New house.

Oh yeah, Nathan and I are moving in to a new house in a few weeks.  I keep forgetting about that.

People have been saying congratulations and asking if I was nervous, but honestly, I've only really been thinking about it when Nathan or someone else brings it up in conversation.  Nathan's been taking care of pretty much most of the details (shocking to most, but not really in my opinion), so I guess that's part of the reason why.

I wonder if part of why it hasn't sunk in is because you can get a house for pretty cheap in Rochester, so it's not as big of a dent in your wallet as it would be getting a house somewhere in NYC.  Buying a house in NYC, my dear readers, would be a big deal to me.  Now that would be a big commitment and very permanent in my opinion.  And it would definitely whack a whopping dent in my wallet.

I'm not really looking forward to the actually packing and moving part.  And I'm not too keen on the upkeep side of being a homeowner (with our apartment it's so easy - you just call when there's a problem and then someone comes and fixes it for you for no additional cost!).

I am, however, excited about the possibilities of DIY projects that owning a house can bring.  While it's not like I was in prison and couldn't do any DIY projects in our apartment, not being able to paint the walls or hammer in nails were apparently enough limitations for me to feel like my entire DIY craft freedom was taken away.  That's probably how I subconsciously rationalized my lack of home projects.  I have hope that actually owning a house will help inspire me and kick me into a let's-make-something-creative-and-useful-and-pretty kind of mode.  

The other thing is, we'll be moving in with other people (though it keeps changing and is not entirely set yet).  I was hesitant at first about this whole intentional living community thing, but less so now that Nathan and I have at least a year of marriage and living together on our own under our belt.  But as to how I'll feel about that emotionally as it becomes a reality is hard to say right now.

As many of my faithful readers probably remember, I do not think I am a person who naturally likes to be on the move.  If things were up to me, I'd probably pick a spot and stay there for the rest of my life.  I think of myself as someone who likes to set her roots and keep those roots growing.  But with feeling disconnected from my NYC home and with college and post-college life keeping me on the move, I've often wondered if this is how Abraham felt when God called him to pack up and go.  And keep going.  And keep moving.

But strangely, as I think about moving from the apartment to the new house, I don't feel anxious or reluctant or like a turtle being pulled out from her shell.  I don't know if that's because the whole new house thing hasn't sunk in yet, or because I'm starting to get used to this state of constant moving.  Who knows?  Maybe I'm just...ready.

I guess we'll find out in a future blog post.

A personal advent season. (Part 2)

As I've been gaining a better understanding of what the Advent season is really all about (this article also helps explain a little of what I've been learning), I've been starting to make some connections to my own season of life.

It's been a process of recognizing how our hope and anticipation of the coming of Christ does not stem out of this happy, easy-going, I-can-see-gifts-under-the-tree-and-can't-wait-to-open-them type of waiting.  Instead, it stems out of a period of darkness, suffering, and silence.  Advent is a season of spiritual preparation; a longing; a desire for that which is yet to come, and it is not here yet.  And this year the hope of the coming of Jesus has been evoking a much deeper response in me than simply to celebrate Jesus' birth like any other birthday, do good deeds, and extend my thanks and give good gifts.

There's simply something deeper and richer about the season of Advent that I had never learned before.

While I may not have been exiled from my land or suffered deeply as the Israelites have, it seems as though following Jesus has led me on an exodus into the wilderness, leaving behind almost everything I know and find comfort in.  Geographically, I've left my NYC hometown and my college hometown for a completely new location.  Relationally, I've left behind my friends and family to a community I have to develop and adjust to.  Vocationally, I've left behind familiar students of a familiar campus culture to lead students I've never led before in a campus culture I know next to nothing about.  Personally, I've left behind all of who I thought I was for a completely clueless twenty-something who tries really hard not to just drift through life but can't seem to get a grip on anything.

And spiritually, I have felt more disconnected from God than I ever have in my life thus far.  With these changes in life and marriage I've been forced again and again to come face to face with my selfishness and sinfulness.  It's been difficult to experience God's presence and grace,  even with the knowledge of them in my mind.

But I've been holding on to the hope that God is with me, even in the darkness.  And it's only been within the last few weeks where He has been helping me now start to see that things are getting better, slowly but surely.  There is progress in all areas of my life; despite how subtle and undramatic the progress has been, it is progress nonetheless.  The darkness still surrounds me, but the small light from a candle all the way at the other end of the unknown and uncertainty is enough to help me keep going, and keep holding on.

So as I prepare to enter the official Advent season, I've been trying to come up with creative Advent calendar ideas to help me press in to this season of recognizing the Israelites' preparation and longing for the Messiah, as well as my own today.  And while Pinterest has some really cute and crafty ideas, they don't really hit home for helping me engage and go deeper.  But we'll see what happens.  I'm sure God will use whatever I come up with to encounter Him and worship Him.

