(First, I must admit that I’ve only just now recovered from a very colorful verbal exchange with my computer after it lost this entire post into the unknown cybersphere. As I go back and try to remember it, I can’t help but think it’s a little ironic.)

I have so many plausible excuses, really I do!
Chasing after early morning 2-year-old squeals and filling the night with laughter, for starters.

There’s something about Christmas that won’t let me sit down and spell it out, blog style. The rumble of excitement as family exchanges gifts with the lengthy explanations from every giver, the soaking in of silly faces with people who live too far, the together-ness that makes memories on it’s own… This joy can be exhausting!

It’ll park your eyes at a willing, wide-open stance. It will put dances into your toes. It will make you “poke the bear” until the bear revolts with a playful roar.

It will fill the air with delicious, contagious laughter that (I’m sure) seeped out from under the old wooden doors at my parent’s house and warmed the night trees.

Exhausted by joy.

I wonder if C.S. Lewis would say we are as likely to be exhausted by joy as we are surprised by joy. Well, I submit that it is so.

I wonder if Mary and Joseph were exhausted by joy. I wonder if, when Mary finally gave in to sleep, she felt more than just relief that her vagabond pregnancy had ended. I wonder if Mary’s soul was so full of joy at the coming of the Messiah that her heart got tired.

I wonder if receiving blessings and naming them in thanks can bring a good kind of exhaustion – one that wearies your bones into a prayerful posture.

I wonder at this beautiful Gift.
Christ, our Substitute for the debt our flesh owes.
Christ, our Provision for an eternal abundance of joy.
Christ, our Hope.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy