Is there anything as beautiful as green leaves in January?
What a treat it was for me last week to climb aboard a plane in cold, gray Chicago and deplane in warm, sunny (SUNNY!) Florida. The only thing better than the climate was the company: my good friend Debbie.
Debbie and I met years ago at a writer’s conference. I was teaching a class on creativity and, with more than 60 million books in print, she was the keynote speaker. Of course, I didn’t know that when we met. She was a fan of mine via Daily Guideposts—and I was ignorant of just what a publishing phenom she was/is. Yes, Debbie is a very famous. And hardworking. Perhaps those two go hand-in-hand?
But the thing that impresses me most about Debbie, the thing I find endearing is that she is a truly generous, spiritual person. Every day, before we head off on shopping adventures or beach walks or to see the latest movie, Debbie sits down at the kitchen table with a TALL stack of devotional books and Bibles. She reads passages in each one, writes in two journals, and solemnly puts it all away…before the fun begins.
Except that I know what she’s doing is fun for her. Too many people think spirituality and fun are mutually exclusive. But what could produce more endorphins, give more pleasure, bring out more smiles than filling one’s mind with Truth, than opening one’s heart to joy?
I’ve always said my theology is simple: God is great…God is good…and God has a sense of humor. I know Debbie would concur. What else could account for the fact that we sisters in Christ laugh so much?
I look forward to my yearly visit to Florida to see Debbie. It’s a bright spot for my spirit as well as my eye.
Now that I think about it, I guess there is one thing as beautiful as green leaves in January. The welcoming smile of a seldom-seen friend.
P.S. That's Debbie's doggie in the picture: Bogie Beauregard Macomber.
My husband Gary and I have been married for a very long time. We met in college. (I got a degree; he got me.) I was 19 when I married Gary, young enough to be oblivious to just how young we really were. Less than a year after the wedding, Gary was drafted into the Army. I left school and followed him—Ft. Polk in Louisiana, Ft. Benning in Georgia, Ft. Knox in Kentucky, and Ft. Riley in Kansas. (It was there, in a military hospital, that our daughter was born.)
Long-term love and commitment can be tricky. Especially when people are as different as Gary and I. I love books; he likes football. My idea of an evening out is a play; his is a movie with at least one good car chase scene. I like a restaurant with cloth napkins and vegetarian entrees. He's just looking for a good hamburger. Gary has his own excavating business, and you’ll most likely find him on a jobsite, running his excavator or bulldozer, muddy and happy to be that way. I’m more likely to be at my desk, working on a story, Gregorian chants coming from my CD player. I like to travel; Gary likes to stay home. But, as my friend Lurlene reminds me, we agree on the big things. Money. Religion. Children. And monogamy—we’re big fans of monogamy.
Gary isn’t much for sending me flowers. The last time he sent them was…uh…let’s see. Never mind! And the last “real” piece of jewelry he bought me was 15 years ago. But he shows his love in so many other ways. He lets me hold the bag of popcorn at the movies. He calls me in the afternoon and asks, “What are we doing for dinner?” So if I don’t want to cook, I just say, “Going out!” He builds a fire in our woodburning stove before he leaves for work, so the room is toasty warm when I go out there to read my Bible each morning.
Recently, I mentioned to Gary that I needed paper towels. “We just use so many of them when the kids and grandchildren are here. Seems I’m always running out.” The next day I was in my car, getting ready to back out of the garage, when I looked on top of the refrigerator we have out there and saw…paper towels. Rolls and rolls. I turned off the car and got out. There were 45 rolls of paper towels!
When I asked Gary about them, he said, “I was at the lumber yard and remembered you wanted paper towels. So I bought you some.” And then he smiled, the same smile that had melted by heart forty years ago.
Yes, long-term love and commitment can be tricky. Challenging. Hard work. But oh-so-very-worth it.
Last night I treated myself to my final, final holiday tradition. In the quietness of that mid-January evening, I snuggled into my favorite chair and, one by one, reread every Christmas card we’d received.
Some featured chubby snowmen with carrot noses and funny hats. Others showed angels, their wide wings embossed in gold, their mouths open in praise for the newborn Babe. One, from my friend Betsy, contained a “Kohn Family Holiday Quiz”—a fun new slant on the familiar Christmas letter. (I flunked miserably, Betsy. We need to have lunch!) Among my favorites were the ones showing the Holy Family—in styles both formal and humble. Shepherds and sheep and stars. A dove of peace. Stockings stuffed with presents.
