It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

They’ve put up lights in the trees in downtown Tallahassee, and every night when I pull out of the parking garage at the DoubleTree I take a moment to stop and smile at how pretty they are. It also reminds me that Christmas is less than 3 weeks away!

Like everyone else in the world (with the exception of a few curmudgeony Grinches and Scrooges) I love Christmastime. I love all of the exterior indicators that the holidays are upon us, such as the ability to wear scarves and boots and pretend that we live somewhere cold enough that they are necessary. I love seeing that tonight should get down to 30 degrees and saying things like “what if it snowed?” although I haven’t seen it snow here in the 11 years I’ve lived in Florida. I love Christmas Blend coffee and cheesy Christmas songs that give you that warm fuzzy feeling ….

…. And then I start to panic at the thought of Christmas shopping. Take a girl who hates shopping but loves a lot of people and wants to buy presents for all of them, give her a significantly tight budget and the overwhelming force of American holiday consumerism, and what you get is a near miss with a full out anxiety attack and then the sigh of relief that comes with online shopping….

…. But to get back to the warm fuzzy feeling. Call me crazy but there truly is something special about this time of year. And I think that try though we might, we haven’t been able to kill it with the crazy distractions we’ve created through the aforementioned choking fog of consumerism, or the creepy claymation movies that someone once decided were festive. I think that there is a sheer moment by moment joy and focus that we get to experience during this time because our Heavenly Father chooses to let us. What better time to remind us of things like Love, Joy, Peace, Comfort and Hope than now. We don’t have the capability to have those things on our own, but He gives them to us and He gives us the opportunity to enjoy them and extend them to others.

So take some time today to smile at how pretty the twinkle lights are on the trees and houses in your neighborhood. But, how about we also take a minute and smile at the people in your office or the girl serving you your Christmas Blend coffee? Not out of a sense of “holiday cheer” but just because we have Christmas because God chose to give us a gift a few thousand years ago that cost a lot more than we’ll ever really understand and offers us more Love, Joy, Peace, Comfort and Hope than we know what to do with.

We're On An Adventure!

When I was growing up we would often pile the whole family of 6 into the minivan and embark on trips. Sometimes they were short trips and we knew exactly where we were headed; but sometimes they were long trips that took us to unfamiliar places and we would hear Mom and Daddy talking in low voices in the front and pulling out the map, and when we asked “where are we?” Daddy would cheerfully respond “We’re on an ADVENTURE!” In the McMahon family, We’re on an adventure = We’re lost.  Liz especially hated this and would often respond with “I don’t want to be on adventure” (even at a young age being lost stressed her out, and she hasn’t changed a bit).

I, on the other hand, often liked adventures; at least while Daddy was driving. I trusted that although he didn’t know where we were at the moment he knew where we were headed and I had absolute faith that he would get us there successfully.

Me & Mr are about to step into our next adventure. I’ve been offered and have accepted a new job. It is at the Doubletree hotel here in Tallahassee, and I will start next month. I’m excited to step out into a new place with new people and new challenges. I feel very strongly that God led me to this decision and put all of the pieces in place to make it happen. So I guess I have to still trust that my Daddy will get me through my next adventure successfully. Like any adventure it’s a bit scary stepping out of the comfortable into the unknown but I’m excited about it. I’m certain there will be things I miss about the place I’ve spent the first two years of our time here in Tallahassee but as I step out into the next chapter I expect to see really great things in store for us.

Our church family is also embarking on an adventure. City Church is growing so quickly that we need more seats. What an incredible problem to have! Our pastor has called each of us that call City Church our home to give above and beyond what we normally do to help us add onto our space. Any of you that have talked to Clay and I in the last few months know that we’ve had a large number of unexpected financial hurdles, but we had no doubt that God wanted us to be a part of this endeavor. We are excited to see the ways He will repay our faithfulness even when it’s sacrificial. This doesn’t mean that if we give $50 to City Church that I will find a $100 bill on the ground tomorrow, in fact we may just be $50 shorter than usual in our bank account. But think of all the people who will hear the truth about a God who loves them just as they are and has given everything to redeem them to Himself. Think of the lives that will change because they can come into our building and hear this. What a great return on our investment!!! If you want to be a part of this please join us or just get more info at WhyNotTallahassee.com. It’s going to be a great adventure to be a part of.

Henry David Thoreau says “We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character”. I think he’s right. What adventure are you going to set out on next?  

