The Anticipation of Christmas

It’s Christmas Eve.

I’m 22, I have a college degree; by quite a few standards I am now an “adult.”

And I still get antsy on this day.

This year I know several of my presents, because I helped pick them out, so my excitement isn’t primarily over gifts like it might have been when I was younger. I’m looking forward to giving some gifts, particularly to my nieces and nephew, and I can’t wait to see their happy little faces. In ways, these are things worth looking forward to.

But my anticipation shouldn’t be entirely about gifts or food or presents. Because tomorrow, we get to celebrate Christmas. 

We get to celebrate Jesus coming to earth as a tiny, wrinkly baby. Incarnation.

Coming to us, his people, in a way we can understand and relate to. Jesus skinned his knees and had hangnails and calloused feet and maybe dandruff and body odor. These are things we know firsthand, because we’ve experienced them too.

And Jesus, God himself, lived on this same earth we walk on.

So it is fitting that I get antsy to celebrate that.

Christmas is more than a day though. This year I’m trying to not put the actual day of Christmas on a pedestal. It’s only 24 hours, and whatever picture of a perfect Christmas I have in my head will not come entirely true. And that’s ok, because Christmas is more than about celebrating a specific day. My anticipation is directed towards more than tomorrow.

Last year around Christmas, I wrote in Advent: Found:

This is the part of Advent I think I had been missing though: the waiting doesn’t end on Christmas. The eager anticipation of that day is a taste of what I should be anticipating each and every day as I wait for Christ to come again…What happened in a stable as foreshadowing of who will come again…What we already have, but not yet in full.

Christmas isn’t just a day, it’s a state of being. Of being in continual hopeful expectation and longing for the day when Christ will return.

And that is something worth getting antsy about.

Merry Christmas, and til next time…

~Brianna!~

p.s. How do you celebrate Christmas? How can you keep it as a reminder that Jesus will come again?

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Adventures-To-Be of a Recent College Graduate

It’s been 2 weeks since I graduated from college, and in that time I have accomplished…well, not much. A clean desk, a few days of babysitting, a few small errands, but nothing as substantial as writing papers or taking exams, which is what I am used to. I’m still learning what it means to be “graduated.”

However, in these past 2 weeks of varying states of boredom, I’ve been looking forward to a grand adventure.

London.

And Edinburgh.

I leave Sunday.

And I’m very, very excited.

A few months ago I bought my ticket, and though the number in my bank account fell significantly, it didn’t really feel real. Now, as my suitcase sits half-packed on my floor, my wallet now contains some British pounds, and my brand new passport is absolutely itching for its first stamps, it still doesn’t feel entirely real. Part of me is afraid that the whole thing will go by so quickly it’ll feel like it never even happened, and all I’ll have left is the pictures (of which I’m sure I’ll take loads).

But even if it does feel like it never happened at all, I can be thankful that, as my days of college dwindled, and I adjust to an odd mixture of old and new situations colliding, and I have fought to stave off boredom these past couple weeks, this trip has given me something to look forward to. The background on my phone has been a picture of Edinburgh for several months now, to remind me why I sometimes had to say to no to fast food or an impulse Meijer purchase. This trip has been my something to look forward to, a reward of sorts after 4 years of paper writing and Easy Mac. And very soon, I will finally get to enjoy my something to look forward to.

It’s important to have something to look forward to, to strive for and anticipate. Part of the fun is the excitement before the event actually happens, or imagining what things will be like with that new something in your life. Though the waiting may get old after a while, it has a pleasure all its own.

There’s a bit of trepidation mixed in with my excitement as well; I haven’t flown since I was in 1st grade, and now I’ll be navigating airports on my own, not to mention a train station in a county I’ve never set foot in, currency that feels strangely shaped, and dodging cars driving on the…well, not wrong, but unfamiliar side of the road. I have to remind the part of me that enjoys being in the know: this is an adventure. Adventure can be fun, exciting, and magical. So that is what I will choose to see.

For now, I sit in the thrill of anticipation. Next week, I frolic in adventure. =)

Til next time…

~Brianna!~

The First Post by The Recent College Graduate: Restless

“Hi, I’m Brianna, and I’m a student at…”

I find myself stopping short when I think of how would I introduce myself to someone. That label of “student” I wore for so long is now gone, and has yet to be replaced by anything significant enough worth mentioning. It’s been nearly a week since I graduated, and I have done very little; perhaps nothing at all of noteworthy status. The bed I sit on as I type this is the same one I slept in as a child, while some of the decorations on my walls hail from high school days. It is hard to feel as though graduation was a step forward; dwelling-wise, I have gone backward.

My calendar for the rest of this week and much of next is quite empty. I find myself coming up with errands to run, and intentionally splitting them up into smaller trips on separate days, just for some sort of reason to leave the house each day. It hasn’t even been a full week of nothing-ness and already I am doing this. Restless.

In a week and a half I’m leaving for a trip to London and Edinburgh. Approximately half of my time is filled with thoughts of this, of what to pack and how things will look and will the person I sit next to on the plane be nice and will I be able to concentrate on what anyone is actually saying when I’m lost in the sound of their fascinating accents and which shoes should I wear on the plane? These thoughts are helpful, in a way. Anticipation is exciting.

But my trip will inevitably end. Less than a week after I return I’ll start my twenty hour a week temp job, but still…so many hours in a week to fill. Yet I hate thinking like that–that I’m simply trying to fill the hours of each day, instead of really enjoying what I’m doing. Restless.

I don’t really want to sit still all the time, yet at the same time I find myself feeling that doing something is too much work. Restless.

Restless, restless, restless.

Til next time…

~Brianna!~