I’ve been in Kansas City with my family all week. Everyone is here: parents, siblings, nephews, future brother-in-law, 3 dogs, and all of the cookies in the world. Tomorrow, I load into a Subaru Forester with Becca and Michael, Gabe and Toad, Becca’s wedding dress, their wedding decorations, and all of our Christmas loot, and drive west back across Kansas for 9 hours to Denver. Heaven help us.

This is my favorite Christmas present I received:

That, my friends, is the Gregory Sage 55. If you wake up one day and I’m gone, you’ll know it’s because I loaded it with everything I need to keep myself alive and just… walked away. Because someday, that is what I fully intend on using it for.

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And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Thank you to all who entered the Stuck giveaway! It’s an amazing study, and if you’re looking for a soul-filling challenge, Jennie Allen has good stuff. I’m excited to check out Chase and Anything, as well.

There could only be one winner, so I used my trusty pal RANDOM.ORG to pull a number. Multiple comments from the same person counted as one entry.

And the winner is:

8! Leah Van Hoozer!

Leah, I’ll send you an email to get your mailing address. Congratulations!

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Maybe I’ll write a 2012 recap before 2013 – my Google Reader tells me that recap posts are all the rage this time of year. If I don’t, though, suffice it to say that 2012 stretched me in ways I didn’t know I needed to be stretched (and, to be honest, I still don’t WANT to be stretched). I have worked really, really hard in all sorts of ways. Someone recently asked me if I was happy, and I said no.

But you know me – I’d be miserable if I was happy. SMILEY FACE.

What I do know is that I love the people in my world, and while faith does not come easily for me, I’m hanging on for dear life. I hope that 2012 has seen you hanging in there, too.

Here is my friend Charlie Hardin Murphey of Commitment Bells singing “O Holy Night” better than anyone ever.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

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Don’t forget to enter the Stuck giveaway – a winner will be chosen on Friday.

I spent the weekend like so many others did: glued to the news, refreshing the websites every hour, watching every interview, every commentary. Along with the rest of the nation, I am horrified at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and at a loss for how to process it.

I took a long walk on Saturday, and another on Sunday. I prayed for the families, and found myself taking deep breaths, thinking of those who must feel like they can barely breathe. I poured over the victims’ names, and recited them over and over in my head: Charlotte, Daniel, Rachel, Olivia, Josephine…  I thought of my friends who have buried their children in the past, and how we’ve wished that no one ever experience that pain again.

I listened as pundits along with everyday Joes spouted their opinions on gun control, mental health, and policy change. When I walked around the Cherry Creek Mall on Saturday, I felt nervous. I saw a security guard, and stopped him. “Thank you for being here,” I said. He smiled and patted my shoulder.

We need Christmas – not because of the happy feelings it evokes, or the distraction, or the sentimentality. We need Christmas because it’s the only hope that we have: a baby born into darkness, a Father giving up his Son so that when parents lose their own children, it isn’t the end of the story.

Until then, I’m heartbroken.

Thanks to our office Christmas lunch yesterday afternoon, I had the chance to spring out of work early and take myself on my standard 9-mile walk.

Wearing my new Patagonia Nano Puff jacket (which is the perfect weight and warmth for winter in Denver), I booked it from Sunnyside down through LoHi, across the Highlands to Sloan’s Lake. I looped the lake just in time to look back and see this sunset.

Given that the only daylight I see anymore is on my drive to work in the morning, witnessing this was a rare gift.

As I turned toward home and the light faded from the sky, I had the thought that an amazing(ly horrible) holiday album would be “Jolly Old St. Nickelback.” And as is the case with ALL of my genius ideas (trust me, there are plenty), I posted that very thought on Facebook this morning.

Little did I know that my friends would take it to a whole new level.

With a little help from my friends, I present to you:

Holiday Albums That Should (Never) Happen
What Destiny’s Child Is This?
We Three Kings of Leon
Mary J. Blige, Did You Know?
Santa Babyface
O Come All Ye Faith Hill
The Friendly Beastie Boys
The First No-LMFAO
It Came Upon a Midnight Everclear
Deck the Hall and Oats
Little Drummer Boyz II Men
O Come O Come EmmanuElton John

Joy to the World Wide Web, y’all. And joy to your Wednesday.