Some days you just need Bagelheads coffee

Some days you just need Bagelheads coffee. At least I do. I sat at my desk yesterday morning and nearly fell asleep. I’m not kidding. And it’s not because my job is boring or I didn’t have anything to do. I just needed something to kick start my day and get me going. For me that something is usually Bagelheads coffee. So I went and got some.  

I’m not sure if it’s the tantalizing aroma that fills your car as you drive off with a warm cup in hand or simply a chemical addiction to the caffeine that makes it so inviting, but that first cup of coffee is inexplicably good. Then the rush kicks in and you feel like you can accomplish everything on your to do list that day; and since you are moving at the pace of the Energizer bunny you do get about 60% of it done in the next 3 hours.  

Of course by the time it wears off and then you eat lunch you’re back to slow motion by mid afternoon. However, I still count the day a success because for a brief period of time you were operating at full capacity. Sometimes I wonder what I would do without the liquid consciousness that coffee provides.

I’d probably be un-employed.

This morning I came into work feeling pretty good about the day ahead of me. I was awake and alert ready to tackle my to do list with determination and a good attitude… and then I turned on my computer. It’s kind of amazing that my computer has lasted as long as it has. Based on its performance levels I’m fairly certain it was made in 1982. From 8:02 to 8:11 it turned on and woke up enough so that I could click on Microsoft Outlook to read my emails for the day. At 8:17 my emails were finally able to be viewed and read. At 8:29 when I was still waiting for it to open the property management system that allows me to do my job I decided to take a short break and head out to Bagelheads for more coffee.

It’s kind of amazing how coffee can be stimulating at times when you just need to wake up, and at other times it can have a very calming effect and keep you from beating your computer with a baseball bat.

I’m headed to bed fairly early and will get a full night’s rest but I can already tell tomorrow will be another coffee day. Not that I mind. They make really good coffee.

Word Of The Day

 Several years ago my dear friends Ashley and Sarah Miller bought Clay a “Word-of-the-Day” Calendar for Christmas. It was full of 365 astonishingly ridiculous words to improve his vocabulary such as: Ubiquitous, Sagacious, Flummox, Crapulous (yes it really is a word), and Vicissitude.

We still have that calendar. It’s on a bookshelf behind some things, and periodically we run across it and read a few words and giggle at how silly they sound. Thank you, Millers, for years of entertainment (literally).

I have what most would call an extensive vocabulary, and perhaps a weird obsession with words. If you’ve met my dad you understand why. I love words and the depth of communication they can convey when you understand their multi-faceted meaning.

One of my favorite words is Faithful. Many people take this word for granted. I did for a long time. If you ask someone for the definition you will most likely get “Faithful means they don’t cheat” (which is a sad commentary on our culture, but that is another soapbox for another blog and another day).  If you ask Webster you will find that Faithful means:

·         steadfast in affection or allegiance : loyal

·         firm in adherence to promises or in observance of duty : conscientious

·         given with strong assurance : binding  

·         true to the facts, to a standard, or to an original

I’ve come to love this word. I love that every day my husband says to me “I was faithful to you today, because I love you” assuring me that he is loyal to me in his words, thoughts and actions. I am encouraged to be faithful to my family, friends, and coworkers by being conscientious and observant to fulfill the promises and responsibilities I hold in my relationships with them because they count on me to do so. I am so thankful that my Heavenly Father is faithful in His promises and that I can trust they are true and binding, because He is the original, He sets the standard and he is Immutable (this is another big word meaning incapable of change) I can always trust His promises because He never wavers.

Lately I’ve had a few minutes, hours and days where I got caught up in worry; mostly about finances, because things are really tight right now. But I am reminded so often that God is Faithful. His faithfulness shows up in some obvious ways such as the check that arrives the same day as an unexpected expense; but He also shows His faithfulness in the simple fact that we are still here. We live a life that is so blessed, surrounded by love and grace that we don’t deserve. We deserve to be consumed with the guilt of our sin and the ugliness of the things we choose to love more than God but instead we get soooo much! We get to experience love, security, surprise, exhilaration and even cachinnation.

“Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23

P.S. – You get 10 cool points if you stopped reading to look up any of the words in today’s blog. J

Found People Find People

What would you do if you could do anything in the world?

