The Return of the King

Can you believe Christmas is ONE WEEK away as I write this post?

There's a lot going on for our family right now, big changes, both good and difficult. 2011 has been a turbulent and challenging year.

The beauty of Christmas is that everything else shrinks in importance compared to the event we celebrate this week.

I didn't feel this way about Christmas, in my ten years as an agnostic. Christmas was just one more event in which the light of wonder had gone out of the world, leaving me with only a flattened version of the holiday.

That memory of loss and flatness makes me exceedingly grateful for the return of the real Christmas to my life. I rejoice in its complexity and sweet harshness, as a mother bears her child in a stable and shares the event with the most humble, honest witnesses: domestic animals and shepherds.

Welcome, real Christmas, the birth of the Christ Child.

Having once forgotten Christmas, like Ebenezer Scrooge, I can never read his words without emotion:

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach."

Thank heaven for the Yuletide wrinkle in time, connecting past to present to future.

It graces us with the reminder that our lives are small, brief flashes in the vast constellations of God's plan, written in ciphers across the night sky.

A holy and peaceful Christmas to all of you, my friends.

The Lowdown on How Deadlines Can REALLY Feel

Bad. Deadlines can feel bad.

LOL!

I had drafted a long post detailing all the ins and outs of my deadline experiences over the past seven months. I still wish I could share it, because I think it's the kind of thing that's very helpful to other writers.

But I'm going to have to wait until I can teach it in a class.

For now, I'll just say, friends, that I am overjoyed to be only two chapters from the end of my third and last novel in this contract, the end of the Saddler's Legacy series that has occupied my intellectual life for the last five years.

And I'll look forward to that class, fellow writers, when I'll give you the real low-down on deadlines and life balance.

First Things First

This weekend, I directed my fourth children's ministry Christmas performance.

Last year was the only time in five years at this church that I didn't direct the program. I had a January 1st deadline for my second novel last year, and as a result I was too scared to commit to anything in the holiday season. But I felt the absence of that program. It was a real sacrifice, and a reluctant one. I knew that no one else would have my peculiar passion for this type of Christmas pageant, and therefore, the kids wouldn't get the opportunity to do it.

This year, I faced another January 1st novel deadline. But this time, I was determined not to sacrifice that Christmas program again out of fear of my deadline.

I had to place first things first. Though writing means a lot to me, children mean more.

Why did it matter? What's the big deal about a bunch of kids in costumes dug up from the church basement?

When you're eight, a white robe and tinsel halo are beautiful, extraordinary. They make you part of the miracle at Bethlehem. And all your friends are equally transformed into part of the great story, as if heaven just came down to earth. And it did.

I spent ten years of my life without faith, in my teens and early twenties. One of my strongest connections to my childhood faith was the joy of Christmas pageants. It's possible that those early memories helped me to return to faith as an adult. Now, I hope I'm building those same memories for the children I know.

Tinsel haloes matter.