Taken from “Teaching a Stone to Talk”:

One cold Christmas Eve, I was up unnaturally late because we had all gone out to dinner – my parents, my baby sister, and I.  We had come home to a warm living room, and Christmas Eve. Our stockings drooped from the mantle; beside them, a special table bore a bottle of ginger ale and a plate of cookies.

I had taken off my fancy winter coat and was standing on the heat register to bake my shoe soles and warm my bare legs.  There was a commotion at the front door; it opened, and cold winter blew around my dress.

Everyone was calling me.  “Look who’s here! Look who’s here!”  I looked. It was Santa Claus.  Whom I never – ever – wanted to meet.  Santa Claus was looming in the doorway and looking around for me.  My mother’s voice was thrilled: “Look who’s here!”  I ran upstairs.

Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God.  I was still thoughtless and brute, reactive.  I knew right from wrong, but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not yet from love.  Santa Claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you’d been bad or good.  He knew when you’d been bad or good! And I had been bad.

My mother called and called, enthusiastic, pleading; I wouldn’t come down.  My father encouraged me; my sister howled.  I wouldn’t come down, but I could bend over the stairwell and see: Santa Claus stood in the doorway with night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky; Santa Claus stood in the doorway monstrous and bright, powerless, ringing a loud bell and repeating Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas.  I never came down.  I don’t know who ate the cookies.

For so many years now I have known that this Santa Claus was actually a rigged-up Miss White, who lived across the street, that I confuse the dramatis personae in my mind, making Santa Claus, God, and Miss White an awesome, vulnerable trinity.  This is really a story about Miss White.

Miss White was old; she lived alone in the big house across the street.  She liked having me around; she plied me with cookies, taught me things about the world, and tried to interest me in finger painting, in which she herself took great pleasure.  She would set up easels in her kitchen, tack enormous slick soaking papers to their frames, and paint undulating undersea scenes: horizontal smears of color sparked by occasional vertical streaks which were understood to be fixed kelp.  I liked her.  She meant no harm on earth, and yet half a year after her failed visit as Santa Claus, I ran from her again.

That day, a day of the following summer, Miss White and I knelt in her yard while she showed me a magnifying glass.  It was a large, strong hand lens.  She lifted my hand and, holding it very still, focused a dab of sunshine on my palm.  The glowing crescent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted to a point.  It burned; I was burned; I ripped my hand away and ran home crying.

Miss White called after me, sorry, explaining, but I didn’t look back.

Even now I wonder: if I meet God, will he take and hold my bare hand in his, and focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?

But no.  It is I who misunderstood everything and let everybody down.  Miss White, God, I am sorry I ran from you.  I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge.  For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain.  So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.

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As a follow-up, be sure to listen to eastmountainsouth’s “Still Running.”

Merry Christmas, friends.  May you all experience “that love from which there is no refuge.”

Christmas is closing in all around me, like an army of ants on a stale, crusty French fry.

I am the French fry.

I have barely done any Christmas shopping, and with my big move happening in 3 days, I’m not sure when I’ll have the chance to get some ho-ho-ho-ing done.

(I don’t think that came out right.)

Today is our office Christmas party. I have always dreamed of going to some fancy work soirée – a cocktail party on a Friday night where I can wear satin and sequins, and the drinks are free, and the food is good, and no one leaves without a fabulous gift bag of goodies – and maybe even a Christmas bonus. However, our party is scheduled from 1-3:30, and includes macaroni & cheese, a magic show, and balloon animals.

Oh sweet mercy, I SO HOPE that it winds up being as amazing as I think it will be! Pam Beasley’s got nothing on me. Well, I suppose she has Jim.

Whatever. In all honesty, “Christmas cheer” isn’t really my style. I hate eggnog. Christmas trees leak sap. I don’t even turn on my heater, let alone use precious wattage for twinkly lights. I’m not a “festive” person – I’m not an upbeat person in GENERAL – and I don’t like Christmas music. It’s too sappy. Too cheesy. Too contrived.

You want to know what would be my kind of Christmas song? “Holly Jolly Melancholy.” I’m going to write it… because someone already wrote this one.

But on with my story: this morning, a co-worker brought me a pile of gifts to wrap. I’m the temp-receptionist – it’s my job – and in all honesty, I’m a ridiculously good present-wrapper. I can tie a bow like nobody’s business. So I was working my way through the pile of gifts, and for the very first time in my entire life I swear, I peeked at my present.

