A New Day

Every day is a new day.  I have a great deal of fondness for Ann of Green Gables who said "each day is new with no mistakes in it".  I like this way of living.  I find that I make too many mistakes to let them bleed over into the next day, it is important to cut them off and wipe the slate clean.  I believe truly, if one could do this, one would be living life in the Kingdom. 

Thomas Keating, one of those people who make me feel calmer just reading what he writes, says we should look at our strengths and our weaknesses, our successes and our failures and say, 'oh well'.  Just dream for a moment with me: what if we could do this?!  What if we could do this for ourselves, and for others.  Oh well.  What kind of freedom would we find in an 'oh well' world?

Some of you are already thinking about how this wouldn't work.  I hear you, and I even sympathize.  I mean where would the joy come from without the victory dance in the end zone?  What about the people who make messing stuff up a way of life?!  Do we just say 'oh well' and clean up time after time?  What about a work of excellence?  What about bringing the best fruits that we have to God?  What about working towards a goal, striving to take hold of that which Christ has taken hold for us?  Yeah, what about all that?!

I don't have lots of answers, I just wonder about this: what if we lived that way?  What if I was loved and accepted, totally and completely, just as I am and you were too?  What if we saw the good stuff and smiled and saw the bad stuff and smiled?  What if we rejoiced together and mourned together without self incrementation or finger pointing, or finding the reason something didn't work.  What if we stopped fixing ourselves and one another, and let God do what God does with us and be content with that?  Would that change the world and make the Kingdom come, on earth as it is in Heaven?

While I am being totally revolutionary here, let's run to the edge of fantasy and imagine what it would mean to live in God's Kingdom now.  If you work hard, can you imagine a state where we are so filled with the love of God and the love of others?  What would we bicker about?  Who would we gossip about if we were filled with love for everyone?  Who would we compete against?  Who's loss would we celebrate?  The dynamics of relationship would change, the priorities in our lives would turn upside and we would live in a world, the opposite of the one described by Winston Church: where all the things of value are priced cheaply, and the things that don't matter at all are the most expensive.   Let me just say this, before I get off the train to Never Never Land, why is it we don't want to live here?

I get the world is not ready to change it's vision, but is the Church?  Surely the Church, the Bride of Christ, would desire at the core and center of its vision and hope to be this Kingdom on Earth.  We pray it every week!  Wonder if this could be the year we mean it and begin to take the intentional and deliberate steps to allow God to create in us clean hearts and the love that makes this possible. 

I am thinking of staying on the train, I like the view from here. I am not sure I am getting any questions answered but I like the view, I like the company, and I think I will enjoy the freedom.  I can hear Tom Hanks yelling "All aboard" in my head!  I think this is definitely the year, and I am sure there is a ticket for you. 

Thanksgiving Eve

Its the lull before the full court press; my feet are up, my house is quiet, the turkey is stuffed and waiting patiently to go into the oven at the crack-o-dawn.  I have been reading thanksgiving quotes and stumbled across on from Erma Bombeck: "Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence."  I think this is worth posting somewhere.

Erma Bombeck takes me back to my late teens and early twenties when I was trying to figure out how to be a wife and an adult all at the same time.  She wrote funny things about house cleaning, something I have never found naturally entertaining.  "Housework, if you do it right, will kill you". How about that for truth?!  I will have to confess the obvious conclusion is correct, I have never done housework right.

Funny that the things I remember most, as nostalgia rolls in with the holiday season, are the things that made me laugh.  There was the time I asked my eldest son what I could do to help him sit still during worship.  He was about four or five years old at the time.  He thought for a few moments and then said, "Well, Mom, church could be shorter."  The moment was lost, how can you correct your child when you have tossed your head back and you are howling with laughter?!   Or the time when we were standing in line at an amusement park waiting our turn to ride.  My middle child, who was paying no attention to me at all, wrapped his arms around a leg wearing jeans, close to where I had been standing.  The gentleman, to whom the leg belong, took it well.  My son however did not!  I got so tickled by that one, I had to apologize to most of the people standing in line.  I giggle over it still today. 

