Why I Don't Get Tired of Christmas Music

I love Christmastime, and I'm thankful for it. Not because I like shopping (I hate it) or coming up with gifts (I've never been very good at it and the selection process makes me terribly insecure). I like decorating for Christmas, but that's just because the colors and sparkles are beautiful and it's hard to mess it up. Christmas treats are a short-lived joy, because they are amazing but always end with a sugar crash.

No, my favorite thing about Christmas is the Christmas music. I like many of the sentimental, ambience- and tradition-minded songs, including "White Christmas" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." But the songs that I love most are the old Christmas hymns that are full of Gospel truths and constantly being re-interpreted by various artists and played everywhere at Christmastime.

Even though my secular, consumption-minded culture has usurped much of the holiday, you can catch glimmers of its original meaning in those Christmas songs played on the radio. They may just be a holiday tradition for some people, but if you pay attention, really pay attention, to the lyrics, it's like you're hearing the best, most poetic sermons set to music, played everywhere. You can be driving in your car or walking around the store, getting groceries or toilet paper or gifts, and in the background your hear Biblical truths about Jesus and His Kingdom:

• The miracle of the Incarnation ("Veiled in flesh the Godhead see" "See within a manger laid Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth!" )
• The identity of Jesus (King and God and Sacrifice, symbolized in the Wise Men's three gifts) ("Born a King on Bethlehem's plain; gold I bring to crown Him again" "Frankincense to offer have I; incense owns a Deity nigh" "Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom. / Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb.")
• Jesus took the punishment our sins earn us ("with His blood mankind hath bought.")
• Jesus gives us a relationship with God ("God and sinners reconciled!")
• Jesus restores us back to God's original design ("No more let sin and sorrow grow, nor thorns infest the ground. / He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found...")
• Jesus frees us from the sin and struggles within us ("Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day / To save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray.")
• Jesus teaches us how we are to love others ("His gospel is peace. / Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother / and in His name, all oppression shall cease.")
• Jesus prays for us ("...for sinners here the Silent Word is pleading.")
• Jesus is the Way to the Kingdom of God, both now and in the future ("He has opened heaven's door and man is blessed forevermore")

These songs are replete with truth and hope, which is something I always need; even when I don't realize that I am drained, hearing the Good News is the best refreshment for a weary soul and the best reminder of what's really important in life. And if you get tired of a particular musical interpretation, there are always new versions coming out, once again making these truths sound as enjoyable and remarkable as they actually are.

And it's everywhere at Christmastime. Listen for it.

Pumpkin Walnut Scones Recipe

I love the pumpkin scones from Starbucks. Love, love, love them. And this fall, it seems like I cannot get enough pumpkin.

However, I can't afford to go to Starbucks that often, and I'm trying to eliminate most sugar from my diet. I had made some whole-wheat vegan scones before, but they were always a little dry, even if I substituted butter for the applesauce or whole milk for the almond milk. They never satisfied my craving for a sweet, Starbucks-like pumpkin scone. So I decided to play around with recipes I had and see if I could achieve something that would be pumpkin-y and sweet without actually having a lot of sugar.

Voilà! Success! I've made these scones twice now and they came out amazing both times. They are soft and delicious and moist (as much as I hate that word, it's accurate here, in the good way). They are also pretty healthy, considering they're scones. I think the difference was made by using spelt flour instead of regular whole-wheat flour, and also having the walnuts ground into the flour.

Also, they are quickly-made, especially if you have a food processor. I supposed it would be possible to make them if you had a pastry cutter and some kind of spice grinder for the walnuts, but the food processor makes it quick and easy.

So, without further ado, here's the recipe:

1) Into your food processor, dump the following dry, spice, and fat ingredients:

• 1 cup whole-wheat spelt flour
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2-3 tablespoons brown sugar (they are good both ways, just a touch sweeter with 3 tablespoons)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• A sprinkle of ginger and nutmeg each
• A tiny pinch of cloves 

• 4 tablespoons butter, cold and cut into small cubes
• 1/2 cup walnuts (I've been cooking with raw sprouted walnuts; they may not have to be sprouted, but I would definitely use raw walnuts)

2) Run the food processor for about twenty seconds, or until the walnuts and butter have been well-ground into the dry ingredients and the whole mixture looks a little like wet sand.