These cards were from far away family, old friends and new ones, neighbors. There was one from a lovely gal who’d worked as an intern for me years ago. Many included short notes. My childhood friend Melva is now a grandmother. My friend Kathy wrote how she believed God had orchestrated our paths crossing. (I agree, Kathy!) I love the ones that include photographs—proud parents, dressed-up toddlers, srubbed-til- they- gleam children.
When the cards arrived last month, I was in full holiday swing. Usually, I was more concerned with “Did I send them one?” that I was with the lovely sentiments and handwritten updates.
But it’s January now. Decorations packed away. Holiday treats long gone. “To-Do” lists tossed in the trash. I have time now to ponder this pile of good cheer and good news from these people who care about me and my family.
Most of the cards will go in the recycling bin. The photographs I’ll stick in the family album. I’ve chosen one card to keep on my desk. It’s the one in the picture above: a black-and-white forest with a wide, snowy road running through its tall, bare trees.
It will serve as a beautiful reminder that life is a journey—a bumpy, jarring, hold-on-to-your-hat ride that gives you few clues about what lies ahead. But this I know: It is a journey made more joyful when you trust the future to God…and pause to appreciate those making the trip with you.
My grandson Drake, who has just started kindergarten, is learning to read. This is a HUGE thrill for a bookworm and bibliophile like me. I can’t wait for the day when he is reading to me. And what amazing worlds will open to him through the pages of books!
A few weeks ago, Drake was in church with me. When the deacon handed me the order-of-the-service bulletin, he gave Drake a packet for children. In it were a few crayons and some pages to color. There was also a word search.
“Look, Nina,” Drake said, placing his thumb over the last letter of a word. “This is the only word I know so far. Go.” He moved his finger, and I glanced down to see the word was actually “God.”
“If you put a ‘d’ on ‘go’ you get the word ‘God’,” I whispered.
Drake busied himself with the crayons and papers, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that discovery. “Go” is the first word in the word “God.”
Go to Him with all your problems. Go to Him in joyful gratitude. Go to Him when times are tough—and when they’re not. Go to Him when you are angry with Him. Go, go, go! Comfort in every sorrow, help in every circumstance, direction in every decision begins with that simple act.
Each week in Sunday School, Drake is learning about God. Soon he will be able to read the Bible for himself. But already he has latched onto a truth it took me half a century to realize. God is all about “go.”
It is a universally acknowledged truth that it takes longer to take down Christmas decorations than it does to put them up. And it’s not nearly as much fun!
I’m slow to pack away the glitz and glitter of December. January is cold and gray and long. (I mean, really, does January need the same number of days as December? I think not!) But after Epiphany passes, I run out of excuses to keep the holiday lights burning.
Defrocking my house always puts me in a pensive mood. I pull the garland off the banister, thinking about how things were when I did this last year. My mother-in-law was snug in her house right down the road, stoking the fire in her woodburning stove and making plans for her spring planting. We buried Mom in October. I pluck the poinsettias from my wrought-iron fence and think about how a year ago my sister’s husband was alive and part of a family fantasy-football league. Her son, Lewis, was working and walking. Now he is learning to live life from a wheelchair. I wrap the hand-painted statue of Mary and Joesph and Baby Jesus and think about how my own son has had three surgeries in the last six months.
Enough! I think.
So when I come to the big tree in the sunroom—the one where the angel topper touches the ceiling—I try a new strategy. For each ornament I remove, I name a blessing. Off comes a gold ball. I have a job that lets me do meaningful work. A mirrored cross in my hand reminds me God is God no matter what the season! Next comes tinsel, beaded roping and glitter snowflakes. My family has grown closer this year. I am healthy—and have insurance coverage when I need medical care. After 40 years, my husband still thinks I’m cute. The box fills with decorations—and my heart fills with gratitude.
Christmas is over, but there’s still plenty to celebrate…even in January.
Christmas is only hours away. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last week crossing things off your “to do” list—and adding others just as quickly. But, ready or not, the hour is (almost!) upon us.
Personally, I’m ready. No, I don’t have all my presents wrapped. (I’m close, though.) The baking is still to be done (although I did do the big grocery store run this morning—on snow-packed roads covered with a fresh glaze of ice. YIKES!). I’ve got 20 people coming for dinner tomorrow, and I must get the holly-berry china out and washed. I’m nowhere near finished reading the stack of Advent books beside my easy chair.
