Lest my last post before Christmas be on a down note (that note being, specifically, "I missed the last weekend of Fezziwig's and the December Gaskells!"), I decided that I had better take a break from my contracts outlining and post a reminder of God's goodness.

One of the Christian principles which I most love C.S. Lewis' space trilogy for elucidating is the idea that God is working for my good, and if I don't remember that I can bring much evil upon myself by refusing to take the good that he is offering me simply because it isn't the good I had my heart set on. This weekend has borne that principle out.

Last night I saw The Brian Setzer Orchestra with the family, and that was a fantastically good time. It involved no dancing (the pit was way too crowded for that even if my sister and I had felt like venturing down there) but the music was great and the showmanship was just superb. It's hard to see how that really substitutes for the Dickens Faire, but somehow it filled that hole.

Perhaps more obviously, if I had stayed up at Stanford I would have missed seeing Twilight's father playing Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. For those readers who don't know, Twilight's dad is quite the actor, and this was by far the most moving rendition of the tale I have experienced in any medium. But aside from the production's many and obvious merits, the whole experience was enhanced for me by the fact that I was simultaneously remembering my Belle breaking up with my Scrooge, that I was thinking of dear Fanny Scrooge, of whom I was so fond, dead (but living on in the spirit of her son Fred), that I was remembering walking through London myself as Scrooge was conducted through the streets by the spirits. The whole thing was somehow much more mine as a result - and, I suspect, tied into certain ways in which God is growing me (and now Alanna knows what that phrase means!). It's praiseworthy, I think, to remember that I neither chose to go to Dickens in the first place nor chose to leave it in the second - and yet had I resisted those two things I would have missed much that God had for me.

On a slightly related note, I totally sympathize with Shanah's expenditures on pretty things. It may surprise some of my readers to know it, but I like wearing pretty things. It's one of the character traits I have inherited from Alanna the Lioness. This has come about most recently thinking about the February Gaskells, the Viennese Ball (for which I will be assembling a Victorian costume), and of course next year's Faire. And the trouble is that many of the pretty things I want are expensive, like tailcoats and waistcoats\\vests and top hats. Mmmm, top hats. Collapsible silk top hats. And of course then one gets into the world of options, which involves an even greater expenditure of money. And really, I must be careful to use my borrowed money wisely. And after it is my own money, I must still be careful to use it wisely. Sigh. Well, I suppose it wouldn't be fun if I could just buy whatever I wanted, right?