There was the Christmas my brother in law bought my sister underwear.  Now, in fairness to my brother in law, my sister asked for underwear.  He carefully discovered that she wore size 14 jeans so he bought her size 14 underwear.  Those underwear were so large that all of us could have worn them together.  I am not sure, but I think we did. 

Or the time I cooked the pecan pie and forgot to take the wax paper liner out of the pie crust.  The pie filling kept rising and rising and rising.  We began a great count down, knowing that Vesuvius was about to blow!   Or the first time I made homemade chili.  No one told me,nor did I bother to read the directions, that you needed to soak beans over night.  So I put them straight into the crock pot with the rest of the chili fixings.  The beans were hard as rocks.  In fact, we took the beans and started a rock garden.   I will point out here that there are countless stories of my cooking, including the never ending lasagna and my famous turkey pops, but that no one has ever died from my cooking.   At least it has never been a direct correlation.

I am grateful that God gives us the gift of laughter.  At the end of the day, when truly the dust has settled and the smoke has cleared, it is the gift of humor that is my prized possession.  I have certainly shed my fair share of tears, but never find them as comforting as I do a good laugh.   I am grateful for those who find the humor in life and giggle.  I am grateful that even in the dark places in my life,  God has often blessed me with someone who would help me find something to laugh over.   I know that much of life is not funny, there have been some very sad moments in mine.   I have had those moments when I couldn't grin for any reason under the sun.  Some of those memories are precious too, for God was especially near and carried me when I could not walk on my own.  I know that we ought to be content in all circumstances,  I just love the ones with laughter best!

May the joy of a good belly laugh be yours this year.  May God bless you with a community of those who will laugh with you. 

 

Riding the Waves

Do you remember the story of the little girl who's mother prompts her to pray before dinner with company?  She shyly responds to her mother, "I don't know what to say".  Her mother prods her a little and says "Honey, say what you have heard me say".  The little girl lowers her head, folds and hands and prays "Dear God, why did I ask these people to dinner?!"  I bet all across the world this week there are people praying this same prayer: Dear God, why did we agree to host Thanksgiving?  Dear God, why did we start this project?  Dear God, what was I thinking?!

I am in the Dear God category myself.  It is not the Thanksgiving dinner part, I am looking forward to that and the company who will join us.  It's not even the projects, I can see them coming to a close.  Its the standing still in the middle of the tornado that is blowing through the church that has caused me to say, Dear God, what was I thinking!  Let me say first and foremost, those who have counseled me through the years and said, " be careful what you pray for, God might just honor your prayers", were spot on!  Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if I would listen when people talked to me?!

The Church is undergoing some much needed change.  Within the mass of institution and religion and agenda and politics, there comes a soft but driving force for change.  Five years ago it was a whisper, today it is a murmur and there is the sense in my bones that it will become an audible voice in my life time.  There is a call for discipleship, for relationship, for the Kingdom of God and the rule of Christ to be spread now, today, not just in eternity.  There is a hunger in the people God is calling into the faith for more: more love, more connection, more truth and more transformation.  It is the most exciting, exhilarating time and as I watch the little sparks spread to something resembling renewal, I am dancing with anticipation.  I am so grateful to see God move, to be faithful to the nurture and care of His people, even if His people are not all that faithful to Him.  It is just awesome to see hope return, the lights on the hill shine even if the light is small and feeble.

So why the Dear God moment?  Do you know how scary change can be?!  I do!  I can see the prayers I prayed over the years being answered, and while it delights my heart, it causes the hair on the back of my neck to stand up!  Someone mentioned the Prayer of Jabez in Sunday School this week and I thought....oh my goodness, I prayed that prayer too!  Oh that God would expand our territories still sounds remarkable, until I think what it might mean for me personally.  I am sitting squarely between being scared of revival not coming, and revival coming very close! 

