Category: love

Did you get enough?

“What did you get for Christmas?” Christmas tree

When we were kids, that question implied the friend really wanted a turn to brag about their new train or bike or roller skates – always something bigger or better than you received.

But were they really asking, “Did you get enough?” Did you, like he or she, arrive at the end of the day and wonder, “Is that all there is?”

For adults, the question is usually, “How was your Christmas?” The question is too often only as deep as, “How was your vacation?” It’s good manners, and makes better conversation than the weather.

With us, the hidden question may be, “Did you survive the crush of activity, expectations and indulgences?” For others, “Did you have to endure family members you’re glad you won’t see again until next year?” Or simply, “Did things go as you planned? Did you get what you wanted?”

In the end, though, perhaps the deeper question really hasn’t changed. “Is that all there is?”

This Christmas was far from normal for me. With many health and energy challenges, I shopped from bed with my smart phone. Advent candles were all I managed in preparation. My husband brought down the tree and plugged in the lights. I hung the ornament my grandson made in school, and set out the manager scene (weeks behind), placing the important figures around the room, to move towards Christmas.

No lights outside, garlands on the mantel or decorations scattered throughout the house, all of which I love. No smells of Christmas baking, aside from the Tropical Christmas Pudding I had started months before for my British son-in-law. Since I couldn’t count on having the energy for a big Christmas dinner, nothing special was planned for the day.

Christmas Eve we traveled north to enjoy a wonderful dinner with our son and his family, then to a candlelight service with YD and her family. Our time with all of them was sweet.

Christmas Day, my husband and I provided music for an intimate gathering of families for our Spanish congregation, then I picked up my mother from her assisted living home. She didn’t even know it was Christmas.

I spent Christmas caring for Mom, and trying to draw her back to reality. Towards the end of the day, she kept asking where she was going to sleep, obviously longing to stay, so I pulled out a clean toothbrush and soft flannel PJ’s.

As I do with my grandchildren when they visit, when I tucked her in, I put my hand on her forehead and prayed for her.

When I finished the prayer, she smiled radiantly and said, “You’re the best Mommy I have ever had.” Then Mom turned on her side and fell asleep.

Mom tucked in on Christmas
When I walked back to the living room and stared at the baby in the manger, I knew the answer.

As long as I sought gifts of time or stuff, even my own mother’s love — anything in this world to satisfy my need for love — I would always end with, “Is that all there is?”

Now that the Manger Child, God become human, has grown into the Savior of my heart, I know that Christmas isn’t about presents.

Christmas is about presence.

His presence in my life has filled the longing in my heart.

And now I can freely be the hand of love. I can give the gift of my time, energy and attention because I have received love that overflows its boundaries, a love that seeks to give, and give, and give again.

Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that. Ephesians 5:1 (The Message)

How was your Christmas?

Lavish gift-giving

manger scene
I had a dream, so real that it felt something like what I imagine Joseph experienced when the angel told him about the baby Mary was carrying. In the dream, God said we would have a son, and we were to name him Jeremiah.

Not long after the dream, I began having serious “female problems.” My gynecologist ordered an ultrasound, which revealed massive ovarian cysts and endometrial tumors. He said there was no way I could get pregnant. So certain the dream was real, I went for a second opinion. That doctor said not only could I not get pregnant, but if, somehow, I should conceive, with the pregnancy hormones the tumors would grow faster than the child, causing his death, or severe deformities. I rushed out of his office in tears, and cried for hours.

Finally I surrendered and scheduled the hysterectomy.

The day before surgery, I went in for routine pre-surgical blood work. The next morning, the nurse called.

“Don’t come to the hospital. You’re not having a hysterectomy. You’re having a baby.”

I was ecstatic, but, recalling the doctor’s warnings, fearful at the same time. At the end of the first month I began to cramp and spot. The doc said I was probably losing the baby, to just go to bed. A crowd from church arrived and prayed. Within two days I was fine, and back on my feet.

At twenty-two weeks I went for my first in-office ultrasound, a brand new gadget at that time.

Instead of all my fears, there was a beautifully formed little boy with ten fingers and ten toes, all a-wiggle, and a four-chambered heart, beating regularly. No cysts! No tumors!

The rest of the pregnancy was normal. When our boy was born, I couldn’t stand to name him after Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. (Silly me, as if a name could change God’s design for him. You’d think after those miracles I would be obedient!)

More than twenty years later, my youngest daughter (YD) and her family decided to adopt, to do their part in saving one child from a life of poverty, neglect and/or abuse. When the call came that a five-week-old boy needed a home in two days, they had to make a quick decision and arrange work schedules. YD was still recovering from hospitalization with a serious kidney infection, and their lives were already stretched to the limit with work schedules and their two children. I admired their hearts, but didn’t think it was the right time.

Nevertheless, when they left for another state to get him, I went to the library and checked out every book I could find on adoption, cross-cultural adoption and bonding issues. I read about the children who refused to allow their adoptive parents to give them the love they yearned for, how they would back into a hug, never trust, never let go of some little rag they had brought with them, rather than receive from the parents trying so hard to give them what they really needed.

While I read, I felt God whispering to my heart.

