Gloria in excelsis Deo.
Angels called to shepherds tending their flocks, proclaiming that those lowly herdsmen would find a babe wrapped in rags and resting in a trough where animals fed. Led by a star unlike any ever seen before, those men, dirt crusted, smelling of their ewes and rams, hurried to find that child. But what to say of that child?
This is not a Christmas (okay, post-Christmas) message. Let me say that again, so that we’re all clear. This is not a Christmas message. Good. Moving on. Anyway…that beautiful child was God’s fulfillment of a promise, albeit in a, for some, unexpected and peculiarly magnificent way. His own Son sent as a frail and helpless human infant birthed by an obscure peasant girl in a barn, of all places, on the wrong side of the blanket. By all accounts, this would seem to set Jesus up for notoriety and failure, but these exact circumstances allowed the Father, His Abba, to fulfill His purposes. (Again, not a Christmas message. Keep reading.)
We don’t get to choose the circumstances of our births. We don’t get to choose much about who we are or who surrounds us when we come into the world – who populates our life. We don’t get to choose some of what happens to us as we grow older or what happens to the people we love, who they choose to become. However, (not being a complete fatalist here) we do get to choose what we do with those things that happen in our lives – good or bad, things that feel like they will bend us or even shatter us, we get to choose to allow Him hold us, calm us, and use those things to grow us to be people He can use to illuminate and shape His world. The things that should end us, don’t have to. Maybe the things that should end us are simply our beginnings, are intended by Him to set us on a path He knew all along.
The world may seem like a cold dark place right now. Newspapers, new casts, internet – they all cast long shadows, chase away light. (Please turn off the TV and, for all that is good and holy, shut down the computer, but not until you finish reading this.) Down to my tippy toes, I believe that babies are whispers of hope to this world, that in Heaven every baby is celebrated by angels. I believe that babies are miracles, proof of the existence of God. If in doubt, look at their fingernails. How can you doubt God’s existence when you look at baby fingernails?
Three years ago, my sister gave birth to a baby girl, her first child, two days before Christmas, her love by her side. My parents waited at her house, deliciously anticipating the call that Little L had finally arrived. When the call rang through to me, starbursts in my head showed a world of possibilities for this baby, for the choices she could make to shine for Him in this world, and I’d like to think that somewhere angels called through the crisp December night.
We celebrated Little L’s third birthday three days before Christmas this year. For her part, Little L was most excited by a fairy costume that came with a wand (which she called a “Wish”). The wand was the draw as it permitted her go around granting those gathered their greatest desires. If you knew her, you’d understand that this giving to others is just who the child is; when she saw Santa this year, she tried to give him the cookie she was holding. On Christmas morning, she came down the stairs, glanced at the piles of presents amassed under the tree, and ignored them, bypassing them instead for a hug from my father, her beloved Paa Paa. Again, totally within this Little Love’s personality. And the gift is that she is part of my life. But sometimes those gifts, they don’t quite feel like enough.
This year beginning the first week of January, brought brutal medical and emotional circumstances. And the hits just kept on coming, but not in the way Michael Nesmith and Casey Kasem meant. I’d recover and find my footing on the side of the rocky mountain, only to attempt to move, slip on the slick grey shale and slide oh, so far down. I’d cling to handholds and watch the chunks of my life tumble into the abyss below me. Breath became perilous, hope nonexistent. The fog swirled around me until it became impossible to see anything but the ‘nots’- cannot, will not, should not, do not, and the most painful: HAVE NOT.
The fog is beginning to clear, and my heart is trying to break free from the cyanotic bleakness encasing it. Part of that breaking free is to breathe and move. My feet may slip, my life may fall apart, but breathing and moving are essential to the climb. And so, I reach one hand over the other searching for a handhold. I whisper a prayer of thanksgiving for knowing my handholds: writing, running, music, Bible study, service. And I will pursue those handholds relentlessly with His help because, while I didn’t get to choose the circumstances of this past year, I can choose how to respond. I can choose to sink into a black depression, or I can choose to seek refuge in the handholds He has given. I can choose despair, or I can choose hope. I can choose to discount the gifts He has given, or I can choose to live with thanksgiving.
I choose His handholds. I choose hope. I choose thanksgiving.
Gloria in excelsis Deo.
The Unexpected Life 