I was in line at the supermarket the other day waiting to check out. While doing so, I overheard the conversation of the customer ahead of me and the clerk at the counter. They were talking about Christmas, which I figured was appropriate since it had happened just the day before. The clerk mentioned to the customer about how, while she enjoyed her holiday, she didn’t like it as much as she used to. She blamed it on a phrase that I’ve heard multiple times in the past month or two: the “commercialization of Christmas.”

I blame it on growing up.

Think about it. I doubt anyone between the ages of 3 and 13 cares about how early Christmas music is playing in the stores, or how early the displays go up, who has the best Black Friday sales, or how much is being spent or not spent by the American public. Instead, they are lost in the mystery of the season.

Somehow, as we get older, we miss the anticipation of the season, the joy found in the celebrations, and the love that is wrapped up in each gift. We tend to focus more on fact, and less on feeling. Anticipation, joy, and love are replaced with dates and dollar signs.

The challenge is not in battling the corporations vying for our money in a struggling economy (who can blame them?). The challenge is in rediscovering the feeling of Christmas. As usual, my hindsight is 20/20. (;

Somewhere throughout my 28 years, I grew up. (Or, at least, partially.) And in the process of doing so, I’ve discovered that I just don’t like snow anymore. In fact, I’m pretty sure that there is an inverse relationship between “enjoyment of snow” and “responsibility.” When I was young and my only worry was exactly how big the snowman would be, snow was great. But now that I have this place I have to be at a certain time each morning five times a week, snow is a lot less fun.

Driving in it is no fun because it takes five times as long to get anywhere. Walking through it is no fun because it gets my pants, the pants I have to wear for the next 8 hours, all wet. Playing with it isn’t that much fun either; it doesn’t hold the magic that it used to.

Snow does bring with it one redeeming quality. I love the peacefulness that a good snowfall brings. A couple inches of snow seems to be the sound equivalent to a black hole. Nothing escapes it. Not the sound of cars bustling down the road. Not the voices of two people talking while meandering down the street. Not the *clink clink clink* a metal gate makes as the wind pushes it back and forth against the fence. Everything is silenced. Peace flows from a good snowfall.

I almost wrote that I wish I could extract that peace and use it when it wasn’t snowing, but I think I’m glad that it is locked inside those tiny snowflakes. For it is the last enjoyment that I have when the ground has been painted white. May that peace be with all of you.

One month ago today, these United States of America elected its first ever minority President. In terms of historical significance, this is right up there near the top. It will be written about in history books, and discussed as one of the most pivotal moments, regardless of what Barack Obama does in office, of our young country. That’s pretty exciting.

However, for the moment, what is more exciting to me than the freedom of a country to elect who it thinks will be the best (or at least, “better”) President choosing a minority, is the return of a freedom that I have not experienced in quite awhile: the freedom to think for myself.

I feel like, over the course of this electoral season, everyone from my friends to my church (of all places) decided that I apparently did not have the moral fiber nor the conscience to vote for the person I think would be best for this country…*my* country. I was told which issues were important, and which were not. I was told which propositions should pass, and which should not. I was told who I should cast my vote for, and who I should not.

I was rarely, if ever, told that I have the capacity to decide for myself for whom and for what to vote. I was rarely, if ever, told that God had implanted in me a good conscience, and that I should use it. I was, I feel, in large part, not trusted by some of those closest or most important to me.

That lack of confidence, more than anything, is why I didn’t vote. What good is a vote, if it isn’t mine?

…is not just the title of one of my favorite books (click me), it is how I feel right now. Usually, when I say that, it is because I can’t seem to find the time to do all the things I *need* to do– the grocery shopping, the cleaning, the bill-paying.

This time, however, it is a bit different. Everything that I need to do is getting done.

However, there are bunch of things that I want to do that I just wish I could fit in. There is so much that I’m excited to do, and motivated for, but I just can’t find the time to fit it in. If there were just 2 more hours in the day, I could squeeze in some of these things, like running/exercising, reading the Bible and other assorted books, a little more camping, more home cooked meals. As it is, though, these things are left in my mind to be excited about doing, like I’m at the starting line of a race, anticipating the gunshot, when I’m able to leap off the line and experience these things.

Someday. Someday soon, hopefully.

About a month ago, I was talking with a friend of mine about relationships. He was getting out of one that hadn’t been so good for him, and we were just kind of discussing all of the little rules that we individually had for relationships. One of mine was this:

I believe that there should not be any fights in the first six months of a relationship.

