An Open Heart....

At this unreasonably late~early hour i feel the urge to blog...so i'm gonna....
maybe it's needing to process the end of the year....before Christmas week hits full force.... 
It's been a series of sentimental days....i could analyze why and come up with some pretty good reasons...but i'm learning to listen to the emotions and not try to explain them away....
Some thoughtfulness comes from looking back over this year...the ups and downs of a rather weighty time...
It's good (but not necessarily fun!) to be living fully aware...living in the truth....knowing that hope and honesty and faith really do enable us to be secure....even when life is insecure...
I think my eyes are a little more open, my vision a bit more unclouded.....
I see a lot of things more clearly.
oh...and my heart.....maybe it's a little more open, too....

early in this year, i strongly felt that God was leading me to pray and endeavor "for an open heart". Goodness gracious, that was mighty providential planning on His part (kind of tricky, actually!!)
How absolutely gracious and good He was to prepare me to be guarding myself against the very thing that in my own strength is a most impossible task : not letting life and disappointing relationships and situations convince me to harden my heart....
This year, it's taken courage and grace and plain ole grit to not completely give in to blame and fear and anxiety...
It's taken looking to friends and relationships that have not disappointed, but have, in fact, risen to the occasion with support and care and love...
But mostly it's taken the gentle and patient and faithful presence of the Father....keeping my heart and my head steady in ways that i can not even begin to understand...

So i finish up this year  hoping and praying and believing that living with an open heart is still the best option....still better than guardedness, still better than cynicism, still better than duplicity....
I want a heart open to the beautiful path of mercy...
Open to being defined and guided by God, not man....
Truthfully open to both the goodness and the awfulness of humanity; in other words, the complexity that exists in all of us!
Open to new possibilities...to allowing God to work in ways that i may not understand; allowing for endings and beginnings that are difficult and messy...but maybe necessary...
I'm hoping for positive places someday out of all of this openness, but i'm aware that it may continue to involve pain...most things worth understanding are that way, i think...

"I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision....I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back." (Maya Angelou) (March 2nd on fb)

i know that all of this rambling is more than a little cryptic, but i bet that even if you don't get the details you get the emotions of this heart journey that we all take at some point or another, i guess...
A writer i read some after, Sarah Bessey, recently used the phrase "true enough" : in this crazy world of social media, it's easy to overshare....to risk too much...or, to guard too much. it's clear that we're probably never sharing everything ..and we shouldn't be. We only share glimpses of all that we are.....but i began this year hoping to be a little more authentic on this blog...and i hope that i have been. Not because it matters what this blog is like!! but it does matter what my heart is like...
The struggles and "successes" that i share here are muddier than i might express them on fb...or even face-to-face...
Being vulnerable is a choice that always hold lots of positives but plenty of negatives, too...(and i don't always choose it!)
I often am ashamed of how imperfect and far from my ideals some moments of my life are...and i am so aware of how much i need a Wonderful Counselor who meets me in these areas of neediness...
But i do want to be "true enough"...so that i can celebrate the ways God is helping me even in my weakest times and so that i can change and grow more like Jesus...
i pray that this Christmas and New Year we will be brave enough to rely more on this Christ who came to give us Himself....to fully open our hearts to Him and to each other, allowing Him to create beauty in the stories of our lives...

"So let's all gather at the manger

And bring all our hopes and hurts and fears
All of our unworthiness and shame
Knowing every one of us is the reason that He came

God is with us
God is for us
This is my story and this is my song
And God is with us
And God is for us all"
(Steven Curtis Chapman)

*i wrote this a couple of night ago and cleaned it up a little before hitting that publish button*

"Merry Christmas Cookies"

at the start of this year, i had a lofty/small plan of how i might try to write out some of these past years of caregiving by telling stories about how cooking ~ making my Mom's recipes and establishing my own ~ have helped see us through these days.... (see here :)

um, yeah. that hasn't happened!!
like many sorta good plans of mine, this one has fallen by the wayside...
a wayside littered with too many anxieties too count....too much uncertainties for even my very over-multitasking mind to manage well!!

so...it's almost the end of 2012...and come what may has come and gone...and we have MADE it through this year...still in one piece, still holding our heads high (ok, they're a little more bent!), still hanging on to our faith...and tonight i made one of those recipes that would have gone in that little book if i had ever gotten it started:)

Merry Christmas Cookies are pretty much little, perfectly balanced bites of fruit cake!
and while fruitcake itself seems to often be maligned, i've never heard anyone who tried these cookies do any maligning:)

i can't remember a Christmas that we didn't have these...and i really do not know how old this recipe is...
but it's pretty old...
in our recipe books, it's always sourced as coming from Aunt Bernice.... Grandpa's sister in Florida.
my memories of her are of a big open heart....giving, responsible, God-loving...
she gave the recipe to my Grandma Anderson...she of the aprons and sloppy kisses and prayers and a gentle heart weakened through sorrow....

but i mostly remember my Mom making these...along with the 1,000's of other varieties she lined the tables with, loaded up in the trunk of the car to give away...sent in boxes to places like NYC...
How very much love she invested in all those cookies...when she didn't quite have the words or the magic to fix the troubles of life, she gave away herself when she gave away all those cookies. i didn't quite see it then, but i do now.

There's still no magic fixing for life....but there's cookies and love and together they make it better...
So Mom has walked me through this recipe....the weird almost can't mix it thickness of the pecans and fruitcake mix...how you can't get the oven too high and how you have to be patient and let them cook a little longer...and i've learned to love making these cookies...they're one of my very favorites!

our family ties are thick like that....through the rural roots of Florida and Louisiana...to the openness of our little family living in the Midwest....and the unpredictable happenings that led us back down to Louisiana....
they're so thick that they've survived what has at times seemed like unbearable disappointment and fear...
our life together is tightly wound up in these stories...these traditions....this love that grows and grows more strong...

"Merry Christmas Cookies"

Cream:

·         1 cup brown sugar

·         1 cup white sugar

·         1 cup butter

·         3 eggs

Beat In:

·         3 cups flour

·         1 t. cinnamon

·         1 t. baking soda

Add:

·         2  16oz. fruit and nut peel containers  (fruit cake mix)

·         1 16oz. box dates

·         1 cup white raisons

·         7 cups chopped pecans or walnuts

Cookie mixture will be thick. Drop a large Tablespoon on cookie sheet. (cookie will spread just a little) Bake at 325 degrees for Approximately 15 minutes on greased cookie sheets.