Christmas 2012 Gifts

With the clarity of hindsight, we look back and see the significance of past events. With this perspective, their importance can seem obvious, a moral to our story outlined like a curriculum. For an idealist like me, the past may even be tinted with a sepia glow: the tedium of the daily grind is forgotten, the challenges, hurts, and confusion are seen now in the light of lessons learned, and all that remains is the good, the beautiful, the meaningful.

I was reminded of my tendency towards this retrospective optimism by my Christmas gift from Catherine this year. As a complete surprise to me, she worked for dozens of hours on compiling photos and blog entries from our 2006 South African family adventure into a hardcover table book (via www.mixbook.com). It is a stunningly beautiful gift and a loving tribute to our shared experience.

It is not an exaggeration to call that trip life-changing for us as individuals and as a family. It was our first (and so far only) visit to the continent of Africa, a place that has been described as dark and poverty stricken, but that we found to be rich with deep history, bursting with verdant life, and full of amazing people with hope for the future. It was also our first experience with longer-term volunteering, homeschooling, living in community, and participating in community development.  

Obviously, as I read through our blog entries now, I am struck again by the magnitude of what we were experiencing together. Written with raw immediacy, the posts nevertheless hint at a reflective understanding of the events unfolding. Now, almost 7 years they were written, the significance of those events is even clearer: were being challenged to grow and learn, and we can see how we have grown and learned in the years since.

Yet I also recall a conversation with my good friend Mike in September 2010 in which I questioned whether our family adventure had been worth it. Focused on the frustrations I was feeling at the time, I remember quite seriously wondering if we would have been better off not going to Africa. My frustrations were real: feeling displaced in a wasteful society that focused on accumulation of wealth, stuck in a job where I felt stymied, disconnected by busy-ness from a church community that had begun only a few years earlier with such high ideals, torn by the challenges of parenting two teen-aged daughters, and wondering whether my marriage and my sanity would survive it all. Those feelings were also very real: frustration, disappointment, confusion, loneliness, even despair.

So I am reminded that the trajectory of our lives is not always forward. More specifically, I am reminded of the magnificent and terrible gift of free will. My daily choices, especially about where I focus my thoughts, may determine whether the challenges of life overwhelm or strengthen me. Whether I ultimately walk a path towards maturity or towards bitterness may depend simply on my ability to choose which path I choose.

Yet I am also reminded of the glorious gift of grace, given when I’m at my weakest. For that conversation with Mike was no accident. It was the deliberate gift of a friend who knew I was hurting and chose to spend time with me. I have received similar gifts from Mike many times…and from other friends and family members.

Truly I receive these gifts daily. Catherine and I recently celebrated 23 years of marriage, more than 8400 days in a row of receiving the gift of her love and commitment.

In fact, every day that the sun rises and warms our planet, we all receive this gift of grace, camouflaged as another ordinary day. I am reminded of our first day in South Africa, riding in a van from the airport, gasping and commenting on the wonder around each corner; meanwhile, our chaperones, having grown up there, seemed immune to the beauty all around them and may have even rolled their eyes at us. How often we see newcomers and children revelling in the everyday wonders that we have missed: clean water from a tap, the formation of a snowflake, the whoosh of geese flying overhead, or the touch of a spider’s web.

Today, I celebrate my family and their Christmas presents to me, the gift of good friendships, and the Giver of our everyday gifts of grace.