I am a fan of a good ballad song. I am a belter of show tunes. The louder, the better, in my opinion. The generation just behind me lovesloveloves their low-key music. They love it moody, soulful lyrics, with a giant dose of nonchalance and a whole lot of easy listening. MEL-LOW.

I am 1000% not that girl.

The other night—I can’t recall why exactly—I got started on 80’s ballads while I was doing dishes. I pulled out my cute bluetooth speaker, turned it up to 11, and serenaded the house—and probably the bike path along our backyard. By the time Jeremy’s D&D guys were arriving I was really into it. I was self-concious enough to control my moves, which were already mortifying my 15 year old, but I couldn’t stop/wouldn’t stop with the ballads. They were joy to my soul.

Zephaniah 3:17 has something to say about God’s love for us and I’m pretty sure it’s saying that God is jamming out over YOU with the passion of an 80’s rock ballad.

The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.

Exult is a weird word. Thanks for that, ESV (English Standard Version, a translation of the bible). It means to be highly elated or jubilant. Think along the lines of the Huskers scoring a winning field goal or you getting that job or being at the best concert with the best friends. Lots of energy. Lots of joy. Lots of high fives.

But wait, there’s something here for the emo among us. If the thought of God 80’s-rock-ballading you is terrifying and unsettling, read the few lines ahead of that. God has GLADNESS for you. Over you. In you. He also stills your ever-moving, ever-wandering, ever-anxious soul. “He quiets you by his love.”

Not every moment is a Broadway-belter. In fact, those moments are rather rare, even for me. In between those times are miles and miles of indecision and confusion. And Zephaniah 3:17 is saying that the very God of the universe will save me. He actually rejoices over me. He quiets me. And yes, he looks at me and breaks out in song over his incredible love for me.

Do you believe that? Do I believe that? How would my world look different if I remembered that the God who created mountains and oceans and all the creatures in them, the planets and stars and all of the cosmos, also really really liked me a lot. He likes me more than my husband, more than my mom and dad, more than my best friend on the best day of our lives. He is here with me and saves me from my troubles. He is here with me and rejoices over me. He settles my heart and then riles it up again but with his profound love and EXUBERANCE over me.

What in the world? Truly, we Christians are either right or we’re absolutely crazy. There’s no in-between here. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

I get a little weird every December. A bit itchy. Out of sorts. For sure seasonal depression is a giant contributor to my mood, but it doesn’t entirely explain why I feel like my soul is wearing ill-fitting, scratchy clothes. The month contains two rather large celebrations on the Tredway Family Calendar: my birthday and Jesus’s. And there are so many traditions—which I love—and lights and delicious foods and smells. It’s almost sensory overload, but most of the time I’m down for that kind of fun.

No, the weirdness is connected to the church and to the celebration of the Advent season. We spend a lot of time counting down the days until Jesus is born. Every year, every single year this is our tradition. I finally put my finger on the weirdness of it this year and it’s that we’re all pretending, to a certain degree. We are REMEMBERING something. Something big. Something earth-shattering and life-defining. The world was marked when God became man. Marked with a giant indelible marker, all creation shifted. My discomfort with the month is the same discomfort that kept leading my mind to considering Easter in the middle of the all the red and green plaid and the scent of evergreen. Christians, we live out Christmas and Easter EVERY SINGLE DAY.

The birth of God as a man is celebrated in our spirits every single day.

The death and resurrection of God as a man is celebrated within us every single day.

We are Christmas and Easter celebrants every time our lungs take a deep breath and every time we blink.

Perhaps this explains my December itchies. It all feels a little off to sing with gusto the Advent songs and then quit singing them on December 25, as though that day ends the party. It feels strange to light a candle of waiting, and another of joy, and yet another of peace, when truly, every day we might light a candle with those names as we mediate on who Jesus was and how his birth, death, and resurrection has perfectly covered our sins.

However I feel in December—which really doesn’t matter much—I don’t want to let go of the sweetness of Christmas or the devastation of Good Friday or the utter and complete joy of Resurrection Sunday. All those events are knocking around in my heart daily. Jesus is with me daily through his Spirit. I carry his birth, death, and resurrection in my spirit because, no matter what month is is, I believe that he is the Son of God and that his sacrifice gives me life. Life forever.

