14 December 2004
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I'm starting to feel a little Christmas stress, or maybe it's just life stress, I'm not sure. I try not to get too freaked out during the holidays, but as I am my mother's daughter, that is next to impossible. I love this time of year - from the cooking to the decorating to addressing almost 100 cards - but sometimes, I think the idea of it all is much more alluring than the actual reality. I was disappointed in my tree this year, the first one I've put up since I moved to Atlanta, because I felt like I was a little rushed picking one out. The one we bought is lopsided and a little crooked, and despite being over six feet tall, it's a slightly Charlie Brown-esque. As I was staring at it, after wrapping it branch by branch with hundreds of lights, I was overcome with a sense of frustration and a why-can't-I-ever-have-exactly-what-I-want-itis. But then I checked myself, and remembered that it's not the tree, or the lights or the Radko ornament that I'm celebrating. It's what that tree stands for - the gifts of life, forgiveness and divine love - that I should focus on. So I hung up every ornament I own, even the ugly ones that I normally toss back in the box, and every time I plug it in, I give thanks.
I leave for Ohio in a little more than a week, and suddenly my entire calendar is booked for the remainder of 2004. Work has been busier than it's been in months, and all I want is FIVE MINUTES, people! But I've already committed myself to making candy for most everyone in my office and apartment building, and sending 75 holiday cards and buying gifts for a long list of people. And then I check myself yet again and remember that I am so lucky to have so many people to call friends and family, a job that I enjoy with really amazing coworkers and the financial ability to buy gifts for that long list of people. Because really that's my favorite part of the holidays. I love buying things for other people. (Except I always seem to find the perfect thing for the same two people - so I'll have a few people on my list who I could spend thousands on, easily, and then a few other people I struggle to find just the right thing for. For example, if anyone needs a gift idea for T or my mom, I have about 100 suggestions.) And last Wednesday, at 4:51 p.m., everything else that was whirling in my life just stopped, when T's son, Baby A, was born. When I spoke with her mother that afternoon and heard that T was going in for a C-section at 4:30, I literally dropped everything on my desk and went straight to the hospital. I sat in the waiting room with her mother, in-laws and aunt and we chatted nervously waiting to hear any news. After he was born we all starting making phone calls, and when I called my mom to tell her that A had finally arrived, she told me that her sister, my Aunt Jo, had taken a turn for the worse. My aunt has been battling lymphoma for at least a decade, the doctors initially gave her six months, and she has taken many, many turns for the worse. But somehow this time it feels different. "And that's how it goes," my mom said. "One life enters as another exits, but you take it, because that's the gift." I held back my tears, still more phone calls to make, and all of us nervous as we had yet to see Teri or hear how A was doing. When I left the hospital that night, after finally seeing Teri and holding her hand and with Baby A in the NICU, I finally cried. I cried for my friend who'd had an incredibly hard day and whose son had finally been delivered, though not in the way she'd expected. I cried for my mother, who was 500 miles away, preparing herself to lose her big sister. I cried for my grandmother, who at 96 is realizing she may yet have to bury a third child. And I cried for myself, for all of the things I so long for, but may never have. And I cried thanks to the awesome God who had delivered a miracle in the form of a seven pound baby, who I already loved so much, even though I had yet still to see him.
And that's the gift. The real gift. The baby who was born 2,000 years ago who went on to live a life like no other before dying a death none other has endured, at only 33. It's the greatest gift I know. For God so loved the
world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes
in him shall not perish, but have eternal life Merry Christmas, y'all. The notify knows about Weight Challenged.
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