MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I know, I know it is still more than three weeks away but I wanted to make sure I was the first one to wish you a very merry Christmas.

That said, I know at this point some of my OCD readers are starting to twitch. There’s no scripture at the top. There’s no four sections labeled “Read, Relate, React, Respond” It is OK. Breathe. Better? After more than three years, one thousand posts, thirteen thousand comments, and four hundred ninety thousand views I think it is time for us all to take a well deserved holiday break. Don’t you?

Doh. The power just went out and now I am having to write in the dark. Sorry, I am breaking all the rules of writing and frankly, my dear, aI don’t give a… care. Power going out around here is one of those things you expect to happen once or twice a week. Another thing you expect is that it will never truly get cold here. Chilly, yes, but not NY winter cold. Normally I hate the cold. I hate winter. I hate the snow. But a tradition I used to keep every year for more than a decade was to pull out all my Christmas music for the first snow of the season. Problem is, there are better than odds here in Gaziantep that the first snow of the season will never come. It is a way to cheer me up so that I don’t try to cry my way under three blankets and cry out to God to just let me once be able to hibernate until March. Not this time.

As with all things there are some times when you have to look a well loved tradition in the eye and just belt out, “Let it go! let it go! You’ll never see me cry! Let the times change on. I’m never going back. The past is in the past. Let it go! Let it go! …”

Well, that’s enough for today. As we grow closer and closer to this celebration of the glorious incarnation I pray that you would experience more and more of the joys and fewer and fewer of the stresses these days bring. As we turn the corner into the final month of this year may you pick up an ever increasing speed to finish out strong. And as you find yourself trudging through that icky brown slush of yesterday’s flurries while your ears turn red and your nose drips icicles may you smile and say, “The cold never bothered me anyways.”