Do I think we should ditch a full month of anticipating the Christ child’s birth? Absolutely not. If anything, I’d advocate for Christians to become way better at remembering. We could probably use more traditions, more attention to the historic church calendar, more singing at the top of our lungs and more wrapping gifts to create memories for our children. If Christmas and Easter actually do live within us, life is worth celebrating indeed.

1. Carry a book with you

You carry what you need. Your wallet travels around town with you and, if you’re like 99% of the population, so does your phone. I suggest bringing a book with you. Waiting for a kid to get out of school? Pop open that book and inhale a few paragraphs. Sitting in the doctor’s office? Prime reading time! Is the weather nice and warm? Instead of rushing from activity to activity, reward yourself with an iced coffee and 20 minutes of reading time in the car where nobody can disturb you. The family tv show is a little boring? Finish off a chapter. Books are read word by word and each little bit gets you to the end goal of having completed an entire book.

2. Utilize your library

Librarians are good—REALLY good—at what they do, and part of what they do is make books available to the public. I find so many quality books by simply wandering into my local library and seeing what’s on display. New fiction. New nonfiction. Recipe books. YA material. Beyond that, the aisles are filled with gems, and the nonfiction sections are a particular favorite. In the past several years as I’ve been hunting for books to interest my child (that’s another post) I’ve found my curiosity piqued by the Young Adult Nonfiction section. Want to know a little bit more about women’s suffrage? Here’s a book or 10 on suffragettes! Interested in who invented the bicycle? Well, here’s a small book about that! The adult nonfiction section has my heart and I could spend a long time perusing the gems in there.

Besides wandering the library, it helps to figure out HOW to procure the books you want. I asked my reading friends lots of questions and learned how to place online holds on books, download books to a Kindle, and borrow audiobooks. Now I’ll open a tab to a recommended book list (in 2019 I started following Reese Witherspoon’s book club for recs) and then quickly add several to my ‘holds’ list at the local library. I get an email alert when the books are in, and I have several days to pick them up. My library charges $0.50 if you don’t get the book—–and I can live with that.

Note: I still buy books and I have two general guiding principles for when to buy them. 1) I like to underline and mark up my Christian non-fiction so I often buy those. 2) I give myself permission to buy fun paperback fiction when I travel. Those are the books that usually end up in my giveaway piles unless they are really really good.

3. Read fiction and nonfiction simultaneously

Like I said before, completing a book happens little by little. Rarely does anyone have great swaths of time to consume a book. Cracking open a few books at a time allows you to invest in more than one text, and the simplest way to do this is to have different kinds of books going. If you’re reading a book of poetry, I highly recommend also having a fiction book on the side. But for me, I’m always wanting to sharpen my knowledge of the Bible and God’s kingdom, so I love working through a Christian nonfiction text while also reading a fun story. I can eat up that story pretty fast, but the meat and potatoes work comes from plodding through something that requires more investigation and reflection—–both brain and heart work, really. So if I have several books running at once then I can use different parts of my mind while still working towards completing them all.

4. Read out loud

Grab a glass of water, maybe run a humidifier or suck on a cough drop first, and get to reading out loud. Even if it’s just you and your pet, words are meant to be said aloud and there is great beauty in hearing what a text sounds like. And bonus points if there’s dialogue and you want to employ an accent to make it more interesting. Life is too short to not explore the beauty of the written word in community! Read to your children, oh please read to your children. As long as they will tolerate you, read to them. Read to your husband, read to yourself, read to a friend. Hear the words as they were meant to be heard and luxuriate in a story with others around. The shared experience is worth more than you know.

5. Put your phone down

Yes, you’ve got 101 tabs open on every topic from raising a compassionate kid to how to compost, but take a bit of time to consider what all those tabs are doing to your brain and, specifically, to your attention span. Not going to be preachy here—if anything I’m preaching to myself because I’ve got a raging phone addiction—but the blips and comments online are generally not helpful to your personal growth and well being.

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Okay, that’s all for me right now. Do you have any tips you’d add to this list?

At the start of a brand new year I’ve got several books available around the house. I’m invested in Eight Dates by the fantastic marriage therapist John Gottman. Next to my bed is a fiction book I haven’t cracked open yet, a birthday present (On Reading Well by Karen Swallow Prior), and book five of Harry Potter which Livia and I put down some time ago and still need to finish. We’re also halfway through Romeo and Juliet so perhaps we should actually finish it. I’m feeling the itch for some really good Christian literature, too, and I’ve got several to choose from.

What are you reading in 2020?