Still, I’m ready. I’m eager to wake up in the morning and know—anew—that Christ has come into the world. To be reminded that love arrived thousands of years ago in the form of a baby, and that love continues to “arrive” a thousand times a day in the form of God’s provision for me and my family.
My Christmas admonition for you, dear friends, comes from an Advent sermon preached more than 1200 years ago by Rabanus Maurus of Mainz (he was known as “The Teacher of Germany”): “Let your souls gleam with purity, shine in love, be bright with acts of charity, glow with righteousness and humility, dazzle, before all else, with love of God.”
Ah, what would Christmas be without the annual children’s pageant at church? I always look forward to those wriggly little sheep and those on-the-brink-of-puberty shepherds. To the (truly) teenaged Mary and lanky Joseph. I believe the more costumes and kids and songs and bloopers the better. And the program this year did not disappoint.
The premise was that the creatures living in the stable, far from welcoming the Christchild, were angry and panicked that (gasp!) humans were invading their space. Their lives were problematic enough. Who needed more drama? The animals mumbled and grumbled—from the mice in the corners to the owl in the rafters, from the wizened old Billy goat to the spotted cow.
When Mary and Joseph arrived (via the left-hand aisle), Mary was prominently, painfully, ridiculously pregnant. At first we snickered. But then most of us fell silent—many of us women remembering our own discomfort when we ourselves were “heavy with child.”
By the time Mary had given birth (quietly and quickly and backstage somewhere), the animals had had a change of heart. They had cleaned and swept the stable and prepared a manger for the new baby. “Nothing but the best for the special guest!” they joyfully sang. Soon Jesus was snuggly sleeping among the beasts while Mary and Joseph looked on fondly.
The curtain call was, literally, a zoo, with plenty of bowing and waving to family members in the audience. The stage was filled with wide grins, with palpable relief at having remembered lines and entrances and song lyrics. Ducks tripped over black cats and even the skunk took center stage for a fleeting moment. The rooster couldn’t have been prouder.
It’s an old story. And a new one, too. Christ comes. He knocks. Will we open the door and bid him welcome? Or will we behave like…well…beasts. Foolish creatures that fail to grasp the amazing truth: The Creator of the universe seeks shelter within our small, humble humanity. He longs for lodging in our hearts.
The kids stampeded down the center aisle, all smiles and ears and tails. Another pageant come and gone. But the last line of their last song lingered with me long after I’d left the church:
“O come to my heart, Lord Jesus; There is room in my heart for Thee.”
I have just returned from taking my friend Lurlene to the airport. In a few hours she’ll be back home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (She was as thrilled as a three-year-old to find we’d had a dusting of snow in the night!)
Lurlene’s annual trip to see me in December is as much a part of Christmas as stockings, eggnog, and “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” She comes one weekend in early December, and we see how much holiday cheer and girlfriend chatter we can pack into three days.
This year we took the train into Chicago and saw a stage production of The Addams Family. Some of you may remember the old TV series about this odd, wacky, macabre, darkly funny family: Gomez and the love-of-his-life Morticia, their children Wednesday and Pugsly (who are always looking for new ways to torture each other—literally), Uncle Fester and Grandma. Plus Lurch, the almost-alive butler.
Lurlene and I laughed and clapped and walked out into the chilly, skyscraper-filled night mulling over what it meant to be part of a family.
Christmas is one of those times of the year when the volume is turned up on families. Memories are more poignant. Hurts hurt more. We agonize over gift selections for those we love—and those we are trying to love.
I like that Jesus was born into a family. Mary had a mother—which means that Joseph had a mother-in-law. There were siblings and nosy aunts, uncles who gave too-much advice and cousins who were clumsy and loud. From the very get-go, this Holy Family was surrounded by drama. And not all of it the heavenly-angels-singing kind.
I once got a Christmas card from a friend that read: “’Tis the season to eat, drink, be merry…and tolerate your family.” Harsh. But a bit too true sometimes, too.
Love begins at home, because that’s the hardest place to practice it—day by day, flaw by flaw, frustration by frustration.
And Christmas doesn’t make that any easier. But it does make it more important. Divine love came down, to a stable and a manger...and a family.
