I love Christmas. It is one of my favorite times of year. All of the parties, tacky Christmas sweaters, candy canes, Christmas trees, gingerbread houses... The list goes on. In my 23 years of life Christmas has taken on many traditions. Each year I help my mom decorate the Christmas tree we look at all of the ornaments and are flooded with memories of Christmas' past. Christmas music blasts through the house or White Christmas plays in the family room while we put decorations up around the whole house instantly creating a scene that resembles a Christmas shop that sells Christmas items year round. Each year on Christmas day I open up my stocking and see a new ornament to place on the tree. Usually it represents something of significance that has happened during the past year. We have the Koch family celebration on Christmas Eve and the Harsch family feast on Christmas Day. We play games, decorate a gingerbread house, and open up our new presents. I love Christmas.
I love Christmas. During the last four years during my time at Taylor I formed new traditions. Taylor traditions. Silent Night basketball games, Candles and Carols chapel service, Christmas openhouses, Christmas pick-a-dates, and the Hallipolooza Christmas Party. I love Christmas.
However, this year is different. I still love Christmas but my surroundings are different. I'm not able to be home to decorate the Christmas tree. I'm not a Taylor dressing up in my PJs for Silent Night. Instead I'm in Colorado with two poinsettias and icicle lights around my house. My Christmas decorations sit in a box in Wheaton. I'm in the spot where I can create my own traditions now. Many of my traditions, once I have a place of my own, will include aspects of the traditions that I grew up with. Which leads me to this year.
This year, on December 1st, I started a new reading Advent plan. Each day I read a story from the Jesus Storybook Bible starting the the first story and working my way through to the 25th on Christmas morning. When thinking about starting this Advent plan I thought this is something that if I were to ever have a family of my own someday I would want to do this with them. Through reading these short little Bible stories each morning I have been able to fill myself up with the simple truths of God's Word. That he sent his Son into the world to die for my sins. That he was born into a broken and sinful world and he himself remained perfect. I'm excited for this new Christmas tradition that I have started and look forward to how I will grow and learn from in during the remainder of this season as well as in Christmas' to come.
Friday, December 5, 2014
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Preschool Adventures
For the month of November I have been in my preschool rotation. This month has been crazy busy! And I love it! Despite getting a head cold and a stomach bug this month has been wonderful. The month started off with a bang when we had record breaking numbers a 7,000 jump from the previous weekend. During this big weekend I was serving in the 5K room. We had 156 kiddos in one service! It was crazy but it was awesome to see so many kids come through the doors to hear about the love that Christ has for them.
The next day I got to adventure up the mountain to Evergreen where we filmed the videos for our preschool Christmas series. It was a cold and foggy day but so much fun to chase chickens, run around getting tea for everyone to stay warm and watching the whole thing come together at the end.
Then over the past several weeks I have been working on recruiting high school students at Rev to serve in Summit Kids. After two weeks of recruiting the night came and we had crappy snowy weather which resulted in a low turnout but we now know that if they are willing to drive in snow to come for training that they will likely drive through snow to serve on the weekend.
I got to make my teaching debut at Flatirons in the 4s room. I thought things went pretty well considering it was the 5:00pm service I served as the guinea pig to see if everything would work. I taught on the story of Naaman. Of course I couldn't help but think of camp and the Seven Dippy Dip song. Surprisingly I didn't break out in song. I loved serving in the 4s room. Those kiddos are so fun and entertaining.
This month I also got to have dinner with my CO3 small group which was wonderful! These group of new friends have been so great to get to know. Since we were a small group we have shared some tough stuff about our lives with each other. I have loved having these guys in my life over the past month and I'm so excited where God is gonna take our little group.
This past month we had our Staff Christmas party. So much fun and laughter had. We had good food although I'm pretty sure that's what made me sick on Tuesday so it was good when I ate it but not so great the next day. Impulse Improv theater was there and lots of laughter was had by all. Seriously the longer I work with the staff of flatirons the more I love them.
Now onto the meat of this month of what I've been learning. This month I've had a couple of hard conversations. In the midst of these conversations I've been learning a lot about myself and some things that I need let God take out of my hands. One was my lack of trust in the people around me. I've learned that in my past, specifically during my childhood, I had a few friendships that were not the best for me and ended up shaping how I made friends in the future. I've learned that it takes me a long time to build up trust in my friends. I remember it was this time last year when I finally felt like I could trust my friends. Now, I'm living in a new state away from my closest friends and I'm having to build new friends. I've learned that building trust is hard for me. I never knew this about myself until now because this is the first time that I have been in a place where I'm uncomfortable in my surroundings and don't really know the people around me which means I have to build my trust in them.
