Epiphany

New Year's is always an anomaly to me.  When I was growing up, we spent New Year's Eve... at home... going to bed early.  I mean, let's not get too crazy here.  And then on New Year's Day, our family would gather 'round to watch "It Happened on 5th Avenue" and at the end, when McKeever's dog jumps into his arms and they walk off together to head south, I would cry every time.  But on the whole, New Year's was and still is extremely anticlimactic for me.  Dr. Budds says that his ideal New Year's Eve would be spent going to the opera house in Vienna.  It would certainly be an occasion worth dressing up for, that's certain.  sidenote:  the lives of the rich and glamorous are an entirely different world to me... I would be lucky if that happens for me once in my lifetime.  Crazy to think that's how some people live.

On the whole though, I like to think about New Year's more in the context of the 12 Days of Christmas, i.e. the season between Christmas Day and Epiphany.  It makes more sense to me to think of Epiphany as the important day to consider, not necessarily January 1.  Besides, it lengthens the Christmas season that much more.

This New Year's Eve is no different than the rest:  weird.  I was blessed by a magical walk in the snow this morning, which turned into at least an inch or two by noon.

    
Then, since my friend Edwina is coming into town for the day, I decided that I would make a little something special.  Unfortunately in the process, I cracked my housemom's red dutch oven from Crate & Barrel...

... seriously, Katherine.  Don't try that at home, kids.  It will not bode well for you.  And then you will have to confess and look like the blonde that you sometimes are and spend an exorbitant amount of money on a new one.  And then you will be a sad puppy.  I honestly don't know why I didn't just use a saucepan in the first place.  Truly, who can know the mind of Katie Beth sometimes?...

This is what I'm making... which will eventually turn into a gluten-free version of these.  Yum.  I hope.  That is, if no other disasters strike...

Once Edwina gets here, which is taking forever because of the snow, we will finish baking these, go get stuff to make homemade hummus, eat the cauliflower soup I made yesterday, and go see my housemom at her store so she can meet Edwina and I can fess up to the cracked pot fiasco.  Then tonight, we're headed over to a couple of friends' houses.  This is the first time I've been out on New Year's Eve in... well, years.

I had hoped that I would feel better about the pot if I blogged about it.  But I don't.  I think it has to do with my personality.  I have a tendency to feel overly bad about things.  I also found out the other night that I share my Myers-Briggs personality profile with famous people like Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Shakespeare, and some sources even suspect Beethoven.  I wonder if Beethoven would've felt bad about the cracked pot...

Also, an update for you on the rest of my life:  I asked for three things for Christmas -- a car, a man, and season 4 of How I Met Your Mother.  I've somehow gotten both a car and Season 4 before New Year's.  I figure if a man comes before Epiphany, it still counts right?  I mean, there are 12 days of Christmas that we're dealing with here... a lot can happen in 12 days.  To be honest, I will probably find myself at the end of 2013 looking back at this post, still single and laughing at myself.  But if buying a car has taught me anything, it's taught me that our God owns all the things in the world -- cars, men, houses, pots (cracked or uncracked)... whatever.  Not only that, but he's a big God who knows our needs and our pain, and he's right there with us, ready to give us just what we need at exactly the right time.

That's how I'll be ringing in 2013.

Light blue and destined to bless: Norma Jean

Today was the best story ever.  I could give you the bullet points but it wouldn't do it justice.  But first, a little context... well, maybe a lot of context.  Because no good story is ever complete without a healthy dose of it, let's be honest.

The car I have now, I have driven forever... or at least, what seems like forever.  In actuality, it's been about six years.  From its outset, this car has been destined to be a blessing to others.  It was given to me by some family friends whose mother passed away and willed it to them.  They didn't need it and had been praying about who they should give it to.  At the time, I was in college and desperate to move off campus in order to save money on my growing pile of student loans.  I barely had a dime to my name and had literally started praying that a car would fall from the sky.  Little did I know at that time that God was totally taking me seriously.  So of course it blew my mind when a 1992 Buick Le Sabre fell into my hands for the whopping sale price of $1.  It was a light blue grandma car with about 70,000 miles on it at the time but I didn't care.  It was the answer to prayer I'd been looking for.  I have literally driven that thing til today.  It has been such a good car:  a complete beast in snow and ice, hauling around not only half my teaching library, but also its fair share of music scores, camping equipment, and high schoolers to student ministry activities.  It's had coffee spilled in it and helped me move on multiple occasions, has survived an interstate blowout, an exploding coolant system, and rear-ended someone (due to my lack of attention... oops).  I had named her Norma because she reminded me very much of the lady who took care of me when I was a little girl... Norma, who owned and operated a family dairy farm, together with her adult siblings and her mother:  sturdy and ready to work with a hint of country in her.  I drove her all over Columbia while I was in school and now St. Louis for the past two and a half years.  These days, she just isn't getting the fuel economy I need her to and sadly, her reliability (at least for this pianist) has diminished significantly, particularly in the past year or two.  It's time to find a new home for her.

So I've been looking.  I started looking for a new car about mid-December.  What a process.  I can't tell you the number of slithery people I've talked to, nor the number of questionable cars I've test-driven.  Every morning I would get up, scan craigslist, search through cars.com and carsoup, and start making calls... it was mind-numbing and draining and exhausting.  At first I wanted a Jetta (and I eventually still do), but after taking one to my mechanic which turned out in every way to be just like the last guy I dated, I realized that now is probably not the right time to buy one.  Had I bought that car, I would've totally named it after him.  (sidenote:  one thing I will say, I have learned so much about dating, simply by going through the process of buying a used car.  There were days when the weight of looking for needles in haystacks in multiple areas of my life was not only overwhelming, but super discouraging...).  After the Jetta fiasco, I started looking at Altimas and Honda Accords, particularly at the advice of our mechanic, who is a trusted family friend.  Eventually I found one:  drives tight, no major problems, reasonably decent mileage, only 10 yrs old.  The catch?  Sticker price about $1500 more than I'm able (or want) to pay.  Eek!  Long story short, this morning my dad and I went to the dealership to talk turkey.  The car was still available and Dad had pre-coached me through the negotiation process.  He and some of his friends had also done some considerable research into this particular Accord, as well as 02 Accords in general.  We were so ready for this morning.  It took about three rounds of negotiations but we finally arrived at the right price -- exactly the amount that I was able to pay.  God is so good.  Dad thinks I could've gotten it for maybe $200 cheaper than I did, but he says I did well for my first time.  He would know.  He used to sell cars.

But this is the best part:  after we picked up the Accord and signed all the paperwork, I called my sister's boyfriend Will to let him know that it was time to sell the Buick.  Will had agreed to help me from the outset and since Dad had done a lot of the work in helping me test-drive and negotiate, I figured this was one area where Will could take the wheel (no pun intended.  Promise.  I hate puns) and sail through with flying colors.  I was praying for a good buyer -- someone who would use her well and not dissect her for parts or sell her to a scrap yard.  Will and I had agreed to sell the Buick for only the cost of the sales tax on the Accord.  Within an hour or less, Will texted to let me know that he had a buyer... it was a friend of his, a friend who's been out of work for awhile, whose family has been through its own share of pain and heartache, and really needs a car to help them out.  When I talked to Will later tonight, he indicated to me that this was no ordinary sale.  Once again, Norma is falling from the sky into the hands of someone who desperately needs her at just the right moment.  It makes my heart so happy it hurts...

God, you are so, so good.