Merry Christmas!

This is just a quick Merry Christmas post... It is also a post to acknowledge the 180 days to go mark for the big race.

Thankfully, Jenny has this as a rest week on the training calendar. It's not that I don't have any workouts, it's just that they are a little more flexible and allow for travel, family, and reflection on the past year and the holidays. It is a great time to have this flexibility since I am already a little stressed out about Crystal's upcoming wedding. There just seems to be so much to get done, and while I know we have plenty of time to do it, it's gonna be a lot of work!

At the last minute I decided to come home to the Quad Cities for Christmas. I rode over with Cam on Monday morning after we decided that the roads were cleared from the previous weekend's ice and snow storms. I was glad to get home in time to go to church with my parents. Mom was a big part of getting this church planted in Davenport, and on previous trips I'd not been able to go with her.

On Sunday night, I went to church with Cam and Michelle in Des Moines for a Christmas Eve Eve service. That was quite an experience as they were worshiping in their brand new, not-yet-finished auditorium. They figured that it would be a good dry-run with a couple hundred worshipers since this was a special service held in addition to all the other weekend services they usually hold. Instead, a couple thousand people showed up and packed the place to near over-flowing!

Both were really good services held by candle-light. What was great for me was to get the chance to experience the Christmas Story from a couple different perspectives - and they were even different from my own church. But regardless of how the story is told, the gift of Christmas still amazes me:

That God loves us enough to leave His throne and become one of us...
That He was born as a baby into a dirty, smelly barn rather than a triumphant entrance fit for a king...
That Jesus willingly came to earth, knowing that only persecution, torture, and death awaited Him...
That He did it for all of humanity, believers and unbelievers alike, but He would have done it just the same for me alone...

Merry Christmas.