Well I can't believe we are already here, this less glistening side of the festive season. All the sparkly stuff done and dusted and packed up into the boxes again for another year. I love the way older Portadown people (well the ones I make small talk with at work anyway) seem to love saying 'Well, did you get Christmas and New Year over you OK then?' As if it's some kind of lingering illness we all have to endure and manage to come out of triumphantly. Quoi? Je ne comprends pas du tout! But but...Santa delivered! Festivities abounded! Friends, fun, family, chilling, food, shopping and laughter all mingled harmoniously together in a blissfully timeless snowglobe-esque haven ! (Yes I have my rose-coloured glasses firmly in place already!) Every time I am greeted with these confusing words I feel like spluttering and saying "Em- hold the phone, my acquaintance/colleague/fellow user of the photocopier. I think you'll find the REAL question is 'Did you get the depressing, stinking, horrible, Sunday-night-blues-inducing, bleak, drab, sombre, leaden, cheerless, grim, dismal, dark return to work over you OK??'" (Yes I got a Thesaurus for Christmas! You can thank my brother and his final chance to take advantage of having been associated with Chambers dictionaries...) But I don't say that of course, I just mumble something about back to porridge and isn't it cold.
I have to admit though that once I get over my initial sulk of getting back to reality, I kind of don't mind this calmer, less pressured time of the year. Where you can say to the diminished number of students who have actually braved the disgusting slush to come in to class, 'Let's just take it easy and see how we get on today, eh?', instead of the all-singing, all-dancing, all-teeth rottingly sugary (literally) extravaganza of a class Christmas party I'll have been enthusiastically pulling out of the bag last time I saw them. Much as I love the annual festivities with them, it is quite nice to be able to just turn up and be calm and gently warm up to being productive once more. I have enjoyed not one, but a record-breaking TWO evenings in this week, pottering, doodling some plans for 2010 in a crisp new notebook. It's nice to feel that freshness and possibility lie ahead. I just hope that I don't make like the snow in Portadown too soon and turn it all into a murky, turbid, tenebrious (thanks again bro/Chambers) disappointingly grey slush. Sometimes somewhere between the fresh-start-feeling of a new year and the first broken resolution, things tend to get a bit bleak and hopeless feeling. (it's called January/February) That's why it's good to cling to things that cheer and encourage you amid such potential dreariness. One such thing I have been enjoying recently is a blog I have on my list here called Stuff Christians Like. Do check it out if you haven't already. It is my new lunch time companion, I think I can literally now say I check it every single day! It kind of gently pokes fun at the habits and quirks of Christian culture and the write Jon Acuff is really sarcastic and hilarious. Anyway it is mostly very silly and funny, but he has started a feature called Serious Wednesdays and I always get sooo much from his gracious, honest style of writing. Yesterday's one just set me up for the whole year (I hope!) so I am going to post it on here so I don't forget to keep coming back to it. I hope I remember to return to it every time I get that feeling, as penned by Counting Crows' genuis frontman Mr Duritz, that 'it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls'. And it has reminded me once more to 'be strong, take heart and wait for the Lord.'(Ps 24:18) Enjoy.
http://stuffchristianslike.net/2010/01/looking-for-goliath/
(sorry can't get this to be a proper link so you will just have to copy and paste it into your browser!)
