Celebrate the Day

It's Christmas again!  It's a tiptoeing holiday; I never remember it until it's here.  Though this year, I literally completely forgot about it until about three days ago.  I'm kind of ludicrously excited and yet, at the same time, feeling disappointed-in-advance, like a niggling wormhole of paranoia that Christmas isn't going to be all that i'm hoping for.

This is my traditional Christmas Eve song.* (This year, instead of just listening to it, I actually found a chordsheet and played it on the piano.)  It always gets my brain in the right place right around now.  It sort of oddly imparts a sense of peace, a sense of closeness, a sense of relief that i'm not the only one who arrives at Christmas Day realizing I've barely given "the Reason for the season" five minutes of thought, let alone personal attention.  I can take some time to reflect, and talk, and go to bed truly feeling that there's really a bigger reason for this grandiose, astonishing holiday besides merely me.

One of the lines in that song I linked to says "And here is where you're finding me in the exact same place as New Year's Eve"…I feel like that every year.  My resolve to spend more time with Jesus never quite makes it past a wobbly trial run.  But even though I still lacked effort in doing devotions or whatnot this year, I feel like God did a lot in me.  I'm more confident, I've started feeling a compassion for people I've certainly never had before, I've experienced freedom from a couple of really chronic issues I was dealing with, and I've discovered that being thankful for lots of little arbitrary things is actually a really enjoyable pastime.  My prayer life, at least, has seen some improvement.  I've discovered that Jesus is much better at cheering me up than wallowing in self-pity is.  And today's his birthday!    Whatever does or doesn't happen, I want to feel him smiling at me.  It makes me giddy just thinking about that.  Even if falling in love with a fellow human being ends up being absent on the roster of my life events for the next year, I really hope that truly falling in love with Jesus finally is.

Look at that, two "deep" posts in under twelve hours.  Lucky you, blogosphere.  I send concisely-wrapped wishes your way for an uber happy, joyous, jolly, convivial, cheery, very-merry Christmas.

  * [This is my "serious" Christmas Eve song.  My traditional goofy Facebook-status-material Christmas Eve song, also by Relient K, can be found here. ]