IHOP Girl: Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to my faithful commenters! Another year has come and gone. It never fails to amaze me how fast time flies! That is one of the depressing facts of school breaks. No matter how much you look forward to break, school always seems to be at your door. Oh well...

As for entertaining facts I must tell you about Friday night.

Friday night I went to stay the night at my aunt's house by request of my three younger cousins. After a nice dinner out we decided to do a little Christmas light admiring. Our family has the tradition of singing every Christmas carol we can think of (SFL insists on singing purposefully off key), so I started sing Jingle Bells. Before long the cousins and I were singing as loud as we could.

As an intermission/side note I would like to state that the phrase "act your age" is a relative phrase. After all, how does one know definitively how to act each passing year? Does one act your FELT age, ACTUAL age, CHINESE age, or EMOTIONAL age? See what I mean, it is so confusing!

Anyway, back to the story....

Had I cared I might have noticed the fact that my uncle was quickly loosing all tolerance for the song. Nevertheless I was blissfully ignorant. Therefore, my uncle suddenly turned on the radio full blast in the attempt to silence us. We all screamed and plugged our ears, but refused to stop singing at the top of our lungs.

Now, here is another note...I am not a person to give a challenge to. The more you try to stop me the more I put my mind against stopping. I know that it is a nasty little trait, but I am VERY stubborn...

Anyway, we refused to stop singing, and before we knew it my uncle had rolled down the windows, and turned on the air conditioning on high! Brrrrrrrrr....Unsuccessful in his attempts my uncle started slamming on the brakes until the car was jolting back an forth like one of those puck rocker cars that is spiffed up so that it literally bounces up and down.

Needless to say by the time we got home we were loosing our voices, freezing cold, our ears were ringing, and we were laughing so hard tears were rolling down our faces. It was hilarious.

I guess it was a good substitute for the family outings we usually have... Well, Merry Christmas to you all I hope that you have all had a blessed Sunday celebrating the birth of Jesus.

1 comment:

Jess said...: JESSICA!!!

Come on, SFL, bre, VineyardWorship, Keith I., c3po774, grinch, and everyone else who reads/comments...join me in a chant.

"Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! BLOG! BLOG! BLOG! BLOG! BLOG! BLOG! BLOG! BLOG!..."

*clears throat daintily, sits gracefully, crosses ankles, arranges skirt, and clasps hands*

Hello, my dear Jess! When might we poor desolate readers hope to see another post appear? We anxiously await...; 4:06 PM

Movie Night In...I love a good movie!

Mega Mind
Taking Chance (Will make you cry like a baby)
Charlotte Grey (A bit of a different take on Nazi Germany)
Series - Merlin (I LOVE BBC)
Robin Hood (Okay, a love Russell Crowe, you'll have to understand that about me...)
Kingdom of Heaven (Chuck full of acting power with an epic tale)
Miss Potter (Such a great film! Story of the creator of Peter Rabbit)
How to Train your Dragon (Possibly my favorite animated movie ever...I'm like a little kid, I watch it over and over)
Buck (Sundance winner, Biography of Horse Trainer, heart touching)
Lost in Austin (Modern day spin on Pride and Prej.)

Life as a nurse...

Great words by Reb Jeff: Vayishlach: Facing Death

"Rachel died. She was buried on the road to Ephrat — now called Bethlehem. Jacob set up a pillar above her grave. It is the pillar at Rachel’s grave to this day."–Genesis 35:19-20

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidui http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_(Judaism), and preparing the notifications to the community, feel like little fragments of the sacred. I have been entrusted with the care and tending of the most powerful, complex and difficult emotions that a person can experience in life. I have been made, in some small part, a guardian of the memory of a departed soul — a life that touches upon many other lives.After dropping off my older daughter at her high school this morning, I made a stop at Treasure Coast Hospice http://www.tchospice.org/, a remarkable organization that sets a very high standard for the loving and respectful care of the dying. There, I visited a lovely man whom I have seen a few times in his hospice room. I sat by his bedside and listened to him (in full possession of his faculties) as he told me about his worries about his family, the support of his wife after he is gone, and the future of his children and grandchildren. I was deeply moved by the way he put any concern for himself — even while facing death — in a distant backseat to his concerns for his family. When my own time comes, I can only hope to have his awareness of the way that one life can touch so many others.Also at hospice, I visited a woman I have known for the past two years — a dear soul who is a former Jewish religious school director. I sat with her, too, singing psalms to her as I listened to her heavy and labored breathing. I have no medical training, but I have come to know the sound of a person who is close to death. The body begins to fight for each breath as it slowly looses it grasp on life. As I held her hand and sang, I realized that being a rabbi is no protection against becoming one of the people caught in the web of connection. I, too, am changed by the loss of a life that has touched mine.Later in the day, I met with a couple from our congregation. She had just learned that her brother died yesterday in a car crash. Coming to terms with the loss is made more difficult for her by the fact that she and her brother had not seen each other or spoken in five years. Sometimes, people think it is easier to mourn the death of someone who has moved out of your life. In my experience, though, it's harder. Grief is magnified by wounded love and regret. I have no magic words to say to ease the pain of mourning. All I can do is listen, become a vessel in which people place their stories, and offer compassion.Actually, there is one more thing I can do. I can have faith that "all I can do" is all that I need to do. It is enough.In this week's Torah portion (Vayishlach) Jacob watched Rachel, the love of his life, die in childbirth. He was overcome by grief. Jacob had worked for his cruel uncle Laban for fourteen years to earn the right to marry Rachel. Now she was gone. Because she died while they were traveling, Jacob had to bury her by the side of the road. He built a pillar of stones on the spot to mark the place as sacred.This is what we all do, in one way or another, when death enters our lives. We grieve and our hearts break. We wish that we could continue to walk along the path of life with our loved ones forever, but the dead cannot fully join us. We have to leave something behind in order to resume our own journey. So, what do we do? We mark the moment as sacred. We erect monuments — both in cemeteries and in our hearts. The stones we place on top of stones remind us that a life may end, but its sanctity is forever.The Torah says that the monument Jacob built for his beloved continues to stand until this day. A life that touches the lives of others never ceases to send living reverberations throughout the web that binds us all.