I am a notorious photo-taking fanatic. I love to have photos of everything. Every little moment. Every little detail. I don't need some deep psycho-analysis to know it's my way of holding onto all of the fleeting beautiful that I don't want to let go of.

But lately I'm finding myself in moments of such depth, that no photo is really going to capture it.

Like our night of music. I did take a picture. I suppose I could've taken a video. But nothing really could capture that moment, that feeling of being in the middle of my kitchen and hearing the voices and melodies of all those I love most pouring out beautiful worship. It was beyond visual documentation. All I could do was stop, be still, and soak it in.

Last night it happened again. You know that moment at the end of a movie when all the sudden the bliss the character has been seeking is just there? The camera focuses on two people and everything around them is in some kind of spinning motion, but there they are in perfect focus and happiness as strains of Coldplay start fading in and it just feels like this is it! This it what they've been waiting for. They've found the beauty.

Sitting around our dining room table wrapping up a night full of games and dancing to swing music around the kitchen sink.  An animal covered game board spread before us and piles of colorful game chips scattered around like confetti. Little girls in pajamas and my husband to lock eyes with as we try to help the game along.

The girls suddenly (as is usually the case) have reached the end of their game concentration. The silliness has hit. And the littlest girl is the most out of control of them all. Because I'm sure there's nothing more satisfying as the baby of the family than to evoke a good laugh out of everyone.

They giggled over nothing, and their giggling made them laugh more until they were just being crazy. Watching our girl who's about to be ten sink into hysteria with her seven and four year old sisters. The four year old has recently taken up the habit of putting her hands over her mouth when she laughs, which just makes her a thousand times more endearing to watch. Because her little hands really can't cover her big old laugh, and there she sits with her giant-missing-tooth-grin just laughing to the point of tears.

And we laugh too. Because they're just so funny and so beautiful, and I'm not sure about him, but for me it's the kind of laugh that's containing a well of tears. Because life can be so beautiful. I know we don't deserve one bit of it. And in knowing that I feel driven to cherish it fiercely. 

There was a moment when I thought about jumping up to grab the camera. I wanted to capture and be able to look back at all that laughter. 

But something stopped me. And I knew I just needed to be still and be in that moment. Not try desperately to grab a little piece of it to hold onto forever. But to let myself be immersed in it and savor it in all it's beauty. No photo could do it justice.

And even though I sit here the next day trying to secure it a place in my unreliable memory, it seems that I can't capture it with words either.

The beautiful gift of a heart so full it might burst. It's always fleeting. Only a moment to soak it in and then it's gone forever. There's nothing quite so amazing. 

After last year I've come to find myself somewhat less surprised by the unexpected showing up around the week before Christmas. 

So when I was driving to pick up my girls after a quick haircut, I found myself abnormally calm as my van steering wheel locked up and the gas pedal ceased performing it's purpose. 

In the middle of traffic, I was barely able to coast to the far right lane before losing all momentum. There was no shoulder to pull off in. This busy street in our town is lined by sidewalks. So there was nowhere else to go.

I immediately called my husband of course. Then a tow-truck. Then I sat and waited, choosing not to get out of my car because it was freezing cold and my hair was still wet.

I sat blocking a lane of traffic, waiting for help, and relatively convinced that my position on the road was not going to be a big deal because there were two whole other lanes open for traffic going my way.

This would be the point where the unexpected got the better of me.

It wasn't just a small inconvenience that my van was blocking this third lane. It was NOT. OKAY. According to all of those people who came flying up behind me at lightning speed, slamming on their brakes, throwing their hands in the air and laying on their horns, it was really NOT okay.

Four days later and I still can't erase the vision in my mind of the elderly woman with Betty White hair and a shiny little Lexus waving her hands at me and glaring with rage. 

I started texting my dearest friend for a diversion.

"What do these people want me to do?" 

"What on earth is such an emergency that everyone is in such a frantic hurry?"

I kept sitting. The general outpouring of hostility and condescension continued. The honking was constant. That by itself was nearly my ruin. In my mind, honking is equivalent to being yelled at, and for a people-pleasing good girl neither one is even remotely acceptable.

I found myself dangerously close to the point of no return. The tears were forming. The self-pitying internal monologue was beginning and it was quite pathetic.

Why are they all in such a hurry? What's so urgent that they need to be mean to me?