Do not mistake my fear for regret.  I am so excited that God, who has so many more delightful children who play better with others, loves me this much and allows me to see daily the Kingdom of God on earth.  I will go forward in fear and trepidation, but I am going forward.  I do not know how the road twists and turns ahead, but if the road behind me is any indication, I expect there will be lovely green places to rest and renew.  I know there will be other places where the rocks are almost to big to get around, and there will be potholes you can get lost in.  There will be times when the people who travel with me are delightful and times when one wonders why it is these people can't walk faster, slower or on another part of the road.  Still, I would no sooner stay put than bungee jump!  The hair stands up, the heart beats a little faster, and I remind myself that there is no place any of us will ever go that God has not gone on before.  That He who is in us is greater than he that is in the world.  And that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God.  You know, seems like God must have known what a timid creature I am, to have given me so many promised to cling too!

Dear God, it is a good thing you love me so much and so completely.  You say you have known me from my mother's womb and have counted every hair on my head (and can I just share a good many of them seem to be falling out?) so all these personalities must not come as a surprise to you.  I hope when the transformation is complete the fun personality will remain, the neurotic one is just so hard to take anywhere. 

Packing up a Saddle Bag

Sister Kathleen Flood entertains us beautifully with a story of her mother.  It starts with the years of separation and pain caused by disapproval,and ends with reunion that is incomplete because dementia has robbed them of the resolution one would wish.  She tells of her mother waiting for a horse to ride to meet Jesus and after her death, and then later, Sister Kathleen packing up saddlebags of unresolved issues to send to meet Jesus too.  Trusting in God's time, time beyond time, there will be healing and restoration and redemption for those broken places.  It's a beautiful story!

This is where the story intersects with me in my own little reality.  "Saddlebags" was the curse of my existence in elementary school.  This was the recurrent nickname that used to send all kinds of horror into my life and make me feel rejected and worthless and friendless.  I still remember the dreadful day when my mother sent me to school in the olive green, hideous dress.  That day of all days, I was chosen to hold the doors to let everyone back into the building after recess.  A glorious job, by the way.  All of us lived to be chosen to be seen holding the door while the whole student population passed by.  There I was in that hideous dress, everyone is passing me by and seeing me, when one of the multitudes says something ugly ending in calling me "Saddlebags".  Could ever anyone have suffered such humiliation?  Why on earth the bully police did not rush in and arrest the culprit I do not know.  Worse, where were the child protectives service people who should have, at the very least, offered my mother the service of a fashion consultant, not to mention an allowance to purchase something ever so much prettier for me.  Alas, this did not happen, and today the memory remains.  Perhaps I ought to put that away in a saddlebag to ride on to Jesus!

Or the nasty year in six grade when a particularly vicious group of girls identified themselves as popular by identifying others of us as not popular.  The story would have been sad enough had the girls just never invited me in, but they did sometimes.  I was a marginal cool girl in the sixth grade.  Sometimes I was allowed to stay and then thrown out on a whim, usually painfully.  But the very worst part of that story was a girl named Helen.  She was never in the 'in' group and she was always the focus of the nastiness, always.  I remember now Helen opening her valentines and crying because of the ugly notes some of the girls had written her.  I don't think I was ever ugly to Helen, though I might have been.  I know that I never defended Helen to the others, my grasp on coolness was so tenuous and the pain of exclusion so great.  I am sorry Helen, where ever you are.  I hope you have been able to put this in a saddle bag and send it on to meet Jesus.  I am sorry I was too shallow to do the hard stuff of standing up for you, with you.  I am putting this in the saddlebag now, but I am remembering that in the redemption that will follow, God may allow me to have more courage in the future. 

