Snow Week

I just checked the school closings and we are off again tomorrow. I cannot tell a lie...this week has been great. If I had known we would have it off, I wouldn't have enjoyed it much, but the way it has worked out, It's been really nice, albeit stinkin' cold.

I really don't know how on earth I am going to be able to force myself into reality next Monday. It's a little terrifying, quite frankly. I have put some thought into changes for the new year, but I haven't been able to unfog the windshield of my brain enough to see these ideas clearly. I was very lucid at about 4 am a couple of nights ago and even wrote a blog post...but then I fell asleep and read it in the morning and it didn't strike me as making much sense.

I did read, however, a fantastic couple of articles on the topic of New Year's resolutions on Don Miller's blog. He wrote coherently what I could not put into words. The Ryerse family is living proof of the value of making changes with a community....there is no way we would have survived giving up pop individually, but collectively, it wasn't hard. Miller also asks the question "What do you want enough to make a change for?" Brilliant. This past year found us actually achieving some of the things we had been longing for so long....a house, a financial plan, a place to expand my creativity, and of course, the wii, that I personally have not developed an appetite for anything else just yet. That's not a bad thing since earning the house was a really big goal, 4 years in the making, and it took a lot out of us. But I like, again, what Miller wrote that our goals are not just destinations, they are part of our stories. So reaching one goal naturally leads to another related goal. As I sit looking out my window, I can't help but think how great a nice big garden would be....

I love Miller's concept of story. I'm so tired of the Christian mentality of "growing more godly." It's about as interesting as a spread-sheet. But living a story allows for our human tendency to go forward and slide back sometimes. For example, this past year, I listened faithfully to the Daily Audio Bible almost the entire year. But when Kevin died, I was away from my computer and fell away from downloading the daily podcasts. I never caught back up again. I felt badly about it in some ways, but my friend Hannah was right when she said, "Just start on today and go forward." I tend to think that we grow more by accepting what God gives us on a daily basis than completing a yearly Bible reading chart.

So with the help of my community, (A word I have more to say about), I hope to live a very good story this year.