No one has even stopped to offer help. Not. One. Person. They don't even know if I have a phone. They don't know if someone's coming to help me.

And they don't care. Nobody cares. Everybody's too busy. Too selfish. They've got their fancy cars and their nice clothes, but they're not nice. 

I began to recall some news story I'd heard once about a woman being attacked in the middle of traffic on a freeway in New York and no one stopping to help her. No one even paying attention. 

And I was quickly deciding that the whole human race is devoid of all compassion and it's a sad, hopeless world we're living in.

Then I looked up and saw four people approaching my stranded vehicle from the parking lot across the sidewalk.

"Put it in neutral", one of them yelled to me with a friendly smile.

Then they all proceeded to push my car down the long stretch of uphill street until the sidewalk opened and I was able to coast into a parking lot. 

I put the van in park, jumped out to thank them, and excercised every ounce of self-restraint I posessed to keep myself from throwing my arms around them and crying on their shoulders while telling them how grateful I was for their selfless display of kindness towards me. In my quest towards control I just said thank you about twenty times.

They smiled, said "no problem", made sure I had help coming, and then went on their way. 

And I sat there waiting for the tow truck, so thankful to be out of the path of aggravated old ladies and obnoxious boys who can shave.

Here's what I was trying to wrap my brain around: those people who stopped and helped me, they were not the kind of people I would expect to help. They were not the kind of people I would approach for help if it were up to me. They were the kind of people I all too often am tempted to disregard because they're just not anything like me.

Stepping out of their beat-up and run-down looking vehicles and walking towards me, they definitely didn't have the look of knights in shining armor.

Three men and a woman, all in their big baggy jeans. Tattooed, pierced, one of them wearing a leather sheathed knife that was bigger than my head. Scrawny and out of shape. Not exactly the stats rescue material is made of.

But they came to my rescue. And I loved them for it. All the "nice" looking people flew past me without an ounce of sympathy. But this unexpected quartet of people who could very easily place their photo in the dictionary above the word "hooligan", they were kind to me. 

I don't describe them this way to sound condescending or belittling. I'm describing them the way I know my mind would process them if I saw them across a parking lot, and had no interaction with them. Because I feel the need to acknowledge the inner snob that never vocalizes itself, but quietly sits ready to raise itself up in superiority when warranted. 

And I want to give that snob a big punch in the face as I tell myself and you that these were some of the most beautiful people I've ever met.

I recounted my tale of woe to some friends later that evening, and one made reference to the good Samaritan. A fitting comparison for sure.

But there's something else I've found myself processing these last few days as everything is of course passing through the filter of Christmas. I've been thinking about expecting a king and then finding Him in a stable. Watching Him choose the unexpected and realizing that His path to king is not going to be what you thought.

And I've been thinking about how we like to think we have everything all figured out and we know the best way, when really, what we consider to be unexpected disappointments and disillusionments may be His best gifts.

Because the beautiful Gift we celebrate at Christmas turned the whole world upside down and showed us that our vision is unreliable and that there is only One who can see what is truly good.

Even if nothing else called for thankfulness, it would always be an ample cause for it that Jesus Christ loved us, and gave Himself for us.

A farmer was once found kneeling at a soldier's grave near Nashville. Someone came to him and said: "Why do you pay so much attention to this grave? Was you son buried here?"
"No," he said. "During the war my family were all sick, I knew not how to leave them. I was drafted. One of my neighbors came over and said: 'I will go for you; I have no family.' He went off. He was wounded at Chickamauga. He was carried to the hospital, and there died. And, sir, I have come a great many miles, that I might write over his grave these words, 'He died for me.'"

This the believer can always say of his blessed Savior, and in the fact may well rejoice. "By Him therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name."

Dwight L. Moody

For every day, but especially for those days when there are no blessings to count coming to mind….

Bless the Lord, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all His benefits:
Who forgives all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases,
Who redeems your life from destruction,
Who crowns you with loving-kindness and tender mercies,
Who satisfies your mouth with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

The Lord is merciful and gracious,
Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.

He has not dealt with us according to our sins, 
Nor punished us according to our iniquities.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
As a father pities his children,
So the Lord pities those who fear Him.
For He knows our frame;
He remembers that we are but dust.

-excerpts from Psalm 103