absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. well, maybe... just a little bit.

This time of year, I always spend copious amounts of time daydreaming.  About what?  You might ask, with good reason.  
I daydream about my hubby.
No, I'm not married, very astute observation, but by the grace of God I will be someday.  And it's intoxicating to me to think about spending Christmas with someone who ADORES me, completely, wholly, romantically...  just for being me.  I want to have someone to shoo out of the kitchen while I make Christmas dinner, someone with whom to give mistletoe a run for its money, someone to impress my parents with, a guy who'll make me feel like ten million bucks, everyday.
A few weeks ago, my sister sent me an email featuring a sort of letter from God to any girl who is feeling like she needs a man.  My heart ached to read it.  You know the kind of ache, the one that almost feels like heartburn but represents a desire so passionate and yearning that it becomes an actual physical feeling.  I wish I could put the exact words in here, but instead I'll summarize the painful truth it brought me.
Until I find my identity, value, and SATISFACTION in God, in a romantic relationship I'll be looking for them to fill me.  The satisfaction part is the real key here.  God knows that I must be complete in Him before I look to be joined with someone else.  Marriage isn't two incomplete people coming together to be the other's missing piece; that's what God does.  Marriage is God fusing two lives that have found their complete fulfillment in Him together to complement each other and NOT fulfill the other's need for love, but rather display to the other what they've learned of God's love.  
It might not make sense to someone who doesn't live in my head... (my head: population 2, me and a little gnome I call Trudy) but I have the hardest time getting this truth down the highway from my brain to my heart.  
I also have another observation to make about myself.  and humankind in general.  You know they say, "love is blind," and that typically means that love is blind to the faults of the other person.  But I would venture to say that love sees more clearly than anything and acts in the best interests of the one it loves.  Infatuation, on the other hand, is most definitely blind.  That dangerous emotion can take you over, make your brain defy reason, logic, and wise counsel.  Infatuation sees little but the infatuatee.  I'd like to skip the whole being infatuated thing, please.  
So now, it's Christmas night and as I sit in the dark in my living room (dark because the timer on the Christmas tree lights just went off.  It seems to be signaling that Christmas is over.), I want to be like a wise man.  I have been reminded through a variety of avenues over the last few days that the wise men a) travelled a very long way, for a very long time, on very uncomfortable camels, in a desert just to worship Jesus... sometimes I can't even focus on Sunday morning in the church that is a five minute drive in my nice car from my home.  and b) that even though gold frankincense and myrrh seem like odd, impractical, and even rude gifts for a newborn child, Jesus was no ordinary child.  Jesus was a KING.  repeat after me: king, ruler, leader, savior, KING, KING, KING.  And the gifts the wise men brought were what they considered valuable.  And like the wise men, I offer what I consider valuable at Jesus' feet.  
Happy birthday, Jesus... even though you were probably born in March (like me!).  Thank you for humbling yourself to the lowliest of human positions.  You not only came as a human, but as an illegitimate baby.  You weren't just born; you were born in a stable.  You didn't just live, you lived as a carpenter, then as a traveling healer, preacher, and teacher.  
And you didn't just die.
Praise God that you didn't just die; you bore our sins, with every whipping and pounding of the nails.  
and you rose again.  
but that's another post, for another celebratory holiday.
Merry Christmas, loved ones.