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The holidays are fast approaching as this fine Sunday morning dawns. The house quiet, the children loaded to Arkansas to our extended family when the schedule unexpectedly allowed. Christmas is about family after all. A fire in the fireplace reminds me of all that is right in the world as Christmas music plays softly from the kitchen. It’s almost church time and yet I linger, drinking in the quiet and calm of this Christmas Sunday.
A conversation reminded me today that we truly only have ourselves to be. Others may label, try to guilt, or encourage that which is within us to come forward, but ultimately it is ourself that must be who we are. At forty-eight I find that to be increasingly true. So many kind souls have given me the gift of presence in my life. Presence to witness my own works, presence to encourage my journey, and presence to share grief and hardship with me. Isn’t that the gift indeed? To be present regardless of the mood or outcome?
This weekend I took a walk in a three dimensional world of a dream. It was astonishing actually to see as I walked that which I have only imagined as real. Props really, not life but so often viewed as we do so many other things, as what’s really responsible for whatever it is we imagine we’d want. Danielle LaPorte says our desires are the source of our true passion. In that case it may be milk chocolate fudge and a home filled with daylight and Southern cooking and friends that ultimately makes up my DNA.
What snapshots run in your mind when you think of Christmas? In my mind are my parents and brothers loading into our Model A Martha…who took us out on Christmas Eve many years. Of my Pappy Nunnally sitting by the tree as I opened Christmas presents as a child in Gurdon. Of many hands bringing dinner in White Hall at my children’s Grandparent’s home and of a snowy Christmas when a loved one arrived home unexpectedly through the snow for Christmas. The sea of reds of poinsettias, of Chrismon trees, friends and family gathering is so much a part of my DNA that one might think that it is what I am made of…and I would love to believe that creating community is so much a part of what I seek to do at Christmas.
Ultimately though Christmas is simply loving…from the inside out, that which is before us, around us, and through us as God loves us…without condition, guilt, or shame…and to forgive whatever it is that might keep us a part. The truth of Christmas is that its not the wrapping, the presents, or the ham…its the giving that matters…and the receiving of love given that counts.
