover over us for days on end).


You can imagine my angst when I discovered that my flight home from Michigan was cancelled and could only be rescheduled for Christmas Eve. With the road trip plans looming, that would give me a total of three days at my lovely Christmasy, mountainous house. I kept thinking about how Christmas would be over before it had even officially begun!

I lugged my snowboard along with me on the plane on Christmas Eve, praying I’d get to use it in Durango for a day. By the time the day after Christmas rolled around, it was clear there was another storm on the way, and everybody seemed pretty content with flying to California, instead of driving. We took an emergency trip up to Winter Park, to get our snowboards some use, and proceeded to sit in traffic for way too long. Not to mention, I had some of the worst altitude sickness I’ve had that day, so it was not quite what I’d hoped.

Nonetheless, I felt a lot of the tension drain right out of me the minute I knew I’d get to rest at home for awhile before New Years. It’s been really quiet around here, thanks to Blizzard 2006 Part II (the most eventful thing that happened was a UPS truck getting stuck in our driveway), and I’ve done some snowshoeing, some cooking, and some watching of good movies. But I’ve also had a chance to realize that my holiday priorities and perspectives have changed drastically as a result of this very strange week and a half. I’m starting to think that God used the minor catastrophe of being stranded in Ann Arbor to help me finally enjoy the holidays for once. I’ve had some good Christmases in my day, but for the most part, as is the case with most much loved aspects of life, I’m always anxious about making sure to enjoy this while it lasts. There is always this panicky urgency to have the perfect Christmas ever. What the heck IS that? It must be common enough, since they’ve made a bunch of movies about that feeling. Anyway, this is so me. In my frenzied desire to enjoy life, I completely miss the bus and end up mourning my lost opportunities to enjoy life. That angst that I felt about missing Christmas altogether? I’m looking at that now thinking that I’m glad everything worked out the way it did. I’m that much more grateful to be here at all, and I’m that much more open to seeing the blessings that are mine.

For one thing, I got to spend four days of my Christmas vacation with Kevin, which was definitely an unexpected and awesome blessing. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye in the first place. Now I'm missing him terribly.

So this has been a really good holiday, if only because it was hard to come by. I’ve gotten lots of unexpected rest and a chance to recoup from a rather difficult December.

Jenni asked about our most treasured gifts this week:

1) chef’s knife and paring knife by Wusthof from Kevin (I’d been wanting new knives but never said a word about it) and a postcard of a little girl hanging her head over the end of a dock
2) wooden salad bowl, perfect for salads for two, from my Dad
3) Little Miss Sunshine from Evan
4) one of those heatable/chillable body wraps with eucalyptus and mint from my Mom, for relief of stress and other, errr, discomfort
5) rest, much needed but rarely truly gotten, from Jesus. Thank you.