And then there is Jim, who was gentle and kind, and whose family loved me as I have really never been loved.  They loved me enough to help me become a stronger member of my own church, which lead to distance and ignoring Jim, and I ended up hurting Jim and all of his family in my self absorption and very limited vision.  Even today, the horror I feel at my lack of feeling and sensitivity wash over me and I wonder just exactly how far I have grown.  Am I not today sometimes so incredibly self absorbed that others fade into the background and I am not aware of how little I am even thinking of them.  I am asking forgiveness, I am putting this into the saddlebag and I am trusting that for Jim and his family there has been redemption, and blessings for the many blessings they gave me.  I am keeping a little note to remind myself that love is precious and I need to make sure I nurture those I love, and who love me.

I am adding Bruce to my saddlebag.  Bruce was my love struck fellow in college, who betrayed my secrets to my roommate and caused division.  Bruce  loved me until he didn't, and then he was cruel and vicious.  Bruce sent to my mother complaining of my character defects, including that I forced him to visit my parents home against his will.  I remember the absolute fear I felt when my mother read the letter to me, I was so sure it would be believed and my own family would reject me.  How awful that moment was.  I remember my mothers response to Bruce, saying she wished he had told her he was being held against his will, that my parents didn't allow me to kidnap people.  What a relief that was!  A greater relief when, in the next semester, Bruce indicated that he had forgiven me and would like to go again, that I could say no and  walk away without regret.  Sadly, when Bruce told others that he didn't get an RA job, that I had complained to the Administration about him, some of them believed him.  I was told those people weren't real friends, but then how does one know a real friend?  So Bruce and my non-real friends, I am putting you in the saddlebag. I am pretty sure this one has already been redeemed, it is just now being release.

I think saddlebags have limited space, so I am sending this one on.  There will be more stuff, in this emotional purge, but for now, I am satisfied!  There is more room in here for God and less crap that I am forced to climb over or work around.  Way to go, Sister Kathleen.   What a means of grace your mother has been.  Wait, I think I see some redemption!

My father's daughter

November is the month my dad comes to mind most often.  It is the month that he was born, the month that he died and the month when my thoughts turn to family and tradition.  This year the memories have been aided by the discovery of the Red Hot Chili Pipers and the wonderful bagpipe/rock combination.  I drove several hours in the sun a few days ago, thinking of my dad and rocking away to the music, wondering if I should take up the bagpipes...wondering if my dad would approve...wondering if once upon a time, many generations ago, those writing music for bagpipes ever dreamed such a combination was possible.  The piano, the bass, some wicked drum solos, a little lead guitar and the bagpipes adding color and life and unifying melody.  I wonder if the same is true for people.  I wonder if the same truths to a different rhythm, one we haven't thought of yet, is the blessing given as the mantle is passed generation to generation.

My dad was a wordsmith.  He was witty and wise.  His humor was one of his greatest gifts and when he had been particularly witty, he so enjoyed his own humor that for days he chuckled over it.  I got that gift from him!  I have often tickled myself and had a hard time keeping the amusement to myself.  Quiet often I become giggly in all the wrong places, but it has been the source of tremendous joy.  What a lovely legacy to leave for me.  I hope it has been passed down to one of my children, or surely to one of theirs. 

My dad was a musician.  The last week I spent with him, just a few days prior to his death, he played for me some of his favorite music.  He played it for himself mostly, often in the night I would hear the music and know he was filling the quiet and the darkness with comfort and 'nourishment' for his soul.  He would describe each piece or perhaps collection of pieces, tell me what they meant to him, the history of the piece or the composer.  Haendel's Watermusic is one of the places I still meet with my dad, since this was one of gifts he shared with me this week.  Music is one of the best means of grace for me and has been long before I knew what a means of grace was.  I am often transported to other places in music and in that moment the current reality means little,  another lovely legacy that I have seen in my own sons.  Last Christmas it came full circle for me when my son sang a solo in the Christmas in the Wires concert.  As I listened to him sing  I was fill with great pride and real delight, and I knew that my father was sharing the moment with me.  I wonder today at the previous generations present in the heavenly host , do they gather when the gift is shared again and celebrate with joy?