I have literally never peeked at one of my presents before. Ever. “Conscientious” is my middle name… except, of course, when it comes to cleaning up dog poop.

Anyway, the gift that I “didn’t” see: a glittery cowboy boot Christmas ornament.

And I love it. Really and truly, I do. Being the bah-humbug-er that I have been, I don’t have a single Christmas ornament – I don’t have a single Christmas decoration. This is my first one. And even with tree to hang it on, it made me happy to be thought of by my favorite co-worker. Maybe I’m not such a Grinch after all…

Highlight #1
The best moment of the Parsonspalooza Christmas Extravaganza happened when Becca and Sarah were both given small, identical gifts to open. They were obviously gift cards – nothing else is shaped like that – except credit cards, I guess, and business cards, and the lid of an Altoids tin, and I suppose a thin, thin calculator.

Becca opened hers: a gift card bearing a substantial amount to the Plaza, a shopping area in downtown Kansas City. We knew that Sarah would receive the same type of card.

Only, it’s… what is it?… $5 to Chick-Fil-A!

You should have seen her face. She was trying SO HARD to be excited. But she was so confused. Becca gets the Plaza, and I get $5 to Chick-Fil-A? Don’t get me wrong – Sarah loves Chick-Fil-A, but…?

It turns out that Mom and Dad had wrapped up the wrong card. I’m so glad that it happened. I hadn’t laughed that hard since Michael Scott “declared” bankruptcy.

Highlight #2
Speaking of gift cards, I received the all-time greatest gift card for Christmas. $15 to Starbucks.

Starbucks? you ask? Doesn’t Annie loathe Starbucks?

Why, yes, of course I do. But this was no ordinary Starbucks card. Look:

This is my own, personal, customized Starbucks card, designed for me online by my sister-in-law Ashley to commemorate this day. I will never throw this away, not even after I’ve exhausted every penny on my Venti, single-bag, Wild Sweet Orange teas.

Highlight #3
Yesterday, a tall, charmingly-scruffy man showed up on my doorstep to take me to lunch. How could I be so lucky? Joel, my friend from my Colorado days, is on furlough from his Peace Core post in Burkina Faso, Africa, and is visiting extended family in the Kansas City area. Our mutual timing in the KC area was serendipitous, and so we took advantage of our one day of overlap to catch up.

Joel has amazing stories about life in a country that many people don’t even know exists. He lives in an honest-to-goodness hut in a real-live village, braves 117 degree weather, takes bucket showers, and bucks the Burkina norm by not using physical abuse as a disciplinary tool in the classroom. His blogs transplant me to a foreign place of which I know nothing, and I highly recommend the reading.

We had a wonderful time catching up, even though we ate at a mediocre soup/salad/sandwich place in Brookside. Out of all of the options for good food in Kansas City, we somehow picked the ultimate loser. But the conversation was nourishing and life-giving and smile-generating, and I am grateful.

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This morning, the Parsons drive to south-central Colorado to stay with our friends the Claders in a cabin in the mountains for the week. I will be removed from society and, most likely, the internet. In the event that I cannot post blogs, never fear: I promise to write a few posts while at the cabin, and post them when I return. I mean, really: 10 people and a bunch of dogs, holed up together in the woods, far from any semblance of civilization, in -12 degree weather, with nothing to do but SURVIVE?

You know I’ll have stories.

Today, we had our family Christmas celebration. Having a pastor for a dad and a musician for a mom, Christmas Eve has never been a holiday as much as it’s been a “work” day, and this year, we’re leaving on Christmas Day to drive to Colorado for a week. So today was our only chance to celebrate as an entire family.

Being unemployed and living on a tight budget, my funds were meager this year. But one of my favorite gifts turned out to be one that I made.

First, I watercolored 5 little flowers – although our scanner has washed them out slightly:

Then, I paperclipped them to a ribbon to make a little banner.

That’s all! Simple, but cute, and it reminds me of Ashley and her shabby chic style.

Speaking of flowers, I am obsessing over Amy Butler these days. Her fabric? Her notecards? Her frella stunning designs? I want her to supply me with all things “home decor” in my new Nashville home. If I was a quilter, I would make an Amy Butler quilt. If I was a seamstress, I would make an Amy Butler trenchcoat. If I was an upholsterer, I would make this.

See, it’s like this: if we all have a harmony to our melody, a yin to our yang – a floral counterpart, if you will – she is totally mine.