3) Dump the flour mixture into a bowl and add the following:

• 1/4 cup almond milk
• 3/4 cup pumpkin

4) Mix wet ingredients into dry ones. (I've found a couple stirs with a spoon help get things started, and then I use my hands to really get the pumpkin to absorb.)

5) Shape the dough into a circle about a half-inch thick, then place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Cut the circle into eight triangles. Your uncooked scones should look like this, except a little darker because this was an attempt where I forgot the spices and had to sprinkle cinnamon over the top later:

6) Bake for 10-12 minutes at 450 degrees (I set my oven to 440, because it always runs a bit hot).

7) Let rest on the cookie sheet for five to ten minutes before serving.

Unfortunately, I do not have food styling skills, so the pictures I tried to take of the finished product didn't look that good. The scones did, however, taste VERY good, so if you're craving pumpkin, try the recipe... Let me know what you think and whether you make any adjustments of your own to increase the tastiness!

Thankful for Thankfulness

This will be my first year participating in the "30 Days of Thankfulness" tradition on Facebook. I am starting a day late, having spent yesterday debating whether or not I would participate. This is no surprise to those of you who know how indecisive I am and how much I hate commitment.

But I decided to participate after all, for two reasons: first, I am going to try to use a lot of pictures instead of descriptions. I tend to get wordy with descriptions, and when I get wordy then I always self-edit, and when I know there will be editing involved I procrastinate, because I am a perfectionist.

Second, there are simply a lot of things for which I am truly thankful these days.

Gratefulness is not my heart's state as often as I would like. Too many times busy-ness makes me forget to feel grateful, or the routine of life makes me take good things for granted, or my inner, entitled ideal of what my life should be likes makes me focus on what I don't have and the little things going wrong, rather than the many things that are going well.

But over the last month, God has been working on my heart. I have been studying grace and growing in my appreciation for it, and I have been studying Jesus and growing in my love for Him. These are things I am grateful for, and somehow in the midst of them, God has been helping me to feel more thankful for a variety of things.

I have been feeling that inner peace and thankfulness that you can't fake or drum up. Prayer and reflection can lead to gratefulness, but with the two baby girls, I don't have as much time as I would like for those disciplines. I can't sit and read my Bible for an hour, and journal my way to gratefulness; many times, all I have is a few minutes to pray for my family and ask God both for gratefulness and to be reminded to pray throughout the day. Over the last month, God has been faithful to answer my prayers for a thankful heart. It's not natural to me, and it's not something I can earn. I still have many stressed, angry, irritable, ungrateful, entitled, selfish moments throughout the day, but the Holy Spirit keeps speaking truth to me, which gives me perspective and reminds me of God's goodness to me.

This grateful feeling is a gift from Him, and I am truly joyful that He is helping me see how much of a gift it is. So, for day one, I am thankful that God is making me thankful.

The Golden Age of Babyhood

Kaitlyn is now seven months old, a month into what I've thought of as "the golden age of babyhood" since Alexandra went through it.

I love my babies at this age; they are so fascinating and just... enjoyable between six and twelve months. (In case there's any doubt, I love my babies all the time. But some ages are more fun than others.)

She's becoming much more independent than she was; her attention lasts longer, and she will spend several minutes playing with toys. She loves reading and has favorite books.

She's curious about everything and wants to grab anything in sight, from toys that she can manipulate to large objects that she scratches at to her sister's hair. When she finally grasps the objects she's reaching for, she loves turning them over in her chubby little hands to examine them, taste them, give them a good shake, and whack them against things to see what happens.

She experiments to figure things out; when she sits on the table in her Bumbo while I prepare lunch, she smacks the soles of her feet against the wood, enjoying the sounds. She'll grip a toy with both hands, raise it above her head, and try with all her might to pull it apart. When she discovers that she can get a new view of something by rolling from her back to her side, she rolls back and forth several times just to practice.

She's on the verge of exciting physical accomplishments. In two weeks, she went from not being able to sit up at all to sitting up by herself for several minutes while playing. She loves to grasp my fingers and pull herself up to standing, especially if her big sister is standing right next to her. She gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth, eventually stretching out on her tummy to reach whatever it is that she wants. And she has three teeth coming in, all at once!

Also at this age, she's at her most social. She can distinguish between her family and friends and strangers. Mommy is still her favorite, but she adores her big sister and has a special smile just for Daddy. She's always been a pretty cheerful baby and likes to smile at almost anyone who smiles at her. Just don't make her mad, because there are certain triggers (such as not feeding her RIGHT NOW when she's hungry after a long nap) that turn her from easygoing to enraged, from smiling to tearful and red-faced.