My dad was a Scotsman.  He was proud of his Scottish heritage and often lost himself in its history and in the family genealogy of those who have gone before.  My introduction to bagpipes came from the Highland Games in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. We would take our lawn chairs, listen to the bagpipe competitions and the grand march when they would all take the field together.  I cried every year, it so moved me to hear them all play together.  Tears come today as I remember the feeling, on the edge of the fairgrounds when the music would start, when my heart will swell and be so full, it overflowed.  They come  now as I remember the very cold bagpiper, playing at the cemetery in the snow, as we laid my father to rest for the last time in the same place so many of his ancestors were buried.    I am grateful for the gift of a genealogy too.  I enjoy my Scottish roots and I am grateful that my parents lived in such a time when remembering who we are and where we came from was the vogue.  How much I would have missed had I not taken the bagpipes into my soul.

The Red Hot Chili Pipers are my hope for being faithful to the generations who have gone  before and leaving a legacy for those who will follow after.  Oh may the gifts we were given be passed on and transformed to suit the time and the season of those yet to come, and may we gather with the

heavenly host to celebrate the glories of God being revealed and reflected again. Then we will share in the blessing our hearts await,"well done, good and faithful servant", the mantle is passed and like Elisha, they will be able to do far more than we ever dreamed.  I am grateful that I am my father's daughter, and my Father's daughter.  And may those who come behind us find us faithful. 

Hollow

I do not know when hollow milk chocolate Easter bunnies were first introduced, but it was a very sad day.  A hollow milk chocolate bunny is just a very sad and pathetic shadow of what a chocolate bunny should be.  It should be thick and deep and leave teeth marks when you bite into.  It should fill you mouth and coat your throat with sweet, delicious, delightful chocolate that  means you can really only eat a bite to two without taking a break.  You have to pity the bunny that is hollow, just a shell of a rabbit really.  There is so much missing.

I am feeling like that poor sad bunny tonight, awfully hollow inside.  Just a shell of a person really.  Not much substances, just a lot of cotton wool and emptiness.  Not much to bite into, there is so much missing.  A very sad, pathetic kind of person today.

I am confident that this is a means of grace.  I am confident that the best part of being hollow is that it has made so much room for God.  All of the overwhelming sadness that has created a barrier that shoved all the stuff that was filling me up before. Now the sadness has created a new God shaped space where grace can be pumped in like insulation.  Maybe exactly like insulation.  Then the next great sadness may have less space to clear, and I may never get as hollow as I have today.  That's the way it is with grace, you know. 

I do not know how long it takes, to allow grace to fill all the hollow places.  I would like for it to be soon, though I do not have the energy to be in too much of a hurry for anything.  I know that it is worth waiting for.  I know that the grace that will flood in will be like light, and warmth and hope and security.  An Easter bunny worth eating. 

Now that is a goal to aspire toward!

Release, it's not for cowards.

I just need to say up front and without attempts to deny the obvious, I am a coward. I am a total and complete coward. I do not like pain, in any way shape or form. I do not enjoy suffering, correction, direction, attitude adjusting, boundary setting, humility exercises, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile or any of the people who spend their time thinking of ways to be my Holy Spirit. I have a Holy Spirit who does all the stuff mentioned above. My family is pleased to work in conjunction with the Holy Spirit to help complete the good work begun in me, so the rest of you who are applying for the job need to know it has been filled.

That being said, God really wants me to release all of my stuff into his control. All of it, even the parts of it that are in place to protect me from people mentioned in the above paragraph. God wants me to open my hands, let go and trust that what He says He will do, He will do. I am completely torn here, between my desire to be in deep relationship with God, my desire to know as I am known, to pray with sincerity not my will but yours, and the large firmly entrenched coward who is yelling really loudly, “Don’t do it. Danger Will Robinson, run!”