There are many things in this world you can do quickly. You can drink a milkshake quickly (brain freeze alert!). You can tie your shoes quickly. You can scan the want ads or brush your teeth quickly. You can even zip through your bedtime prayers (although I wouldn’t recommend it).
But one thing you positively cannot do quickly is…put up Christmas decorations. I should know—I’ve spent the last three days doing just that.
First, there’s the opening of the big plastic tubs—tubs that have spent the last 11 months in the loft of the barn with their lids collecting (yuck) an impressive amount of dirt and small spiders. These bins house an assortment of lovely decorations—and junk I haven’t quite gotten around to tossing out. It all must be handled and sorted.
There’s the macramé Santa for the coat closet door. The copper-colored poinsettias and pine roping for the hallway banister. Candles for the windows, the Santa placemats, the wooden crèche just right for little hands to handle. Balls for the tree—how could ALL the hooks hook-up like that? And lights…I KNOW they were in neat circles when I put them away. But now (alas!) they have twisted and turned, cleverly hiding their end plugs…where?
Nope. No speed records have ever been broken by someone pawing through tinsel and a lifetime’s accumulation of “keepsakes.”
Hours pass as I walk from room to room, placing decorations, making decisions (the rocking chair Santa goes back in the box this year), fluffing bows and testing lights. Slowly, ever so slowly, my house is transformed. Shadows are broken by twinkles of light; tabletops hold favorite Christmas books and statues of the Holy Family. The air smells of pine (okay, so it’s a candle) and a tall gold angel takes over the center of my dining room table.
Almost everything in December goes too fast for me. Advent has barely begun, and already I feel the familiar hum and pulse of frustration. How shall I get it all done in just 25 short days? I want to bake more this year. I want to ring the Salvation Army bell. I want to wrap presents for Toys for Tots. I want to give a holiday party and take my friend Victoria to lunch. I want to drive around at dusk and look at lights with my grandchildren. I want to mail my cards early (or at least not late).
Oh, yes…and I want to wait with expectation for the coming of Christ. I want to sit near a window and watch a winter sunset—crimson and startling—break open behind bare trees. I want to remember that all was darkness before He came. I want to know, to feel, the thrill of revelation mount with the passing of each day until (wonder of wonders!) it’s Christmas. And nothing will ever be the same again.
Yes, December is a quick month. But its short days are meant to be savored, not squandered or sucked dry with detail. ‘Tis the season. Let’s pray we don’t miss it.
Last Sunday I dressed up like “Priscilla Pilgrim” and gave the children’s sermon at our church. It had been years since I’d given much thought to the Pilgrims (I’m not proud of that fact) or what they’d endured. I mean, Thanksgiving usually finds me worrying about the turkey (Will it thaw in time? Will it be dry as the Sahara?) and whether or not the crusts on my pumpkin pies will burn this time (probably). Then there’s the plates and flatware to count out and napkins—paper or cloth? Grocery store lines and last minute guests and…well, you get the idea. So I’m grateful that this year I got to spend some time with the originators of the feast—those hearty, pious, ravenous Pilgrims.
The year was 1620. Determined not to be forced into the Church of England, 102 sturdy souls climbed aboard a small boat and headed out to sea. Sixty-five days later, they sighted land. But storms had buffeted their craft and sent them WAY off course. Instead of Virginia, their original destination, they landed in Massachusetts. Instead of friendly colonists who would welcome them and help them prepare for winter, they faced a cold, desolate, empty land—and savages peaking out from the forest.
That first winter was one of hunger and sickness. Almost half the Pilgrims died—46 shallow graves were dug into the frozen hillside. But when spring came, they praised God and picked up their plows. With the help of those savages—who had become their friends—they planted and reaped a bumper crop.
Party time! The first Thanksgiving was on.
My family has had a rough year. Maybe yours has, too. But we still have much to thank God for. We live in a land where we can worship as we please. We have access to good medical care. None of my grandchildren is hungry or cold. Our houses are snug against the coming winter. And God is still in control—and still wanting me to trust Him with the details.
After church, several of the children posed with “Pricilla.” “Wasn’t it fun having your picture made with a Pilgrim?” I asked. “Want to make a fun face for the next shot?”
And so, with the enthusiasm and abandon peculiar only to children, they put on their fun faces…
Happy Thanksgiving, dear friends. May your day be filled with gratitude and good food…and a few funny faces.