It was surprising to me how many differences I could see between my girls' personalities, right from the first weeks of their lives. Now those personality differences are more obvious. Kaitlyn has always been my cuddle-bug, my little Mommy's girl, the one who likes silence like me, whereas Alexandra was fairly independent right away and likes background noise like her daddy. Kaitlyn loves interesting textures and would rather be constantly on the move, touching and tasting things, while Alexandra always wanted to sit back and observe.

It is so exciting to watch babies gain new skills and abilities, and it astounds me how much you can know about these little beings who can't talk, just by observing them and interacting with them. I'm so looking forward to the next few months of the Golden Age.

What Is This Freedom, and Where Do I Get It, and Who Gets the Glory? How Galatians Is Transforming My Idea of "God's Way"

My friend recently wrote a blog post entitled, "Why I Won't Be 'Growing My Kids God's Way.'" I agreed with her post, as I'm not a fan of what I know about the program. What really hit home for me, though, was her follow-up post, written because some readers were wondering why she was so opposed to that particular program. After all, most parently ideologies and programs have strengths and weaknesses; why not take in the good and leave out of the bad? For her, it all came down to the idea of God's grace: the Growing Kids God's Way program has a very strong emphasis on external behavior.

Katie wrote, "It is because I come out of a works-based, earning, “getting it right” culture of Christianity…but am conversely learning the everyday reality and expression of grace…that I am so passionate about exposing programs, habits, and expressions of any works-based version of Christianity." This statement resonated strongly with me, as I only realized relatively recently how ingrained a works-based Christianity was in my soul, and I find myself more and more aware of all the subtleties of works-based "Christianity" that are present in the American church (not to pick on Americans only, but I am not very familiar with other countries' church cultures).

A culture of works-based Christianity is a lot like slavery. You can't imagine the pride and arrogance that fill your heart (which you try not to express, because that would expose you) when you are keeping the rules. You can't imagine the devastation and alienation from God you feel when you mess up. You can't imagine the incongruity between an outer world where people talk about how good you are, a shining light and example, and your inner world full of doubts, struggles, bitterness, anger, and pride (that you can't ever get help with, because then everyone would know you weren't as good as you seemed).

Growing up in the church, I was very much aware of the enslavements of sin. I wasn't aware of the enslavement of religion. I knew what things I should and shouldn't do. My personality naturally wants to please people, and the esteem of authority figures feeds my pride, so being good was easy for me. I LIKED following rules, because following rules was a sure way to earn the approval of parents, teachers, and other adults in my life. I was able to figure out the "rules" of getting along in the kid world and obtain the approval of kids around me.

I didn't realize until I was older that I applied the same logic to my relationship with God. It was easy: I would and wouldn't do certain things to keep God happy. Principles about loving God and people were difficult to manage, because they were not measurable; rules and measureables I liked, because I could check them off my list.

But things started to change as I got older. I doubted my salvation, because I kept finding sin in myself. I knew that God loved me because He loves everybody - that's just what He does - but I had trouble believing He loved me individually. I kept hearing people talk about grace and Jesus's love and freedom, and I became more and more frustrated because I didn't know what those things felt like. I knew what I should believe and what I should do, but I wasn't sure I had this relationship that everyone kept talking about. I would read books about grace and passages throughout the New Testament, but I could never really believe that grace was for me.

Deep down inside, I truly believed what an LDS friend of mine once expressed: you have to work hard and earn God's love and approval, and Jesus takes care of the rest. That is, it's mostly up to you to try to be good, and the Cross is for the leftovers. I would never say it when talking about my beliefs or theology, but my heart and behavior revealed my true belief: Jesus would only do His part if I was working hard to do mine. And I was afraid of Him, because I knew that I was not working as hard as I could. And if I were to work as hard as I could... I would probably die, or at the very least, hate God.

I knew this was wrong, but couldn't get it into my heart. Speaking to others about this, I even felt a little mystified by my mom's definition: "Here's how I feel His grace: Imagine lying on your back, floating in a pool. Every part of your body is relaxed, the water holds you up, the sun is warm on your face.... Ah, ...grace. God does all the work." It was a foreign concept.

