It’s become a tradition to recap my year’s bests. As usual, this list is not necessarily books or music that debuted in 2009, bur rather things I enjoyed in 2009 for the first time. Each year I add or delete certain sections. This year I deleted the “Best Moments” category only because I’ve already mentioned most of our best moments in other places on this blog. Please add some of your favorites from any category in my comment section OR create your own post and leave me a link!
Best of 2009 Reads
Shanghai Girls- Lisa See
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society- Mary Anne Shaffer
Celebration of Discipline- Richard Foster
For Women Only- Shaunti Feldhahn
Best of 2009 Movies/TV
Julie and Julia
Invictus
The Blind Side
Young@Heart
Gran Torino
Slum Dog Millionaire
Glee
Best of 2009 Music
Lord of Lords-Hillsong
Say Hey, I Love You- Michael Franti
Have a Little Faith- Michael Franti
Single Ladies- Beyonce
We Got Love-Ryan Shaw
Use Somebody- Kings of Leon
Don’t Stop Believin’ – Glee cast
Magnificent- U2
Love- Matt White
*Thank you Amy, Anne and Matt for introducing me to some of these songs. 
Best of 2009 Websites
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/
Bonus section: Things I’m anticipating in 2010
Erin and Mike’s wedding
Matt’s graduation
Fourth annual summer camping trip
Scott and Lauren’s wedding
Getting a dog (Jonathan?!?! PUH LEASE?)
Best of 2006, Best of 2007, Best of 2008
After six months of eager anticipation, here we are at the Rose Bowl watching U2 perform the largest concert in the stadium’s history. Close to 100,000 fans packed out the stadium for a two-and-a-half hour concert broadcast around the world on YouTube.
I told you in April that I’d be blogging about the concert as soon as it was over. I’m writing this on only a few hours of sleep–because it took us three hours to get out of the stadium and back to Orange County. In the background tonight I have the YouTube concert streaming so I can catch all the little things I wasn’t able to see last night. Our seats were amazing, but, still not quite close enough to see some of the emotion you can pick up on camera.
What I loved the most about last night was the energy in the crowd. There is nothing like singing with 100,000 other people, nothing like seeing the hands waving in unison, and nothing like the beating that takes over your entire body. There’s nothing like watching the Dad in front of us as he continued to jump up and down, much to the amusement of his teen daughters. There’s nothing like hearing Amazing Grace float over and out, into the sky, and hearing the sounds of thousands join in. There were moments where I found myself worshipping God..thankful that I could do so, and praying that others might be moved to do the same. That statement will sound dramatic if you’ve never been to a U2 concert, but, I’m being honest!
Here we are with our concert buddies- Lori and Dan. We tailgated with a few other Westmont alums, then hid out in the car afterwards to eat pumpkin pie until the crowds thinned out. If you’re jealous, don’t worry. Tickets go on sale soon for Summer 2010 tour. Anaheim anyone?
I contribute, and give credit to, the hand of God for bringing Jonathan and I together during our early years of college. I also might credit Bono. Don’t call me a heathen. God can work through people, right?
“This is not just an American dream, but also an Irish dream, a European dream, an African dream … an Israeli dream and a Palestinian dream,” Bono said in the middle of U2′s performance of their 1984 hit “Pride (In the Name of Love).” (MTV)
(Lovin’ my three day weekend / celebrating MLK Day / anticipating Tuesday morning’s festivities. Are you?)
Tired of reading my blogs on Chris Martin/Coldplay. Oh, don’t worry. 2009 is all about U2. We got in the U2 mood this weekend by watching the 1988 “Rockumentary” called “Rattle & Hum.” It was pretty much awesome.
Bono on their new album– now due in early 2009:
“We’ve hit a rich songwriting vein. It gets a bit dark down here but looks like we’ve found diamonds not coal. I thought a while back we might have the album wrapped by now, but why come up above ground now if there’s more priceless stuff to be found? … I’m always the one who underestimates how easy it is to simply ‘put out the songs now.’ If it was just up to me they’d be out already! But early next year people will be able to start hearing what we’ve been doing. We want 2009 to be our year, so we’re going to start making an impression very early on.”
Apparently, the band has up to 40 tracks they’ve recorded…not all of which (obviously) will make the new album.
