What is Christmas all about?

This has been my fourth Christmas without snow. Many people I am sure don't care. Many have never had a white Christmas or don't care about a white Christmas. It's just I've had almost 20 white Christmases, snow is almost a tradition for me.
It has been tradition to go to my mom's cousin's cookie party. Tradition to drive around and look at Christmas lights strung beautifully on houses and at the local zoo. There is pumpkin roll and sugar cookies and putting up the tree with all our Christmas ornaments given to us through the years. I loved listening to Kenny G after the tree was put up, the living room lights turned off and the Christmas tree is the only source of light. It's shining like the stars at night, reminding me of the star that led the Wise Men to the baby Christ. Christmas Eve spent at my grandparents eating food, telling the kids to stop being so crazy or fighting, and laughing till our sides are sore, then we go home and go to bed exhausted.
Christmas morning we open presents in our pajamas, eat cookies and milk for breakfast. The living room is a mess, toys everywhere. Snow is covering everything outside. It's cold, sometimes freezing some years, but we are warm inside the house. The spirit of Christmas could be felt from Thanksgiving until the new year when the tree comes down.
For the past few years Christmas hasn't been the same. Family move, people move on, I am in places without family and snow. I am the one making the pumpkin rolls, no cookie parties anymore.
Last year I was on my mission during Christmas. I was without family, but I still felt the Christmas spirit. I talked about my Savior, taught about him to people who did not know of him. That is all what my Christmas was about. It wasn't about presents, decorations, Christmas TV specials. It was about the original meaning of Christmas.
This year was away from home once again, but not away with family. Yet, it still didn't feel the same. There wasn't many Christmas traditions I got to do. I didn't decorate a tree, make cookies or even a pumpkin roll. We didn't drive around looking at lights. Christmas Eve was spent at a casino theatre watching a musical and a very expensive restaurant with the smell of smoke everywhere. We did find some snow earlier that day, but had to drive a good distance in the mountains to find it and we went sledding for a bit. But I still miss looking out the window of where I am staying and not seeing white, but rocks instead.
What brought some of the feeling of Christmas back some was a phone call and long conversation with some one not near in location but very dear to me. We talked about Christmas memories and our ideas of what Christmas is to us. Night of Christmas we began to read in the Book of Luke in the New Testament, THE Christmas Story. We didn't finish reading the story because we got lost in discussion about some of the wording in the verses.
Bringing me into the scriptures and talking about "The First Noel" brought back Christmas.

Yes, I can be a dork!

Last night, at the last Improv show of the semester (I am in an improv group called Academy of Comedy) I got called a freshman twice! I have passed my college freshman year of college years ago. The thing is I just happen to be friends with the freshman girls in the improv group. It also so happens that most of the girls in the group are freshman!

This is not the point I am trying to make.

Something I realized last night and some of this morning is I enjoy being silly and crazy at times.

In my family when you are being silly of goofy you are called a "Dork". To many outside of my family that may seem like an insult, something you don't call people you love. That is just how my family is. We love each other, we drive each other crazy like all other families, but we love being sarcastic and being silly at times! Dork has some how turned into a term of endearment almost (using endearment for lack of a better word).
Anywho! I was kind of hyper and crazy last night. I think my boyfriend can testify to that. I was a bit off the wall when I was talking to him on the phone after the improv show. But man, I was having fun!

My theory about all this comes from a quote I think you'll find amusing... I found a quote from Bugs Bunny that says, "Life is no laughing matter, but can you imagine life without it."Yes, there is a time and place to be crazy and silly. Yet there is a time and place to be serious. Just because I am in my-twenties doesn't mean I have to stop having fun, laughing till my sides hurt with my friends, dance to music in my living room (or in an improv show). Just because I am in college, an aunt, a role model to the little and younger ones in my family doesn't mean I have to be stiff and borning, dull as Ben Stein, plain as plank of wood. No!

I enjoy my moments of being a silly girl, of being a dork! It's part of living!

I know God has a sense of humor. If he didn't he wouldn't have put the ability in us to laugh and to have laughter bring such pure joy when you share a funny moment with friends and family. Yet, as a reminder silliness has it's place and time, I do have the ability to be serious and take life serious, classes serious. But if I was like that all the time, life would dull and I wouldn't be myself.

Simplified

I was having dinner with Cayla yesterday on campus and I voiced an observation about my life. The observation went something like this, "Almost everything in my life had not taken the simple path, nor the easiest."

Now let me explain what I mean, for I know there are few different ideas of easy and simple that float around in your modern English language.