My pros and cons of the Fall/Winter season

MY PROS:  

1.  I'm a sucker for pumpkin everything.  To me, pumpkin to the fall season is like Christmas carols are to the winter season.  Some people are serious pumpkin grinches, but I haven't gotten tired of pumpkin things yet, and I think it's fun to try making my own pumpkin things.  So far I've made pumpkin scones, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin pancakes, and pumpkin oatmeal.  I'm hoping to try making my own pumpkin spice latte (I actually dislike the Starbucks version) and there may be pumpkin bread in my future.

Pumpkin scones and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies!

2.  Stunningly gorgeous fall foliage.  Upstate NY is the BEST during the autumn season!  We may not have skyscrapers everywhere, but we've got enough colorful trees to make you smile.  Skyscrapers don't make me smile.  The bright mixes and shades of orange, red, and yellow leaves definitely make me smile.

3.  Flannel sheets and down comforters.  I discovered flannel sheets in college, I believe.  I think I got myself a set of penguin twin-sized flannel sheets.  Definitely did not grow up with them.  They're so warm and fuzzy - perfect for cold evenings.

4.  Having a wonderful husband to snuggle with.  Yeah, I'm a closet snuggler.  I don't think people's first impressions of me would include the assumption that I'm a snuggler.  Pam didn't really like it whenever I'd try snuggling with her growing up (she's not much of a touchy person), so I'm glad I'm spending the rest of my life with someone who likes to snuggle with me.

5.  Festive holidays.  I love Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I love reasons to get together with family and eat good food, and I love celebrating the seasons with little things like putting up decorations, listening to Christmas music, and even changing my desktop backgrounds to match.  I like the traditions and trying to develop new traditions, and dreaming up new and creative ways to prepare and participate.  It's fun and often helps me be reflective for me, too.

6.  Apple picking & farms.  Not only am I a sucker for pumpkin-y things, but I'm a sucker for apple picking and other farm-type activities and goodies.  Corn mazes, cider doughnuts, hot (or cold!) apple cider, the whole shebang.  I'd even go for the cheesy hay ride.  Almost went this year on one.  Would've gone if I had the time.  

MY CONS:

1.  Dry skin.  Especially dry, cracked skin that never moisturizes no matter how much you put lotion on.  It is painful, my friends, painful.     

2.  Cold, cold apartment.  Nathan describes our apartment like a thermos - it keeps the heat hotter in the summer, and keeps the cold air colder inside than outside.

3.  My desire to participate in outdoor activities decreases.  It's already hard trying to get me to exercise...try convincing me to run the cold.  I really like participating in (or rather, the possibility of participating in) warm outdoor activities like picnicking, rock scrambling, walking, biking, etc.  Though, I really love ice skating.

4.  When it slushes instead of snows.  It's dirty and gross and wet and not very pretty.

5.  The dangers and frustrations of too much snow.  Black ice?  Been there.  Digging out and pushing a car through the snow?  Done that.  Scary and time-consuming.  Not fun.

6.  Harder to wear pretty clothes.  I love skirts and dresses and pretty blouses and wish I had more of all of them and could wear them all the time.  Bundling up in pretty clothes is just not as easy for me to do in this season.  Maybe I need to just be creative?

Same number of pros and cons this time around, but can you tell which ones hold more weight in my opinion?  :)

Christmas cheer.

There were a few years when I was little, when my dad would use these pre-made paper links to celebrate Advent with me and my family.  Each night in December after dinner, we'd read the little blurb about an aspect of the Christmas story on one side of the paper strip and then would do the word puzzle together on the back side before my dad would lick the adhesive end to add to our paper chain that we hung on our real Christmas tree.  I absolutely loved that tradition of Advent celebration, but we only did it for a few years (I think the company where my dad ordered the paper strips from stopped making them) and Christmas just hasn't been the same for me since then.  We'd still light our Advent candles each day, adding a new one for each week, and my dad would go through some Advent booklet, but I longed for something more creative and exciting and fun.

Even though I do think the materialistic hubbub, shopping dash and overly-done crazy Christmas stuff can be a bit over-the-top and isn't the real meaning of Christmas, I still love the Christmas season and the things that come with it.  I love the decorating process, real Christmas trees, 24-7 Christmas music radio stations, and learning about people's quirky family traditions while enjoying my own.

