What if December Looked Different This Year?

This Christmas our family is learning to give, and, well, I’m a bit embarrassed to confess,  it's not as easy as I thought it would be. I’m a little more OCD than I'd like to admit, I’m a bit more impatience than I thought I was, and I actually like all my worldly American comforts.

You see, this Christmas, my husband and I decided we are not giving each other gifts, and our kids are each getting 1 gift and 1 adventure date coupon. Instead, we are opening our home to a teenager who is an Eastern European orphan, “N” (her name and location are being withheld for privacy & safety reasons).  We are partnering with Project 143 to give orphans hope.

In the past we've gone to other parts of the world, this time we are bringing the world to us.  We've come to recognize even though our hearts stir us to go into all the world and share the good news of Jesus, our family dynamic is such that we just can't. We already have a child who has a disability requiring adult supervision at all times. Taking him into places with unfamiliar smells, where he is on sensory overload, and can't find a quiet room full of Legos, is too much for him (and me!).

Here’s the thing: my excited, motherly heart tells me to splurge on N this Christmas. I want there to be stacks of presents for her under the tree; I want to take N on a shopping spree at Nordstrom; I want to give her a Pottery Barn bedroom; I want to have a day away at Spa W being pampered from head to toe; I want her to spend a day wandering Powell's Books and buying everything that takes her fancy; I want her to go to school to have friends; I want to teach her to ski, to bike, to ride a horse, and I want her to put her toes in the ocean.

Then I stop myself and remember…all she really needs for Christmas is a family.

What she really needs is hugs every morning, prayers every night, grace throughout the day, boundaries and unconditional love. To know she is loved, and she is accepted. To know the Messiah came 2016 years ago and she can receive the free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ who loves her.  So we are going to do our best to meet those needs from Dec 20th to Jan 15th, and plant seeds of hope we know will continue throughout her life.

This song by Matthew West truly expresses what we hope to do this year: Give This Christmas Away.

A Season of Hope

I’ve had a favorite Christmas ornament for 13 years. This intricately hand painted scene of Salzburg, Austria on fragile blown glass has traveled the hills of Austria, into Germany, across oceans, through TSA gestapo and the rough hands of movers tossing boxes across 3,000 miles of America. It’s hung gracefully on my tree for 13 years in 5 different houses. Each Christmas as I’ve unpacked and repacked it with care, I’ve told my children the adventure and joy it signifies, a reminder of a beautiful trip with my husband exploring the grandeur of a land dear to us. I’ve told them of the market stalls and grand cathedrals, of the castles and music, of the people and friends that are etched in my memory.

This year I kneel on the floor, my hands shaking, my eyes so blurred I can scarcely see the shattered pieces of tiny glass. While tears stream down my face, Boy Wonder sits in the other room sobbing, knowing that this time he went much too far. It is by no means the first lovely sentimental item he has destroyed. Yet this time, I am so filled with sadness and regret I cannot go near him. My frustration of all he has done this week, culminated in anger at the sight of glass scattered under the tree, the result of direct disobedience and impulsiveness on his part. He squeezed the glass until it shattered... compressing my patience right along with the glass.

My emotions too raw, I order him out of the room. I am repulsed by the sight of him: of his increasingly selfish behavior the past months, of his greediness, of his unending want, of his constant focus on himself, of his meltdowns when he doesn’t get his own way. 

He cries now only because he fears a consequence, not out of sorrow for hurting another. As with most people affected by FASD... he just doesn’t get it. He has no comprehension this ornament is irreplaceable. He doesn’t appreciate the value. He doesn’t have compassion for others. Still my hurt, my anger rages deep inside me and overflows from my wicked tongue to pierce him with my words.

As I sit with tears streaming, softly mixing with remnants of glass in my broken pile, waiting to be cast forever into the rubbish heap, the irony of the beautiful tree and the bright crimson embroidered “Peace on Earth” tree skirt suddenly flood my soul.  Sobs rack my body as I see the brokenness it all portrays.

Such is life with disability: the perfect ornament we want the world to see, a shattered family painted inside, a fragile child hanging in the balance. I reach up to gently unhook the rest of the glass still attached to the tree. I find another thin shard of painted glass resting in the evergreen bough. I am overcome with emotion.

Is this not the reason God sent the Messiah to us one Christmas season so long ago: to sweep up the pieces of His beautiful world that man has shattered. To heal wounded, fragile souls. We took His delicate, hand-painted world and slowly compressed the beauty of His creation with the sin in our hearts: our gluttony, our greed, our sexual preferences, our self-sufficiency, our idols. Until one day the glass could no longer withstand the pressure -- sin shattered our souls into hundreds of tiny pieces, the only hope of rescue being a Savior. And in the fulness of time: Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God come to earth as a son of man.  He came in such a fragile form, creating the very womb that gave him life! It is too much for me to comprehend. This grace extended to me. This reconciliation of man to God via a crimson stained Savior.

I’m still shaken as the day passes. I am saddened by what cannot be replaced. More than grieving the temporary beauty of the ornament, I grieve the loss of the things Boy Wonder does not comprehend: of emotions and empathizes that are foreign to him. Yet the crimson words of "Peace on Earth" ring in my mind and I find solace in the eternal beauty of this season... knowing in the Messiah there is found everlasting hope for the parent, for the child, for the family exhausted by disability. I close my eyes at the end of a long day and rest in the promise of peace on this journey.

My heart kneels as I ask for more grace.

Immanuel has come: God with us.