This is a very open ended question. I could mean this evening, or this weekend, or with your free time or with your career. Sadly, I’m afraid that my answer to this question would be unremarkable. My sister asked me today if I could have any job in the world what would it be. I would write. Not that my books would be life-altering classics. But I would enjoy that more than anything else.  But it made me wonder, what would I do if I could do anything in the world? And as I just said my first reactions were unremarkable.

I found that several of the things that first came to my mind were quite selfish. Some of the ones that even sounded selfless were not. And since they were severely limited by my own benefit they were decidedly un-ambitious. Because if I were honest with myself I would have to admit that there is a big difference between my answers to the questions “what would you like to get if you could get anything” and “what would you do if you could do anything”. Doing is much harder than getting.

So why don’t we work hard to accomplish or achieve the things we would like most to get? Laziness. Selfishness. Pride. Just to name a few. So what do we do about it? I’m trying to figure that out myself. I have a feeling it will require a change of heart. Actively working to care more about others than we do about ourselves. Caring less about what other people think and more about what they need.

And they need to be found. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the following phrase this in the past week: Found people Find people. I want that to be my automatic answer to the question “what would you do if you could do anything in the world”? I want a change of heart that would cause my answer to be that I would invest my time, effort, heart, and soul into finding people. Because I was found. And found people find people.

My Husband Is A Warrior.

I love my husband. Seriously, I do. I’ve known Clay since we were 16 and I have had the privilege to watch him grow from a boy into a man. Not only physically; but mentally, emotionally and spiritually as well.  It didn’t happen overnight, but something has definitely changed in his life as he has learned to put God first and love Him more than self. Today I watched him make himself completely vulnerable and risk embarrassment and judgment because God’s glory is more important to him than his own.

My Mr  gets a great deal of joy from playing video games. He once told me with a completely straight face: “Babe, you don’t understand.  I have to kill a certain number of things a day, because I’m a warrior.” Yep. He was serious.

Not too long ago, as we talked about struggles he has faced and continues to win out over as he chooses on a daily basis to be a man of God who holds onto truth, and integrity even when it is hard, he said to me “I have to kill a certain number of things a day, because I’m a warrior. And some of those things are pride and selfishness”.

We have faced  A LOT of difficult times in our years together. Times that we’ve been scared or angry, times that we have been hurt by others and times that we have hurt each other. Let’s be honest, in marriage you are so closely and intimately united that you are completely vulnerable and you have the ability to devastate each other.  

I’ve faced some of his struggles head on with him, just like he’s faced mine. We’ve faced moments where we have had to preach the gospel to ourselves, reminding ourselves of how Christ has loved and forgiven us when we didn’t deserve it, in order to continue loving each other sacrificially and unselfishly. 

However, our God is a loving Father, and he never wastes a hurt. He is using all of this to shape us, to teach me that He is the only one who is truly Faithful in all things and that I cannot look to my husband to be my functional Savior, I must look to my Savior to supply my needs and then love and respect my husband regardless of what I feel he should do better. I am learning to look at myself through the eyes of my Heavenly Father rather than through the lens of what I fear I’m lacking as a wife, friend, woman, and helper in our relationship.

 I love seeing the way that these struggles have encouraged and challenged my husband to embrace transparency and fight sin and selfishness head on. I’ve seen it stir in him a passion to lead other men and challenge them to be men of God rather than boys who give in to selfish pursuits. And through it all I am challenged to be the kind of woman that helps my husband to be God’s kind of man.

I love being a sister

Having a sister is such a cool relationship. God didn’t have to think it up but He gave it to us because he loves us. I am lucky enough to have grown up with three of them and then get another one through marriage. I got to spend some time this weekend with my little sisters, and in about a month will get to hang out with my big sister.

I love hanging out with my girls. I love being comfortable enough with them to be an absolute idiot and have so much fun doing so. I love getting up really early and drinking coffee with them while we are still too sleepy to have conversations. I love laughing really hard with them. I love it that even when we get annoyed with each other I have no doubt that it will be quickly followed by love, patience and forgiveness.

Maybe you guys won’t understand what I mean, but any of you girls who have sisters do. It’s just cool to be a sister, especially a big sister.  There is something very special about looking at someone and seeing so much of yourself in that person: sometimes you see things that you love and sometimes you recognize things that you wish you could adequately warn them about but know they have to figure it out themselves. I can only imagine it’s a little glimpse of what it’s like to be a parent and watch your kids grow up.

I’ve got some pretty awesome sisters, and I will miss them until I see them again. But that is only 12 days away, so I thankfully I don’t have to wait too long.