Thoughts on Christmas

I wish writing came really easy. I wish it wasn't work. I want all these random thoughts that come springing forth to shape themselves so that the process easily flows and everyone says, "what a great writer he is" and "I wish I could say it like that". It isn't like that though. The crazy thing is, after 2 beers I think it's like that and I'll post most anything. I once sent a rambling email to my pastor and it embarrasses me now when I peek back into "sent mail" and see it there. I can imagine him, eyebrow raised a bit and his head cocked to the side thinking, "I believe Dave had two beers before he wrote this".

Christmas 2009 came. And it went. Five years ago I was part of a larger family. I was married and my wife's family always made such a wonderful Christmas celebration. Christmas eve was at my in-laws' home and there was food and frivolity and dogs running everywhere (always more dogs than kids). We began a Christmas morning tradition that included breakfast at our house where we opened stockings while feasting on some kind of egg/sausage/hash brown casserole. I am grateful for those days.

Since 2006 it's been quite different. There was plenty of time right after the divorce to wallow in self-pity. I remember thinking, as that first post-divorce holiday season approached, "I'm going to be spending Christmas in this little apartment all by myself!" I will admit that it was a bit scary. I prayed at my bedside Christmas eve and I gotta tell you, there was an honesty about that prayer. I was whining like a baby and complaining all the while knowing I was to blame for my circumstances. Prayer in times like that is difficult for me. I always picture God like an angry parent saying, "well maybe you'll think before you go off half-cocked and do something that stupid again".

But what surprised me was that God was so comfortingly close. Kind of in spite of myself. It's like when I was a kid and got my fingers caught in my grandmother's wringer washing machine. I was hurt and scared and she scooped me up and let me nestle in her lap while she lulled me to peace in her rocking chair. Yes it was my fault. I had slipped a piece of paper between the rollers on that machine so I could see how squeezed it would become. Like putting a penny on the railroad tracks to see it after the locomotive went by knowing when I retrieved it from the tracks it would be flat as a pancake and at least the size of a half dollar. Nothing like that happened to the paper though. It just sat there all wet and went 'round and 'round on the roller. Thinking I'd better retrieve it, I put my fingers up there so I could scrape it from the roller as it came by. The rollers weren't having any of that. They live for little boy's fingers! Slowly I watched helpless as my index and middle finger were pulled between the merciless rollers. I remember screaming. Grandma came quickly in her uneven gait down the stairs and saved me. God was just like that that Christmas eve night. Only bigger.

Now Christmas is singing carols with a group of friends at a home where a young wife has terminal cancer as she celebrates what will likely be her last Christmas here on earth. A holy time. Christmas is taking some hot coffee, biscuits and gloves to folks who live in a tunnel downtown. It's squelching my pride, at least for a few hours, to accept a dinner invitation at a friend's home with her three sons. Don't get me wrong. I would love to have the joyous family celebration again and the opportunities to serve were there all the time. Maybe I just had to wake up a bit. Maybe it helped to be squeezed a little.