Another thing that I've been reminded of this month has been in our reading this month. We are reading When Helping Hurts, which I would highly recommend for anyone in ministry not just on the missions field. While reading this book one thing that I have reminded of is that God was there before I was there, while I was there, and after I was there. This hit a trigger point in me because of my time spent in Peru. One thing our team constantly reminded each other was that God is with them. It was hard to leave them because we thought that it was our love that changed them when in reality it was God using us to show them the love of Christ.
This month although a great month in general has also been very hard in the sense that I have been incredibly homesick. More homesick than I have ever been before. However, the night when it was the worst I texted a few of my friends and asked for prayer and almost immediately felt at peace. But over Thanksgiving my family flew out from Chicago and we drove up the mountain to Estes Park and were able to spend the holiday together in the mountains. We went hiking at Bear and Sprague Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. After a few days up the mountain we drove to Lafayette on Sunday morning for church. I loved being able to show my parents around the place that I've called home for the past three months. I got to show them around Flatirons and take them to my favorite local barbeque, Lulu's. Then we went to my house and got to relax until it was time to take them to the airport.
The phrase, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" couldn't be more true for the phase of my life. Being away from my family and my church family have been hard but I have grown to love the time that I had in Glen Ellyn and Wheaton. It's because of the people and their influence in my life that I am the person I am today.
The next day I got to adventure up the mountain to Evergreen where we filmed the videos for our preschool Christmas series. It was a cold and foggy day but so much fun to chase chickens, run around getting tea for everyone to stay warm and watching the whole thing come together at the end.
Then over the past several weeks I have been working on recruiting high school students at Rev to serve in Summit Kids. After two weeks of recruiting the night came and we had crappy snowy weather which resulted in a low turnout but we now know that if they are willing to drive in snow to come for training that they will likely drive through snow to serve on the weekend.
I got to make my teaching debut at Flatirons in the 4s room. I thought things went pretty well considering it was the 5:00pm service I served as the guinea pig to see if everything would work. I taught on the story of Naaman. Of course I couldn't help but think of camp and the Seven Dippy Dip song. Surprisingly I didn't break out in song. I loved serving in the 4s room. Those kiddos are so fun and entertaining.
This month I also got to have dinner with my CO3 small group which was wonderful! These group of new friends have been so great to get to know. Since we were a small group we have shared some tough stuff about our lives with each other. I have loved having these guys in my life over the past month and I'm so excited where God is gonna take our little group.
This past month we had our Staff Christmas party. So much fun and laughter had. We had good food although I'm pretty sure that's what made me sick on Tuesday so it was good when I ate it but not so great the next day. Impulse Improv theater was there and lots of laughter was had by all. Seriously the longer I work with the staff of flatirons the more I love them.
Now onto the meat of this month of what I've been learning. This month I've had a couple of hard conversations. In the midst of these conversations I've been learning a lot about myself and some things that I need let God take out of my hands. One was my lack of trust in the people around me. I've learned that in my past, specifically during my childhood, I had a few friendships that were not the best for me and ended up shaping how I made friends in the future. I've learned that it takes me a long time to build up trust in my friends. I remember it was this time last year when I finally felt like I could trust my friends. Now, I'm living in a new state away from my closest friends and I'm having to build new friends. I've learned that building trust is hard for me. I never knew this about myself until now because this is the first time that I have been in a place where I'm uncomfortable in my surroundings and don't really know the people around me which means I have to build my trust in them.
Another thing that I've been reminded of this month has been in our reading this month. We are reading When Helping Hurts, which I would highly recommend for anyone in ministry not just on the missions field. While reading this book one thing that I have reminded of is that God was there before I was there, while I was there, and after I was there. This hit a trigger point in me because of my time spent in Peru. One thing our team constantly reminded each other was that God is with them. It was hard to leave them because we thought that it was our love that changed them when in reality it was God using us to show them the love of Christ.
This month although a great month in general has also been very hard in the sense that I have been incredibly homesick. More homesick than I have ever been before. However, the night when it was the worst I texted a few of my friends and asked for prayer and almost immediately felt at peace. But over Thanksgiving my family flew out from Chicago and we drove up the mountain to Estes Park and were able to spend the holiday together in the mountains. We went hiking at Bear and Sprague Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. After a few days up the mountain we drove to Lafayette on Sunday morning for church. I loved being able to show my parents around the place that I've called home for the past three months. I got to show them around Flatirons and take them to my favorite local barbeque, Lulu's. Then we went to my house and got to relax until it was time to take them to the airport.
The phrase, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" couldn't be more true for the phase of my life. Being away from my family and my church family have been hard but I have grown to love the time that I had in Glen Ellyn and Wheaton. It's because of the people and their influence in my life that I am the person I am today.
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