This used to be a day filled with anticipation building for Santa, reading Christmas stories, and going to the candlelight service at church. Now, it's about Christ coming, the real reason; as I sat in traffic today in York (go figure!) I thought about how often we get that wrong.
I had lunch at Panera bread with friends from middle and high school youth group. God has brought us back together, year after year, even though you may not have not thought so. We've been all over: Micronesia, California, Africa, but we meet back together at the same table each year.
I think that's been the trend this past year: the moment I get disappointed about some allusion I've been creating in my head since childhood, the next I'm pleasantly surprised about what God is doing instead. I might not be at Berkeley getting a masters, but I'm in a program that I love and can get an education while staying at my job. I am not engaged or even close, but God is refining me through so many of my relationships. I feel like I'm finally beginning to heal from ones that have wounded me in the past with the community I have surrounding me.
I can still carry on the traditions of the Eve before Noel, running with my friend Claire, going to church at midnight, spending time with my family. Just because childhood is over doesn't mean I have to be an adult necessarily yet, but I do need to let go of some of my childhood expectations. Ways of thinking the world should be, when it's not. Jesus still came into the world, even though it wasn't perfect.
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