“This is how you’ve been. All the years of struggle, wondering why you haven’t made progress, or why I haven’t changed your circumstances, you’ve been trying to do it yourself. And the times you have come to me, you’ve only backed into my arms.”

I learned that adoption is expensive, and marveled at their faith to borrow money to pay the fees, facing sacrifice for a year or two to pay it back.

God whispered, “I counted the cost, and paid with the life of my Son, so that I could make you my child. Will you let me love you?”

When I considered the choice my daughter and her family were making, purely out of the love of their hearts, with absolutely nothing to do with what the child would bring, I again felt God speaking.

“That is a small glimpse of my love. I love you because I AM LOVE. You cannot earn it, and you cannot lose it.”

Early in the afternoon, YD called to tell me the birth mother was on her way with the baby. “She only asked for one thing.” I waited. “That we keep his first name.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Jeremiah.”

We had our Jeremiah, after all.

Now certain that God was in this, tears coursed down my checks. My heart swelled with love for the child I’d have to wait several more weeks to meet.

When they came home, as my daughter put him in my arms he began to fuss. “Jeremiah,” I whispered.

He turned and looked in my eyes, drew in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. He snuggled against me with a look that said, “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you?”
Grammi and Jeremiah

Talk about love at first sight!

Jeremiah is three now, with dimples that could charm the spots off a leopard and a smile that lights up a room.

And when I hug him, I am reminded of the God who loves me, just because it’s His nature to love. Who had been trying to love on me for years, and I wouldn’t really let him. Who paid a high price to adopt me into His family, even when I was pushing Him away.

So I light the candles on our Advent wreath and move the statues of Mary and Joseph and the donkey closer to our little manger. The child whose birth we are preparing to celebrate made it possible for his Father to adopt me into his family.

I sigh and snuggle into my Lord, so glad I’ve finally run, arms wide open, into His warm embrace.

Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son. Ephesians 1: 4-6 (MSG)

Won’t you come?

Seize Life!

For a while now I’ve reflected on beginnings and endings, unaware of how much more personal endings would soon become. I’ve missed a week here, because I missed a week in my life – and almost the rest of it.

After a “simple” hand surgery Tuesday last, disoriented with too much pain medication in my system for my slow metabolism, terrible nausea woke me in the middle of the night. After staggering to the bathroom, I accidentally took too much of an anti-nausea medicine which is very sedating. In the morning, I only responded with groggy words and my husband was concerned, but knew a friend was coming by in an hour to pick me up for church, so he left my cell phone by my ear and went on to work, calling me regularly. After I hadn’t answered more than twenty calls, he left a full schedule of patients and rushed home. When it was clear that I was deteriorating, he called EMS, and followed the ambulance to the Emergency Room.

I awoke in the ER, thinking I’d just had the hand surgery, with no memories of the preceding 24 hours. I couldn’t get my words out to answer their questions and couldn’t move my hands to follow their instructions — the middle of a nightmare.

After an afternoon of CAT scans and other tests, copious amounts of IV fluids, a huge amount of confusion and a great deal of humiliation on my part, they ruled out a stroke. Towards evening, I was improving, so they released me to my husband’s care. We arrived home to find my precious youngest daughter with dinner ready, and my sweet, declining mother with her arms open wide.

It was days before I really understood what had happened, and even more days before I began to feel like myself, as I was weak, had little balance and huge amounts of brain fog. But even in the midst of the splitting headache and waves of nausea, I felt a deep sense of gratitude for the people in my life – my husband and his love and intuition, my family and their loving care, my dear friends from church who called and prayed – one who came and took over when my daughter had to return to her family the next day, and prepared food to last us several days.

As a child, I was always told to wait until I was older to do what I wanted and learned early on to postpone enjoyment. Life was scary and harsh, so I engaged reality as little as possible. That helped me to survive a rough childhood, but that is no way to live. How many of our early-acquired defense mechanisms now keep us imprisoned?

In the days that followed The Big Scare, the fog lifted, colors seemed brighter, everything around me more beautiful, and the people in my life even more important. I moved in a deep current of the joy of living and the desire to make every moment count.

And gratitude, in huge waves and gulps, filling me, washing me and releasing me.

As Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 9:7-10 in The Message

Seize life! Eat bread with gusto,
Drink wine with a robust heart.
Oh yes—God takes pleasure in your pleasure!
Dress festively every morning.
Don’t skimp on colors and scarves.
Relish life with the spouse you love
Each and every day of your precarious life.
Each day is God’s gift. It’s all you get in exchange
For the hard work of staying alive.
Make the most of each one!
Whatever turns up, grab it and do it. And heartily!
This is your last and only chance at it,
For there’s neither work to do nor thoughts to think
In the company of the dead, where you’re most certainly headed.

With a fresh sense of the value of each moment, for living now, valuing my priorities, I’m relishing each task, learning to make the most of all of my life, not waiting for high moments or perfect circumstances.

Letting my Lord’s love pierce me through and through, I am choosing to gift that freedom to everything I set my hand to do, whether loading the dishwasher, walking the dog, playing the guitar or singing in church, hugging a hurting friend, dancing with my youngest grandchild turning one, walking with my husband in the cool of the evening . . . the full range is exciting to embrace, and it’s all a wonder.