Waiting is Hoping

The gift of 45 minutes alone, unplanned, unspent, un-agenda'd.

The pressure of 45 minutes alone, unplanned, unspent, un-agenda'd.

Today I read somewhere, The Christmas you struggle with is not Christmas at all. And my heart said Amen. Because my Christmas, the one I love, is the one where we work at watching for Light. We watch for it in all the dark places of our lives and we really devote ourselves to spying the spots twinkling in the distance and if grace allows, perhaps we even realize they are not all that distant after all. The Christmas I love is the one where Hope is promised and The Wait is the point. It is one where we remember that the end will be the end - all there is is right now and what we are hoping for right now. Our Hope is the Present.

The rest - the frenzy and the consuming and the dreading and the pushing and relating and the pressure... none of that is Christmas. All of that is just a box with the wrong label on it. That is something else altogether. That is a big mess of ugly that has nothing to do with Christmas.

Waiting for that part to be over... well, that is part of it too. We move through it full of Hope that we will not be ruined. That goodness may rise from the ashes of a burnt out relationship, that the gift given will in fact be a gift needed, that our generosity will be spent in the right directions and that at the end of it all, our real Christmas will be bigger and more memorable than the rest of whatever was packed in that box.

The gift and the pressure - always wrapped together. But grace is seeing the gift and smirking at the pressure.