And the Joy...

Today I'm feeling discouraged. I don't even have a really good reason to. I think that a lot of it has to do with being a little disappointed. I know it doesn't matter, but today at work, I saw some of the teachers taking home boxes of gifts from their kids and parents, but I had four. It isn't important, but it makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong that the parents dont like me.
Daniel didn't have to work tomorrow, but now I think he's going to be driving up to Minnesota to fix Nathan's car. That wasn't exactly what I'd planned on having this week look like, and we were just there this weekend.
And besides that, there's something about a discouraged Nathan that bothers me. I'm used to it, actually. I spent a couple of years being his friend when he was sure no one liked him after his fiancee ditched him. But I don't like it when the stable people in my life need help.
I can't find gifts for some people who I really wanted to get something cool for. And it's stupid, but it makes me feel like a failure of a friend. I can't decide what to get for my best friend. We spend hours together every week, but I can't find a single thing she'd like. And I feel like what I decide to give to people is inferior to what everyone else gives.
... that might have to do with the fact that my older brother is planning to give everyone gifts that are more than a hundred dollars.
Today it just feels like a kind of joy I usually have has been drained from me. Maybe it's my fault for caring about things I don't need to. Or maybe Maybe I'm just tired out and don't want to handle life right now. That might be it. I'm excited for Christmas, but it feels like things aren't going to slow down long enough to enjoy it. I'm s ure they will, though. They always do.

A Hard Time we Had of It.

I've been reading a lot of poetry lately, and came across this about a month ago. It was just so cool that I want to share it. It being Christmas and all.

Journey of the Magi By TS Eliot

'A cold coming we had of it
just the worst time of year
For a journey and such a long journey
The ways deep and the weather sharp
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory
Lying down in the melting snow
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces
And the silken girls bringing sherbt.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women
And And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had for it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night, sleeping in snatches
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse gallopped away in the meadow
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver
And feet kicking the empty wine skins.
But there was no information, so we cotinued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place, it was (young men say) satisfactory

All this was a long time ago, I remember
And I would do it again but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death
But had thought they were different; this birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
WE returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

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Does it bother anyone else that it says "Comments" at the bottom of the page, even if there's one? Because that really bugs me.

Do Unto Others...

Thursday it snowed for about twelve straight hours. It was cool, and I was happy about it, but I was afraid to say so because everyone seemed so annoyed. I decided while driving to work that when I got off, I'd scrape the windows on everyone's car. I did mine first, and let it run while I went on to the next one. At that time, there were only two other people left at work. So I started scraping Kelly Jo's car. I like Kelly Jo. Everyone does. She's nice and kind and doesn't really gossip much. It was easy to scrape her car, too, because she had only been at work for three hours.
Melissa is the manager in the afternoon. While I was scraping Kelly Jo's car, she came out and said, "Kristin, do mine too." She tells people when she's trying to ask, that's how she is. So I said I'd planned to, and I went off to do hers. She'd been parked there all day, and there was a lot of ice on her car. But I did it anywya, because it was too late to turn around and not do it, especially after she'd seen me scraping Kelly Jo's.
But it got me to thinking about service, and how hard it can be to do onto others as you'd have them do onto you. especially when they're telling you to do it. And their life is such a bigger mess than everyone else's. And they aren't very gracious when you do finally do things to help them. I wish that some how, those people wouldn't count, and I could just help the nice people. After all, if I were being a jerk, I'd want someone to show me that I was being a jerk. That's doing onto others as I'd have them do onto me... but something tells me it doesn't work that way. It probably has more to do with Love your neighbor as yourself, and "Let this mind be in you that was also in christ Jesus who... became nothing, taking the form of a servant and humbling himself to the point of death." That's a lot more weighty than scraping people's cars off. And I think that it will be a long process for me to discover how fulfilling serving the jerks of the world can be.