This is the first year I won't be spending Christmas with my family.  This is also the first year where I felt like I had a chance to really be free in getting my creative juices flowing to start my own quirky family traditions, go all out with Christmas decorations, and celebrate the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in creative ways.  But November was quite a crazy month of emotional roller coasters, which made focusing on preparing for Christmas season the last thing on my mind.  And with so much traveling and planning for work these past few weeks, the most I've done this season is put up a Christmas wreath on our apartment door, set up a nice nativity scene on our windowsill, and sometimes listen to Christmas music on Pandora all day.  Nathan and I thought it would be silly to get a real Christmas tree since we wouldn't be home for most of the month.  Things went by too fast for me to think about sending any Christmas cards or gifts for friends, family and co-workers, and I haven't even baked anything.

Thinking and lamenting over how I haven't done anything for Christmas has got me thinking of some ideas for next year.  For example, we don't have many Christmas decorations (though we did get some as wedding gifts from some pretty brilliant friends!), but I was thinking maybe there would be some after-Christmas sales that Nathan and I could catch (hopefully there will still be sales after Urbana!).  Also, I got this other idea (initially as a joke) for if I know Nathan and I will be traveling a lot during December for work and visiting  family next year, maybe we can get one of those little Charlie-Brown-Christmas type Christmas trees to keep when we're home and to bring with us when we're traveling.  Portable Christmas tree?  That'd be a quirky tradition :)

Anyway, sorry about the lack of spreading Christmas cheer from the Bixlers.  Hopefully we'll be in a better place to do so next year!

Hands full.

During the week after my honeymoon I felt useless.  Nathan and I couldn't really dig our feet into unpacking all of our things and setting up our new apartment because we had a conference to attend at the end of the week and another conference to attend the following week.  And with traveling everywhere and doing all things wedding related, I was pretty slow at getting into work mode and preparing for the new school year on a new campus.

Reflecting on that week with some co-workers during our Regional Staff Conference (the latter conference) revealed how much I was hiding behind the craziness of the wedding planning and the limbo and stress of transitions.  Doing so reinforced the idea that I was strong enough to handle being busy with lot of things on my plate.  But now that the wedding was over, all of my things were in Rochester and I was adjusting to married life just fine - there were no major conflicts to justify my worth to others or excuses to say, "Life is hard."  I realized that I felt guilty for "not doing anything" that week after the honeymoon, that it was somehow wrong to rest or slow down by choice.  I wasn't being productive.  I wasn't planning, cleaning, organizing, or crossing anything off lists of things to do.  And it felt weird.  I felt empty, like I had nothing to show the world.  I had the subconscious mentality that I needed to be doing something worthwhile to prove that I deserved to exist another day.

A few weeks ago, the church Nathan and I have been visiting for several weeks made an announcement about the need for someone to help once a month with the powerpoint on Sunday mornings during service.  It seemed really simple.  They'd even teach you how to do stuff, and it would only be once a month.

It was so tempting to throw my hand in the air and say, "Me!  Me!  Pick me!  I can do it!" or, you know, just walk up to the person in charge after service and talk to him about it.

Thankfully, in a matter of seconds, I came to my senses and realized that Nathan and I had not actually committed to this church, so it would be silly to commit to something once a month if we weren't sure we would be around next week, let alone the next month.  It also occurred to me that we had made the commitment not to serve in any church capacity for an entire year.  It was a piece of wisdom we received as newlyweds from a number of wise couples we know, to give our marriage the attention it needs particularly in our first year together - which totally makes sense.  But it still feels really weird not to volunteer for things I think are important that I'm perfectly capable of doing

Things have gotten crazy again in my life, but there's a part of me that's hungry for more, as if I'm still not doing enough.  Part of that comes from having so many desires to do things:  I want to keep up with my out-of-town friends and family, build relationships with my neighbors and serve my community, try new things to feed my desire to learn and create good stories...they're not bad things to pursue.  But I think there's a subconscious part of me that cunningly takes all those (and more) desires and says, "Well, you're only really occupied vocationally right now, and most people don't understand how much work you do on a day-to-day basis with InterVarsity, so you need to commit to this, volunteer with this, and find more ways to stay busier than ever so that when people around you can see how important you're making a difference in this world and aren't just wasting you life by doing nothing. 

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who does that.  And I'm not saying we necessarily do it on purpose, either.  I think part of it comes from growing up in a culture where the message is "more is better" - the more you're doing, the better you are because how much you do says how worthy and valuable you are.  I think another part of it comes from our need to be needed and wanted.  Volunteering and committing to work sometimes gives us a sense of purpose and security that we're doing something important.

And I think there's a healthy tidbit in there.  God designed us to build, to create, to work - and it wasn't always a dreadful thing.  But that's the kicker, right?  Since we are broken people part of broken cultures who dwell in a broken world with broken systems, we in America have twisted work into busyness and allow it to distract us from giving the proper attention, time, and parts of ourselves to the people and causes that are sometimes more important in the grander scheme of things.  It is our busyness, not our work, that has become the definition of our value and worth, justification of our existence, and excuse from facing more difficult, though meaningful, conflicts.

