The winter storm we held our breath for has come and gone. The winter wonderland we enjoyed for 3 days has now frozen over into rock-like ice formations waiting for another warm spell. The food has been consumed and some of it regretted. But, the warmth of family and another season celebrating the mind-boggling miracle of Jesus coming to earth was one of my most memorable.
Not that anything out of the ordinary happened. It was just being together that mattered and slowing down enough to savor the moments, spontaneous and planned, that will be a special memory for years to come.
We celebrated the miracle of Kayla Rose born in July to Kyle and Jennie. We celebrated the health we have been fortunate to enjoy. We celebrated the gift of work that we treasure laboring over and homes that (though sometimes smell a little much like a fireplace) are inviting. I'm proud of Mary's hospitality in baking lasagna and a special meal for Mom. And the creative ice cream sandwich dessert. I'm grateful for Dad reading the birth story from Luke (always a Christmas tradition). I'm thankful for getting to spend time with both Mary's and my family, which have become our family. And our prayer together after dinner will remain a Christmas highlight to me. And who, really, is Mike Jondan (inside family joke)?
And with all the joy of laughing together, eating, watching little people scamper around the living room, the twinkle in the eyes of Grandmas as they held their grandchildren and our best efforts at celebrating Emmanuel...there is always something that aches inside when it's all over.
Even as I write, I'm sitting in our living room that just 2 days ago was filled with the life and energy and brightness of togetherness. It's now silent except for the furnace kicking in and the gurgle-click of the timed lighting. It was in a moment on Thursday night when everyone had gone and we were cleaning the kitchen that I was left, again, choked up. There's something more. With all of our frail human efforts to slow the season, to grasp what it means that the Creator of the world really did enter into humanity...we still, to some degree, miss it.
But I don't expect to get it before the other side of the thin veil of this life. Then, I believe, that only-tasted knowledge of the yet-realized heavenly intuition will truly be known. Christmas celebration will really make sense. The joy and laughter we experience momentarily here will fill every hidden place in our soul and we will know God in His fullness.
I look forward to 2010 and more moments of being together, of celebrating. I look forward to the possibilities, to the hope of growing and being stretched, of stories yet to be told. And another Christmas.
And so I'm once again humbled and taken aback at the speed of this life, the momentary graces of love and friendship, mercy and forgiveness.
Merry Christmas to you, dear family and friends. It's a privilege to be walking on this road together.
1 comment:
Good to see you writing again. Good job!!
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