While he disagreed on the appropriate time frame, and exactly what constituted a “fight,” the sentiment was essentially shared. There is usually a certain amount of time where both parties are so enamored with one another, that they compromise and accept (or tolerate) practically everything about the other person, with the goal of advancing the relationship. The relationship, if it is going to last for any length of time, should be able to make it past this point relatively easily. It is the “honeymoon” phase, and after it is over, that’s when the “work” of a relationship really begins.

As such, I have a fight scheduled for January 19th, five months from today. And I’m so excited about what that means. (:

I was watching one of my favorite Scrubs episodes yesterday. In “My Best Laid Plans,” JD, Turk, and the Janitor all have plans that are going their way. But then one small misstep sends their plans out of control and they end up alienating those around them, leaving each of them alone.

Sometimes things don’t work out quite as I expected them to, despite my best efforts. Like, for instance, when I install a new program on my phone, and it automatically posts an almost blank, nonsensical post to my blog. (Sorry about that.)

Other times, however, in spite of all the control and direction that I try to maintain, things will go awry in the other direction. Without any intervention on my part, things suddenly seem better than I’d even planned. This summer has been one long example of that. Things just seem to be turning up better than I’d hoped, better than I’d planned for, better than I could have expected.

Sometimes, my best laid plans just aren’t good enough, I guess.

!$text$!

“It is…”
“It’s about…”
“It’ll be…”

No matter which way it was phrased, there was never enough time for me or Heather to stop whoever was speaking from saying the words we knew were coming next:

“Three thirty.”
“Ten twenty-five.”
“Eight o’clock.”

From shortly after we departed until we returned from the five-day adventure, there were precious few times where I had any idea what time it was. And Heather and I were loving every minute of it. In fact, it took any of us two or three minutes to even determine what day it was.

I loved this so much because it is the very antithesis of what I’m accustomed to in the real world. I loved finding out later that I had gone to bed before 10 p.m., loved how lunch seemed like it was only an hour after breakfast, loved how a 30 minute hike actually lasted 2 hours. I went to sleep when I was tired, ate when I was hungry, and relaxed when I wanted to. There was no anticipating the next moment because I literally had no idea what the next moment was. I was, as the cliché goes, “living in the moment.”

Now that I have this post out of the way. I need to get to sleep. It is after 11 and I have to get up before 7 to be at work at 8 in time for a meeting at 8:30.

This is the first of a series of reflections on my whitewater rafting trip. The rest will be coming as I have the time and energy…probably a post every day or two.

I hadn’t seen Joe in about three or four years or so, since he invited me to the Big 12 basketball tournament. In that time, he’d moved to Minnesota with his girlfriend and we’d emailed only a handful of times. So I was a little nervous when Heather, Tony, and I pulled up to the gas station where we were meeting Joe on our way out to Colorado.

And for the next five days, it was like I’d stepped back in time. Sure, it was obvious that he was more mature now, more professional, all that stuff…but this was the exact same Joe that I remember. The thing I love most about Joe- his sense of humor- was exactly as I had remembered it: extremely witty, very dry, almost coy. Just perfect.

It was great to bond with Joe over the course of those five days- to rediscover where he is at in his life, how things are going up in Minnesota, how life has been. It was awesome to lead the raft with him on Day Two, to share that responsibility. But it was best to laugh at his jokes, the same kind I remember so fondly from college.

Some things actually do stay the same, I guess.

I hadn’t seen Heather in about three years or so, since she got married. In that time, we’d kind of grown apart and went our separate ways, despite both being in the greater St. Louis area. It was probably mostly my fault, and so I was a little apprehensive when I saw her and her husband walk into the restaurant I was eating at recently.

I thought for a little while about whether I should go over and say hello and see how life had been for them. I’m usually not one to do that kind of thing, due to the usual awkwardness of the situation and my shyness. However, I remember Heather always being able to make me feel comfortable and never concerned with who’s “fault” it was we hadn’t seen each other in awhile; she was always happy to see me.

I was much surprised, however, when I walked over there and proceeded to talk with her husband (whom I had only spoken to twice previously) about how their family was doing. Granted, Heather had the responsibility of taking care of their 2-3 year old, but she was much different than what I remember. Perhaps the three years was too long, or maybe one or both of us had changed too much in that time, but what I always used to remember as comfortability and acceptance was replaced with awkwardness and indifference.

Some things won’t stay the same, I guess, no matter how much I’d like them to.