Since I knew that Galatians talked a lot about grace, I decided to read Galatians. Over and over. Until what Paul said about Jesus and grace became second nature to me, rather than glimpses of hope in my rule-bound world.

That was when I learned something interesting about my rule-keeping.

Even though I knew I was in a spiritual prison of sorts, I had never realized that my rule-keeping was evil. I always assumed there were a few levels of evil, of worldliness. The lowest, of course, was enslavement to worldliness, to obvious sins like adultery, murder, greed, etc. Wanting to follow rules and earn salvation, though not the way to salvation, of course, was at least better, because you were wanting to please God. Surely that desire counted for something. I did not see a difference between obeying God so that He would love me and obeying God because He loved me.

And then, as I was reading through Galatians the second or third or fourth time, I'm not sure when, I was hit by something as a lightening bolt. Galatians 2:20 said, "I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose."

Hmmm. I think that's when it began to sink in.

I would never, ever say to Jesus, "Sorry, Your grace means nothing." Nor would I say, "Your death on the cross was pretty much insufficient. You can't save me. Only I can save me." Yet that was what I was doing every time I felt like my good deeds were giving God a helping hand. Trying to be good to earn my salvation wasn't okay because "at least I was trying." I was convicted of my own arrogance. As Martin Luther said in his commentary on Galatians, "What awful presumption to imagine that there is any work good enough to pacify God, when to pacify God required the invaluable price of the death and blood of His own and only Son?... To keep the Law in order to be justified means to reject grace, to deny Christ, to despise His sacrifice, and to be lost."

Then, I read another verse. Galatians 4:3 said, "So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world." Growing up in a particular denomination of the church, I had always read this verse as being about bondage to the sins that related to "being bad," not "being good." Drinking, premarital sex, murder, hatred... those were the worldly things that enslaved people. But as I studied Galatians, I realized that the "elemental things of the world" were actually the religious systems apart from Christ's death and resurrection. Trying to earn heaven by following rules, as good as I had thought it, was actually a form of worldliness, an effort that Paul described as "weak and worthless elemental things." (Gal. 4:9) In thinking that I would earn God's love by avoiding worldliness and darkness, I was living under a different kind of worldliness and darkness.

As Martin Luther expressed it, "[The Law] may restrain evil, but it does not deliver from sin." I had assumed that restraining my sin would deliver me from evil. Yet my inner life proved otherwise, and my awareness of the inner life (and its overflow into my outer life) led me to despair and be angry with God. Why would He ask me to be good and make it so hard? Why would He give me a desire to please Him along with an inability to do so? And as it began to really sink in that I could not save myself, that the attempt to do so would just add to my pride and list of sins, it was then that I began to trust in Christ's effort alone to save me. In all my straining to obey the American Church version of the Law and my studying of the Gospel over and over, they worked together as God intended. When I finally reached the hopelessness that anyone who pursues the Law eventually finds, I arrived at the hope revealed in the Gospel. Once again, Luther expressed perfectly what was in my heart:

    "Men fast, pray, watch, suffer. They intend to appease the wrath of God and to deserve     God's grace by their exertions. But there is no glory in it for God, because by their exertions these workers pronounce God an unmerciful slave driver, an unfaithful and angry Judge. They despise God, make a liar out of Him, snub Christ and all His benefits; in short they pull God from His throne and perch themselves on it. 

    "Faith truly honors God. And because faith honors God, God counts faith for righteousness.

    "Christian righteousness is the confidence of the heart in God through Christ Jesus."

My attempts at self-salvation are worthless and worldly. So what do I do? How do I respond? I am learning to be wary of any response that involves ME trying or my effort. All I can do is ask Jesus to change me from the inside out, to give me faith because I can't muster it up or fake it, and choose to believe that He will deliver me. And here, in this spot, I am finally loving God not only because I know He is just and powerful and terrifyingly worthy of awe, but also because He is showing me how loving and gracious He is. "Do not fear, do not worry about your salvation," He says, "because I was willing to give up My own Son for your righteousness, and I am saving you."

Anyway... that's the long version. All this to say, I know where my friend is coming from in her visceral reactions against any parenting program that encourages our human tendency to rely on behavior as a measure of righteousness while downplaying the heart. Once you are rescued from that place, you never want to go back, and you certainly don't want people you love to end up there. 

"If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit to [external] decrees.... These matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence." -Colossians 2:20, 23

You cannot promote man's efforts to be good as "God's way."