While playing with this site’s settings on Thanksgiving, I came across several unpublished posts. I’m not sure what held me back from hitting “publish” two years ago, but this entry still rings true. It’s also remarkable how much has changed since I wrote it, on Nov. 28, 2008.
After several days filled with family and friends, tonight is this girl’s night in. And it’s time, at last, that I can listen to Christmas music guilt-free.
I waited until I returned home from today’s errands, then began with the newest of my three favorite Christmas albums. Red Mountain Church‘s Silent Night carried me through cooking dinner, and Snow Angels by Over the Rhine accompanied me as I ate, then straightened up my apartment.
Finally, I turned on Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God, dragged my Christmas decorations out of the attic and launched into the annual task of evaluating each item. The star ornament I bought last year hangs in my bedroom year-round. The Pottery Barn poinsettias and mistletoe always go out first, followed this year by my tree topper. (Though treeless, I found it a home perched among the books on my to read shelf–located in my kitchen, so it’s positioned for maximum viewability.) I continued lifting boxes of ornaments out of the Rubbermaid tub.
And then I uncovered four packages of Christmas letterhead stationery.
It’s funny how the smallest items send you back in time. I bought this stationery, decorated with Luke 2:11 and John 1:16, in an after-Christmas sale in (I’m guessing) 2001. By the time Christmas returned, I expected to be on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. This paper would serve as the background for my December prayer letter to my ministry supporters.
Life so rarely turns out how we expect! I interviewed with Crusade that December, was accepted to staff, received a staff account number and the information I needed to raise support for the 2002 summer training. And then, a month before graduation, I decided not to go on staff.
It’s a decision I’ve never regretted. I was to be campus staff, aka a professional extrovert. It wasn’t a good fit, and I am so glad life has turned out as it has.
But it is so different than I imagined when I bought that stationery.