U2′s legendary producer, Steve Lillywhite, claims the band’s eagerly-awaited new album will be their BEST ever.
I felt autumn in the air tonight and I started making preparations for the new season by doing the following: taking out all my pumpkin and spice candles, buying two coats this weekend at Nordstrom Rack, contemplating how much squash soup I can make and freeze this year, looking up when the time change will happen on google and daydreaming about flannel sheets. It was glorious.
Labor Day weekend was a perfect end to summer. We celebrated Kristi’s birthday one night with a big game of soccer and matching TEAM PEACH shirts. Then, my parents were in town all of Saturday and we floated the river and got dinner at Aioli Bodega Espanola. The food was delicious but I especially loved the atmosphere. It was soooo hot outside but we sat in the courtyard by a little fountain and had great conversation and just a happy, family time. I loved having them here. On Sunday we hit the State Fair with a bunch of people including Lori who was in town visiting from San Jose. Jonathan tried so hard to win me a stuffed animal but the only thing we left with were stomach aches from the fried cheesecake. This weekend we spent a lot of time with the Boekesteins, playing games (Settlers of Cattan is my new fav) and Erica and I saw the Nanny Diaries. Despite the bad reviews, I loved it.
Keeping with my new passion to try and eat more locally grown foods, I found this pie place downtown by accident called The Real Pie Company. Mmmm…the place is delicious and uses all locally grown, seasonal produce to create fresh pies. LOVE IT! Sacramento has a lot of hidden gems that are fun to find.
So, as promised, my thoughts on a few deeper things. First, I read a book while in Hawaii that I really liked– Walk on the Spiritual Journey of U2 by Steve Stockman. (Thus, the large and hard to ignore picture of Bono, in his signature shades) Anyway, I’ve always loved U2 because my dad listened to it when I was young. I feel like it’s music that I’ve grown with– I appreciate and love the stuff from the 80s and the newer albums that came out while in college remind me of Jonathan and a few great concerts we went to together. Anyway, Bono is a mystery man in a lot of ways and has definitely hinted at his faith in most songs and in interviews, although for a long period during the eighties many people felt he left the faith. The book has a few great quotes that I found interesting:
“It’s lukewarm believers that drive me out of the church…. If there’s a God, it’s serious, if there’s not a God, it’s even more serious.”
“Dream up the kind of world you want to live in. Dream out loud at high volume. That’s what we do for a living.”
“To me, faith in Jesus Christ that is not aligned to social justice–that is not alighted with the poor–it’s nothing. (Said in 1988)
I get a couple things from Bono’s thoughts. First, if we call ourselves believers, if we believe in God, we better get serious about it. Second, when we are serious about our faith, we start to dream about what the world should look like. In church today our pastor talked about how as Christians, we want something more than just a day job that pays the bills. In us, we have an burning desire to change the world because we know that this is not what we were created for. Our world is a messy place but we can be used by Jesus to help make it better. I found great encouragment today at church when we attended the annual ministry fair. There are so many ways our church is involved with our community- literacy and mentoring programs to adults and troubled teens, serving weekly lunches to the homeless, mentoring to prisoners and taking special offerings for the poor. Still, there is an option not to get involved and its very easy to want to shy away. Truthfully, what do I have in common with prisoners or troubled teens? I’m hoping to start a class this week on discovering my spiritual gifts so that I can best figure out how to help. The person, their skin or socio-economic background or age should not matter. What should matter is how I can best help them. God will figure out all the rest… If you like U2 you should definitely check out the book. I got my copy at the library which was perfect because I could skim through chapters I didn’t love and concentrate on some of the albums, lyrics and faith journey that I was more interested in reading about.
My blog took a little longer than I thought and I’m not going to go through and edit because I’m tired! (and, I have clean sheets to go sink into! I love clean sheets!) Wake up tomorrow with this thought from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ” At the threshold of the new day stands the Lord who made it. All the darkness and distraction of the dreams of night retreat before the clear light of Jesus Christ and his wakening Word. All unrest, all impurity, all care and anxiety flee before him. Therefore, at the beginning of the day let all distraction and empty talk be silenced and let the first thought and the first word belong to him to whom our whole life belongs. ‘Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Ephesians 5:14)