Pondering Things
Sitting in church on Sunday, the 3rd Sunday of Advent, and the scripture reading is from Luke 2.
I can’t hear that story without seeing the face of my father and hearing his voice reading it. For years, he read that Christmas story to us, on Christmas morning and Christmas Eves, in church and in our home.
He was a gentle man, with a beautiful voice, and I say each word of the story under my breath as it is being read, because I know it by heart, and it is not me speaking, it’s him speaking thru me. In a way, it’s part of his legacy to me—my father and the Christmas story.
I whisper to Her, who is leaning up against me, “I wish you had known my father; he was a wonderful man.” She smiles at me. She knows I am lost in a memory I cannot share with her.
She has her own. On Christmas Day 2010, in a land far away, her world turned upside down. Her mother had been in the hospital for some routine surgical procedure. She had been released from the hospital that very day, and as she stood up from the wheelchair, she fell down dead.
That can’t happen. Not on Christmas Day and not upon being medically cleared for release. How is that possible? It is not.
Meanwhile, at the Westview house, 5-year-old Grace the Wise had prayed for snow when she said her prayers on Christmas Eve, and woke to a Christmas Day that was snowing, a lot of it, a winter wonderland. Magical, for Fayetteville, NC, and a treasured memory for her.
Faith the Dragon Slayer, just one and a half, woke to Clifford the Big Red Dog, whom she has kept with her in her dream adventures for 10 years now.
DJ, a strong young man, had been closest to his Grandmother, could only fight with emotions that threatened to overwhelm him and stifle his frustration at not being there with her, and not being able to travel to her funeral because of that winter storm that lingered all over the east coast.
Into an upside-down world simultaneously filled with reverence and horror and magic and frustration was born this day in the city of David, a Savior, and like Mary, we would be wise to keep these things and ponder them in our hearts.