Last night, I stayed up too late watching a show about climbing Mount Everest. Let me first say that I balk at climbing the hill every morning on my way to walk the girls to school, so mountain climbing is like, the last thing on my list of things I want to do. Right below get a root canal and drill a hole in my head.

Still, it was fascinating to watch people who know what they’re doing make their way to the top. It was freezing and dark and they had all this stuff they had to carry. One man was battling a stomach virus. And at nearly 28,000 feet, they could hardly breathe. At one point, one of them said that the key is to look no further than your feet. Really? That’s the key? Because I thought the key might be take a crazy pill and wash it down with a glass full of Superman juice.

They reached the summit just before dawn. But when the narrator darkly announced that is only half the climb and the descent is more dangerous than the ascent, I turned it off. The only kind of mountain descent I want to see is on one of these.

This morning, I read in Habakkuk chapter 3, where even in the midst of great despair, the writer admits that the Lord is the origin of strength. He makes me as surefooted as a deer, able to tread upon the heights (v. 19).

Then, in one of my favorite devotional books, Jesus Lives, Sarah Young says this:

Awareness of your need for Me is what creates a strong connection to My Presence. My Power flows into you continually: It gives you strength to take the next step, strength to resist discouragement and despair, strength to know Me in intimate dependence…Though the way before you may be steep and rocky, it is nonetheless the path of Life. It is where you encounter My luminous Presence – radiating peace that transcends all understanding.

As crazy as those mountain climbers seem to me, perhaps we have more in common than I first thought.

image from The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones

At the risk of forcing a local weather update on you for a state you don’t live in, I’m posting this to simply say expectations are everything. I’m glad I got the screen shot of Christmas snow predictions last week. Twenty minutes after I posted that, the forecast changed to rain.

As we enter into this Christmas week, I’m reminded how expectations play a vital role in my holiday experience. Snow or no snow, I’m encouraged to remember simple truth this week: Jesus came.  A thrill of hope for a weary world, He was born and He lived and He died and He rose up again. Snow or no snow, that is a truth I can grab onto.

Here’s our forecast for next week. I’m more excited than my kids. In the meantime, we wait for southern snow for this weekend. Oh snow. I love you.

We’ve entered the serious zone of rest around here. After two days of eating and laughing and Mom doing the cooking, life has slowed to a crawl and I am reveling in the pace of it. Here’s to one more bite and an extra workout on Monday.

She was in town to do an outdoor concert at the baseball park. I had no ticket because in those days, I didn’t have the foresight to plan ahead for things like that. The drivers seat of my little black Corolla would be the best seat I would get. I drove to the park determined to roll down the windows and find a spot on the street close to the stadium. I was happy there.

In the middle of Come In, a couple leaving the concert early noticed me sitting small in the front seat and held out an extra ticket at the end of outstretched arms. I gratefully accepted and within minutes, the gray muffled tones from the parking lot became rich and distinctly colorful. What had been background was now center stage.

I sat up front, counting her freckles. And then she came into the grassy area after her set and I walked up to her. And we chatted, yes we did: about how her brother and I went to the same small school in a suburb of Detroit, though not at the same time; about how I remember her before she was famous when she came to our youth group and sang folksy, poetic tunes from a stool in the front and about how I had been a fan ever since.

But you know this isn’t really about Sarah Masen. It’s about my continual insistence that I’m okay with less when really, I long for more. It’s about how often I tell myself I’m content to sit on a side street rather than taking thankful steps toward the center of adventure.

If he says He will do far more abundantly beyond, then who am I to stop before He gets there?

So I got my haircut last week and some of you asked for photos. This is the after picture. I say that because exactly one person noticed it was cut. Not that it’s a bad thing. More, it is simply evidence that cutting three inches off my hair really didn’t make that big of a difference. Wanna know who noticed?

My brother-in-law. I had to laugh.