For an example my choice in what religion I choose believe in, Mormon. I know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to be the true church, but it's not the kind of church you can join and then sit back relax and merely go to church on Sunday. There are calllings/jobs in the church, scripture study, daily prayer, the everyday effort of trying to better yourself. Being part of this church I have seen countless blessings, and blessings come by obedience. Obedience requires action, and not a passive behavior.

Another example is coming to BYU-I. It would have been easier to stay at the community college I attended for two years before I came here. The classes weren't as hard, it cost my family less. However, I was guided elsewhere. Now I need to pay for rent, my own food, travel home, etc. I have to find ways to get to school and deal with more demanding classes! Coming here has complicated my life a bit.

Yet coming here I made many amazing friends, experianced things I needed to experiance. Expanded my knowledge that community college could ever have!

Now how about my career choice? Theatre director and playwright, along with an author. These three things are not the easiest to be successful in today's time. Yet again I am drawn to these occupations. My current major is Theatre and Speech Education. My back-up plan in life is to teach theatre and communication classes in high school, if mentioned career choices don't work out, or work out as soon as I would like.

Even the choosing of my minor was a long deciding process and once again I was drawn towards something that would not be an easy road to travel, Spanish Education.

I would have loved to have photography as my minor, but the set up here in this university is if your major is in education your minor has to be as well. Which complicates things. Yet I go with a subject I haven't practiced since I about 16 or 17 and wasn't even that good at then.

I debated changing my minor this week, for varies different reasons, back to English education. English and Literature are something I do well in and I can teach (But I am not a big fan of teaching English/Grammar to students). While Spanish, I know, will be a struggle all the way to the end. And back when I returned to school this past September with this idea of having Spanish be my minor I learned it would add another YEAR to my schooling. Not what I was hoping to hear! Yet I know this is the right thing for me to go into.

Also what added to me not graduating at an age when most people do would be my mission. When I had a yer and half left in school I went on a mission for a year and half. It wasn't the easiest thing to do in my life; in fact, it was one of the hardest. It didn't simplify my life, but blessings came to me and my family. Blessings that would not have come if I had simply trudged on with my life at school.

I guess what I am trying to say with all of this is that we all have this idea of how our life ought to be or we hope it would be. Then God throws in curve balls at us and our life changes. One of those curve balls was my Mom dieing. It made things harder on my family, but when we pulled together and were there for each other love made us stronger. I even connected with an uncle I only met twice in my life when i was young child. Yet when this happen I got to know a man, my mom's youngest brother, who is now always there for me.

Then there are the hard choices. Sometimes it's the lesser of two evils/weevils. Other's it a hard choice between two or many good things. Then there are the choices that simply add complexity to our lives, but add beauty.

This reminds me of my favorite story in the New Testament, of the Bible. It's back in the Book of Matthew when Jesus walks out on the sea to his Apostles who were struggling in their boat to cross the waters. The Apostle see Christ off in the distance and think he is a spirit and are scared. Yet Jesus, knowing they are afraid call out to them to not be afraid, for it is him. When Peter sees Jesus is walking on water and knowing all things are possible with his Christ the apostle is compelled to go meet his Savior in the water. He asks Jesus if he can walk out to him. Of course Jesus wouldn't deny the growth and test of Peter. So Peter climbs out of the boat and begins to walk on the water himself. Yet fear over comes this young apostle and he begins to sink. He calls out for Jesus to save him. Jesus does save him, for he loves this man, but he chides him, lovingly, for not having enough faith and the two walk back to the boat together.

I bring this story up because the difficult choices in life reminds me of this story. Like Peter we are often compelled to leave our bubble, our comfort zone, for Peter that was his boat and the company of his fellow Apostles. Like Peter we too are often called to walk the choppy waters. We won't always be successful at stay above the water at all time, like Peter. Yet when we get over-whelmed and when begin to sink we need to call out to our Savior and he will find way for us to be pulled back to our feet and he will walk the rest with us. We may get a bit of chiding when we fall from our own mistakes, when we knew better. But That doesn't stop God's and Jesus's love for us.

I have learned life is not met to be like we were playing Candyland. We wish it would be, but what would we learn from that? Spanish won't be near easy, but if I quit and go with something easier and something I wasn't compelled to study, I won't be made better. I would be the old me who would bail out when things got difficult.

Quoting a fellow sister-missionary I had the good fortune to meet and work with at the end of my mission, she quoted her aunt who told her in a difficult time of both of their lives, "I can do hard things!"

My life isn't simple but I love it. I am happy with it. It's my job to make it that way. Outside forces may change what happens at times, but I choose my reactions.

Now before I end this.... Yesterday while talking to Cayla about this observation I have just written about I made the joke, "I guess I will know what the right decision is in my life when it's not the simple one!" ;)

I love my life! And I hope you do or soon will learn how to love your own life.