But if we truly believed in our hearts and our minds to the very core of our being that we are loved by God and there's nothing we can do to add to it or take that away, then what are we doing?  Why are we perpetuating an idea that steers us in the wrong direction?  I guess I'm just saying (mostly to myself) that we need to keep the proper perspective of why we do what we do and be thoughtful about the things we commit to and not feel guilty about resting.  We need to be careful about how we reinforce for ourselves and others the vicious cycle of overworking and need to encourage rest even more.  We need it not to be lazy or idle, but to take the time to reflect, gain some perspective, and remind ourselves that it's not where our identity lies when we are God's people.

Things are crazy, but no more hiding.

The discipline of thinking outside the box.

Recently I've been noticing God's little nudges to remind me that I worship a creative God.  During Lent I actually re-decorated my room in some creative ways (incomplete, unfortunately).  During a discipleship meeting with a student we went over how we were made in God's image in the first few chapters of Genesis.  Last week at my upstate staff meetings it came up during my retreat of silence, group time and prayer sessions. Our spiritual director read a number of excerpts from a book on Sabbath, but this quote stuck out to me the most:

"Emptiness is the pregnant void out of which all creation springs." --Wayne Muller

It struck a chord in me because I actually had a really hard time focusing during my retreat of silence.  I wasn't looking forward to that or the "Great Silence" we always have that night all the way into the morning through breakfast time.  It wasn't because I was afraid of silence or don't like quietness - I'm an introvert, of course I enjoy silence and quietness.  At first I couldn't put my finger on why I didn't want to be in silence.  It wasn't like I was trying to avoid silence by distracting myself with busyness or noise or wasting time.

I felt like I have been hitting a good rhythm in life of learning to say no, learning to practice Sabbath and quietness and stillness (especially through my morning and evening routines), not over-burdening myself with tasks or the weight of responsibility that isn't mine to carry.  It's just that I've been by myself and practicing silence and solitude a lot as a new staff worker that I was, as my dear co-workers helped me discover, in fact just plain discontent with the emptiness that rang out into the silence.  I've been longing for more.

But that Muller quote, along with all the other things popping up in my life remind me that God is such a creative God and that He created me in His image in such a way that I have the capacity to create something new or take something old and make it my own.  In fact, all of us humans have that capacity.  I sometimes get frustrated when people say, "I'm not creative," because I think by believing that you deny the creation God designed you to be.  Honestly, I do think it is a discipline we can develop.  It's something we practice and learn.  I don't think I would be so inclined to creativity if it wasn't for the way my parents raised me.

Creativity goes a long way with problem solving, too.  You have a problem because you have a goal but there are obstacles or rules or limits that prevent you from achieving that goal.  Creative problem solving steps in when you seek solutions that work outside the limits presented before you.  Creativity thrives when you go beyond what is expected.

I think it's part of the reason why I thrive with structures and systems.  You can't think outside the box if you don't know what the box is.  You can't move beyond limits if you don't know what parameters you're limited to.  It's why it's important to learn the basic rules and structures of any form of writing or art (which is usually associated with creativity) - you can't break the rules if you don't know what the rules are.

The sad part is when the only thing stopping us from being creative is ourselves.  It's like we look at the fence that's blocking our way, say, "Well, I guess we can't get to the other side," when really all you had to do was be willing to do a little work to find the gate that was never locked in the first place.

It's funny because as I was working on this post yesterday, I decided to look at Donald Miller's latest post, which was about being a creator rather than a critic.  I liked the post a lot because it's sometimes how I feel about people who complain or whine about an issue they see but don't seem to do anything about it (which, trust me, I've been guilty of before).  I don't know if it's my optimistic outlook, but I usually believe and hope that there is an alternative solution.  Sometimes it means changing our attitude when we can't change our environment or people around us.

So being creative is not always something we're instantly good at doing.  It takes practice and work and a different kind of mentality.  It means faithfully showing up even if you don't get the inspiration you hoped for.

If you're willing to take on the challenge start somewhere, this website has some interesting places to start.  But you don't need some website to tell you ways to be creative.  Just take your current situations, problems, issues, and identify those limits.  Think about where you are/what you anticipate will happen and then think about where you'd like to be.  Make some observations and brainstorm some alternative solutions.  Take ownership over your situation and turn it into a chance to do something you haven't tried before - you might like what you find!

I've still got a lot to learn,  I'm discovering that creativity can sometimes be an ironic part of my life.  But at least my balloon of discontent silence is slowly deflating.  Emptiness allows space for new life to spring up!  That's exciting.