Today I heard a sermon by Adam Hamilton from Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City talking about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. He talked about the 40 days of testing in the wilderness and Satan going away to return at an opportune time. Hamilton said that the Garden was an opportune time to return and tempt Jesus with whispers of fear: what if the disciples dropped the ball after he was gone, what if God didn’t do what He said he would, what if all the suffering and death was for nothing. Hamilton said Jesus responded by praying: if it is possible make another way, but not my will but yours be done.

I often pray for God’s will. I pray for a pure heart so I can see God’s will and follow faithfully. I just know what I want God’s will to be. I don’t think it’s selfish to want sick people to be well, mean people to be nice, selfish people to share and those who hurt me to stop doing that. It seems reasonable after all to believe this is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only, God sees what I cannot. God allows some who are sick to be healed only in eternity. He allows mean people to be mean and while he doesn’t agree to save me from injury, He does promise to redeem each one. Only, as in Jesus’ case, God’s will is somewhat painful at times, and inside of me is a deep rooted coward. I don’t mind a fight you understand, but like Peter in the Garden, I am determined to win. Release, surrender, keeping my mouth closed, letting God defend me instead of rushing to my own defense is very much like choosing to have a body part amputated without anesthetic. Why on earth do I want to do that?!

Because God asked me to, and I want to do what God calls me to do. I know that in the end, this is the best way to live. God always does what He says He will, the ending has already been written and the in between part is just a part of the delicate work weaving the story. I want the part I am in to be especially radiant with God’s glory. Don’t you?!

Apostrophe

Once in a great while you have one of those apostrophe moments: the light bulb goes on, your head snaps back and aha, by George you've got it! It is sometimes a fabulous moment of enlightenment, your toes are tapping and you and filled with joy. You feel so inspired you have to tell someone else, even when they look at you with those blank stares of lack of comprehension; you are not deflated in the least. You know something you didn't know before and life is miraculous. These are the moments that I feel most like freezing the frame, holding every single second in time in my memory bank so I will always remember the moment when I got whatever it is I got. I really wish there was an ebenezer that could be raised on every one of those times in my life. They were golden, and all eternity danced with me. God danced with me and when I threw my head back and laughed with pure delight, I know God laughed with me.

There are also other moments, the light bulb goes on and there is an awakening to a new truth that is not so joy filled. These truths are less about enlightenment and more about realization, when it finally takes root in my heart that the story doesn't end the way I dreamed it would, when the Calvary doesn't come to save the day, when happily ever after is more like limping to an end. These moments there is no Aha; it is more like an Ah. There is no dancing, no laughter, and no desire to save the memory. This is the sure confidence that the memory will be seared into tender flesh in such a way that try with all one's might, there will be no forgetting the day, the time, the place when truth made itself plain and realization, desired or not, can no longer be avoided.

I remember this moment more than 11 years ago, when I realized my father would die. There would be no touched by an angel moment, no one had a secret cure, he would diminish over time and one day he would be gone. It didn't take long to happen, and I had already realized it would, still the moment when I walked into the house saw the empty space, and the knowledge still rolled over me in thunderous waves. I will never forget that moment; it will no doubt be the one I tell people about over and over in the nursing home. I do not think I remember feeling God's presence, but I would not be surprised to know He cried with me.

This week another one of those moments has found its way into my memory bank. This time I was sure of God's presence, and I felt an outpouring of love that enabled me to breathe deeply and find a place that was my own before the tears fell. This time the pain was just as sharp, the tears are just as many, but the hope is not so tenuous. I can rationalize all kinds of reason for this, the event is different, I am older and perhaps wiser and God has absorbed more and more of me over the years. But I think really the difference is that I am beginning to appreciate that this is the real story, not the fairytale I thought would make for a good life. The one where everyone is kind and loves God just as I do. The one where differences are worked out all of the time and closure is a given. The one where at the end of the day there is a happily ever after somewhere, and there has to be one if God is truly God and loves us as He says he does. I am learning that sometimes redemption comes on the other side of life. That sometimes people choose poorly and brokenness stays broken. That this is part of the reality of living in a world that is awaiting it's redemption as much as God's people await their own, not evidence of God's absence or lack of love but the hope that we are given in the coming of God's kingdom. That's an AHA and an Ah all rolled into one.

