. . . even though I LOVE IT! I’ve literally been waiting a year for it to return and now I refuse to watch the first episode.

Until I finish something.

I have a list. A checklist that needs to be completed by a certain (soon upcoming) date. I don’t have tons of extra hours in my day. The only reasonable place to cut out the time I need is by carving into my “down time” – my “Downton time,” actually. The time I use to watch TV.

This will not be forever. I am not a gladiator. I WILL reward myself with a Downton binge once my checklist is complete. But until it is, I’m denying myself in an attempt to get something finished.

I’m watching other things: basketball, a sitcom not to be name on the grounds that I might incriminate myself, and the remainder of the football season. I’m not CRAZY; I’m just trying to dangle a particular carrot in front of my procrastinating self in an attempt to keep my proverbial rear in gear.

Think it will work? I hope so!

Ever given up something you wanted in the short-term for the sake of something you wanted in the long-term?

UPDATE 1/20/2012: Checklist complete. Downton Abbey this weekend!

The One Word challenge was created by Alece from the blog Grit and Glory. In place of making a list of resolutions, Alece had the idea to spend the year focused instead on a single inspired word.

I made lists of potential words for my 2012 choice before I finally settled on this one: Dare.

(I was encouraged by Ann Voskamp’s Joy Dare here. I even downloaded her app for my new Android phone so I can keep up with the challenge to be thankful for 1,000 gifts in 2012!)

Dictionary definitions for dare include:

to have the necessary courage or boldness for something; to have the boldness to try; to face courageously

This year I want to be daring. Not in anything particularly scary or risky but just in the simple sense of action.

I am a model perfectionist; I’d rather not try at all than try and fail. This is NOT a winning quality. I want to change this.

I don’t want to keep talking about writing; I want to write something.

I don’t want to keep talking about going to graduate school; I want to apply.

I don’t want to only read over contest guidelines; I want to submit. 

Other words I considered were go or work or do. Dare seemed perfect because to the action it also added the element of bravery.

Blogger Jeff Goins wrote about the difference between dreaming and starting here and that’s been another source of inspiration. With this word as my focus, I’m ready to dare!

If you are interested in joining up with your own One Word 2012, check out the links and join Alece’s community.

I dare you.

You’ve come in sunshiny and cold, as a New Year should. You are clear skies to lift our spirits and give us hope that you will be good, but you are also a deep chill that reminds us you might not.

We know this and yet we welcome you. We welcome you with cheers and streamers and parties. We welcome you as if you were already delivering a summer’s bounty worth of produce and good things. Strawberries and peaches.

We don’t welcome you this way to try to trick you into behaving as we hope you will. We are not ancient peasants trying to appease a god of fertility or wealth. There are no altars.

We welcome you this way for our own sakes. We are not innocent. We’ve seen years come and go. We’ve known you to be both plenty and wanting. We’ve known you one year to be life and another year to be death. Some years, most years, you are both. We know you will bring us pain as well as parties.

But we welcome you anyway. We welcome you the way we smile at a new notebook all white with red and blue lines of days and weeks and months yet to be filled in. Today you are fresh, clean, and unspoiled. You just might be something awesome.

But if you aren’t – if your pages fill up with words and pictures we don’t want – we know another like you will come back around again this time next year. You will be replaced. And hope will be new again.

Today we imagine that you could be anything – great, wonderful, or amazing. And we celebrate that hope generally more than we celebrate you exactly, although you can’t always tell that by our glitter covered hats and metallic noise makers. Thank you for the opportunity just the same. Thank you for holding invisible what you will really be so that we can celebrate what you might be.

When we toast you, New Year, we actually toast a deep and abiding Hope. You are the embodiment of that eternal Hope today.

Cheers!

I’m planning to enjoy the last week of the year without writing any new blog posts. If you are here, though, and looking for something to read on that new iPad of yours (or your same old laptop but with holiday time on your hands), I made a list of the top posts from this year from Rare Rocks along with some of my comments.

1. With Facebook as My Witness from Februrary

I feel like I wrote this a couple of years ago! It’s still advice I give often concerning a problem I actually see getting worse. Most of the time it could be summed up as saying, “Play nice, everyone!” But there are other concerns with Facebook and social networking in general that I know we haven’t even begun to figure out.

2. The Problem with Smart Girls (Part One) from March

This was one of my favorite pieces to write because the topic was so close to my heart (and my reality with three little girls!). I’ve also applied the principles to my own life and hope to continue that into my New Year. It didn’t have as many hits, but I think Part Two was pretty good stuff, too.

3. Beautiful, Fragile Jars from April

This one has become an all-time favorite post because it brought together some ideas I had been thinking about for years. I just needed the right context, I guess, for being able to express it well.

I hope you take a bit of time to review your own year. It helps us be more intentional going into the next when we remind ourselves of what worked and what didn’t in the previous.

All the best to you and yours!

Felicity

A Christmas letter from me to you. In my own hand, as the Apostle Paul would say.

I was struck by this quote I read on Twitter this week:

“The truth is, what we call interruptions are precisely our real life, the life God is sending us day by day.” –C.S. Lewis

Sitting here today at home – when I was planning to be at work finishing up course planning for the upcoming semester – I’m aware of how this truth could help me live more peacefully. More in sync with Jesus’ caution that we don’t worry about tomorrow but live each day as it comes.

Last night Macy puked right before bed, following the example of her old sisters – Ada on Sunday and Claire on Tuesday. The whole house is basically wondering when the next one of us is going to drop. We’re eating toast and saltines and drinking Sprite. We’re crashing on sofas and watching lots of TV. We’re cancelling planned shopping trips. (We’re wiping everything down with Clorox wipes!) We’re being forced to slow down.

After getting everyone to bed last night, I retreated to my mom and dad’s house to watch my Missouri Tigers play basketball on their HD TV. During the boring parts (we lead that game by more than 10 for a long time), we talked about how it seems like someone is always getting this stomach bug around Christmas time. We think it was Serenity’s Jake last year maybe? Her the year before. It’s just life. It just happens.

So why do I get frantic about it? As a favorite Jon Foreman lyric says it, “Why do I freak out?” Why do I sometimes go to bed thinking, “How will I survive if I have to be up all night taking care of them?!” Because, really, couldn’t I cancel something the next day? Couldn’t I just accept the illness as a chance to slow down and stay in? Sure, I’d rather stay in and have everyone be healthy, but this is the interruption I’ve been given. How will I use it?

Too often I’m frustrated not because things are so bad but because they simply haven’t gone according to my plan.

Those are my Christmas Eve Eve thoughts today, Rare Rocks. Let’s take whatever day we’re given this season and do our best with it. Let’s forget about our expectations for what life should be and just accept it for what it is.

Have any of your interruptions frustrated you this week or have you already figured this one out? Do tell.

I love these videos from St. Paul’s Church in New Zealand. (I’ve yet to meet a New Zealander that I didn’t like!) Especially considering that Jesus told us the only way to come to God was with faith like a child, this is an excellent presentation of the greatest story ever told.

Merry Christmas!