highlights from the twelve days of christmas.

so i went "home" for christmas and was away for exactly twelve days. i planned it that way just so i could have a great post title.

first, i went to see jeanna. we talked, shopped, and made christmas treats together. jeanna is moving up in the world at the OG! i'm so proud.

then, i went to omaha. my lovely sarah goo, her sister, and i drove around an extraordinarily-christmasy-decorated neighborhood for awhile and took pictures. sarah goo was mesmerized by the house with all of the candy canes in the yard. i think we've officially made it a state landmark.

i had breakfast in omaha with a friend at a place that (i'm not making this up) has peanut butter on the list of things you can have cooked into your omelet. you, the reader, might think that i would have jumped at this opportunity, seeing as how i am an avid lover of the buttre de peanuts. but i will tell you that peter pan crunchy honey roast peanut butter is really the only kind that does it for me, and what restaurant is going to carry it when i can barely find it in the store? it was a very enjoyable morning, though, to say the least. we went down to the old market afterwards, drank hot chocolate/chai, and bartered over an elvis costello poster with a store owner. let's be honest. i pretty much suck at negotiating.

i did get some awesome goo time in at sbux. AND, OF COURSE... we played killer bunnies that evening with a larger-than-normal group. i invited matthew, who had apparently gotten himself a mohawk at 8:00am on saturday morning (how punk rock of you) to play killer bunnies with us. i said the game would fit well with his new 'do. he said he felt like he had already won. i guess that's why he didn't come.

i drove to des moines on christmas eve for my grandpa's/aunt pam's birthday party. there was a smorgasboard of deal-or-no-deal gifts for my grandpa, who is hilariously addicted to the show and insists that we watch taped episodes every time we come over. he is so funny. anyway, i got him 20 scratch lottery tickets for his b-day and hid them in a giNORMOUS box that he had to sift through for five minutes before getting to the actual gift. the lottery tickets yielded a $9 return. not bad!

christmas day, andy and i drove to fort dodge for a christmas party with my dad's side of the family. we had dinner at my dad's new house. the food and company was great, but my favorite part of the evening was playing dance dance revolution. i schooled my uncle. it was awesome!

i also got to spend some QT with my grandma, who is doing remarkably well since my grandpa passed away in november. she is renting a new place in the teeming metropolis of badger, IA (read: population of 610 people), and trying life out on her own for the first time. i know it was hard for her over the holidays. she is such a strong woman... and there were moments when her eyes would well up with tears during the christmas party, and we would make eye contact, and it was really difficult knowing all i could really do was give her a reassuring nod, or go and hold her hand... i know i can't fix this one. **sigh** i miss him too.

after fort dodge, andy and i drove back to des moines to get things ready for One Thing. we had a lovely breakfast with my grandparents the next morning, and then later that day bethany, nicole, and drew came. we all packed up two cars and drove down to kansas city, MO. we stopped at wendy's en route for dinner, and there bethany made some sort of comment to the effect of, "you can never have too much sour cream." this statement started the finest joke of the week, in which drew strategically planted wendy's sour cream packets in bethany's stuff over the course of the next four days. hilarious.

One Thing was quite amazing, though very different from last year. i think mostly because i have changed so much. last year it was all so new to me, and my heart was so open to it. there was a novelty about it. this year, though, that novelty had pretty much worn off. IHOP life has become a part of me... i mean, my heart just feels at home there, and it is so easy to connect with so many of the people who are doing school or internships or are on staff. there is a hunger for the Lord in these people that you just don't find much around here.

anyway, this year... the whole time i was there, i just had a difficult time entering in. and it was frustrating, because i SO wanted to be on track with the other 10,000 people there, and i felt as though i wasn't. i felt kind of cold to it all. the last day of the conference was a solemn assembly (joel 2:15), from 2pm-midnight. basically a 10-hour prayer meeting. and i found myself having such a difficult time just sitting before the Lord. i mean, i was extremely tired and all, but it was more than that... it made me uncomfortable to try and focus on Him.

i don't think i really got it until i got back to chicago, that one of the things that the Lord was doing in me at the conference was really just exposing my barrenness of heart. such a painful thing, but so necessary. apart from Him i am so dry. i am weak, irritable, impatient, controlling, manipulative, insensitive, and angry. apart from Him i am these things, and more. and the most difficult thing in this life with Him, i am finding, is keeping my heart alive. so quickly i am prone to returning to that place of dullness. it is so easy, and it happens by default. if i want to have a heart fully alive, i must go my way...

****
until the day breaks and the shadows flee away
i will go my way...

i wanna run up the mountain
follow in the way of love
i wanna run up the mountain
follow after You
i will run, i will run, i will run after You...

(Audra Lynn 2006)
****

so i have really been focusing on pressing in this past week. and, it's funny... i can feel the difference. i can feel my heart getting softer. and i guess i'm really glad that it's happening this way. i don't want to have some grandiose experience at a conference and then be running off of fumes for the next year. that's not how the Lord ever intended it to be.

anyhow, so i came back to chicago last night, and here i am. getting back into the swing of things at work. **sigh** it feels like some changes are coming this year.