One day the tears cease and instead of ashes we receive crowns of beauty. Until that day, I will dance with all my heart in the seasons of joy and grieve in those seasons of ashes but not as those who have no hope. I am waiting with great expectation, Come Lord Jesus, Come

Holiday Memories

I must have grown up watching one Christmas special too many. I have spent a ridiculous amount of my life trying to have the perfect Christmas. The Father Knows Best kind of Christmas, with a light sprinkling of snow, carols playing softly in the background, a cracking fireplace with stockings hung. My perfect husband in his smoking jacket, pipe in hand, beaming at our 2.5 children and a well groomed and perfectly disciplined dog who, of course, is snoozing on the hearth. Everyone so happy with their gifts, the room immaculate and well decorated, the wrapping paper and assorted holiday litter magically disappears once the gifts are opened. Food is hot and delicious and on the table, whenever we want to eat it and the dishes simply wash themselves and put themselves away. In the warm and fuzzy glow, we entertain our dearest friends and family, then relax the evening away reading our new books or perhaps playing one of the many delightful board games one of us has received for Christmas. Everyone enjoys playing, there is much laughter and then we all warmly congratulate the winner, along with some good natured ribbing which the winner takes in good part, and all go off to bed, delighted with Christmas and the joys of being part of such a wonderful family. Okay, how many times do you suppose this happened in my family? No cheating now, don't compare answers. How on earth did you all guess right? Exactly, none. Zero.


Let's see, a typical Christmas would be my husband and I, bleary eyed from wrapping until the wee small hours and wrestling with those pesky little 'some assembly required'. If he had a pipe in his hand it was either part of the plumbing that was leaking or we had ended up with one of those irritating 'extra parts' from the 'some assembly required' gifts. Our gifts threatened to be lost in the mounds of wrapping paper laying everywhere and should there have been a fire in the picture the room would have spontaneously combusted. The dog most often chewed up someone's something and invariably, as we gathered to play a new game, the rule debate was heated and the good humored playing developed into fairly stiff competition quickly.


So, you might imagine that for many years, once the gifts were opened and everyone had gone off to their own parts of the house, I would retire to the bath tub, book in hand, and feel a sense of disappointment that somehow I had failed at Christmas magic one more time. One year, it dawned on me that the only one disappointed was me. My family was as happy as they could be, and I was making myself miserable. Not only that, but I am fairly sure that when you make yourself that miserable, some of it is bound to get on others. How can it not?


And so, one year I gave it up for Lent. I decided I would just enjoy Christmas as it unfolded and allow it to be whatever it ending up being. It was probably the best gift I have ever received or given for that matter. The ghosts of Christmas perfect were uncomfortable companions but the ghost of Christmas fully present has been a welcomed replacement. Enjoying the day as it is has been such a relief, and the memories are so much more genuine, funny and ours.


After reading various Advent devotionals this year, I can't help but wonder if this isn't the way all life, not just holiday life, was meant to be lived. Allowing the ghosts of perfect living to go, and welcoming in the Spirit, that is fully in each of the present moments, could be true freedom. What if we allowed ourselves to live without expectation, anticipation or even dread? What if we just trusted that He who began a good work in us would truly bring it to completion, just like He said it would, even if we don't know what that means exactly.


Maybe this is something worth taking with me into Lent this year. I am always looking for something else to surrender. Well, something I wont miss as much as chocolate, anyway.