Into It Like a Five-year-old

I didn't even want to plan Christmas this year. Since we couldn't legally get our family together (including our local married children) all under one roof - and, more specifically, the roof of our very own house - what would be the point of laying out schedules and making any preparation thereunto? 

Looking back over it now, I see I should've "gone into it like a five-year-old".

Meaning carefree and unassuming, I suppose, oblivious to past glitches as well as present ditches and snares of comparison and whatotherpeoplethink. That's probably what my friend meant, anyway, when she used the phrase about just going into it like a five-year-old to describe how a group of ladies could successfully circle up and enter into dialogue without relational pitfalls tripping them up so easily. 

I'm guessing my friend was referring to the way a five-year-old would typically approach a current situation with a lot less inhibition than, say, a fifty-five-year-old would, due to what went wrong yesterday and what is likely to go wrong tomorrow.

Maybe if I had gone into Christmas like a five-year-old, I wouldn't have ached quite so much for the way things used to be. I wouldn't have strained my anxious eyes by peering into the future so intently. I could have reveled more in the delight of the present. 

I probably still would have shed a few tears over the frustrations and disappointments of an abnormal Christmas and New Year's. But I would've been quick to let them go in my eagerness to embrace the novel immediate. And I'm pretty sure I would've been startled by the kind of joys that often spring out of the unexpected. 

Such as...

...the way my family humored me by illustrating portions of Luke 2:1-20 in our traditional reading of that passage before the opening of gifts. This involved a Q&A about political figures, a "multitude" of stuffed animals, piano playing, colorful computer screen backgrounds, and a real live child (who didn't exactly enjoy being taken upon a lap when Mary "laid him in a manger", and started wailing!) all in a Zoom meeting with a rather shaky start due to an unstable Internet connection. 

...the pleasure we got from helping to put a touch of hominess into someone else's Christmas. A number of the Trinidadian guys who work for Martin's had to stay in Canada over Christmas because their government was not yet accepting the workers back into their own country. Martin's appointed Ken to purchase and deliver gifts to this group of men who were spending the holidays in a country not their own, apart from their relatives and friends back home. Ken decided on a few small items such as a flashlight and a Canada toque, and I baked cookies to add to the gift for each fellow. Kerra and I joined Ken in packing the 60-some bags and I got the privilege of writing the individual names on the tags. On the day before Christmas, I enjoyed traveling with Ken to his Vienna workplace and handing out the gift bags to some very appreciative "stranded" workers. 

...the fun of having Ken join me in the kitchen to make Christmas Dinner. There were only three of us in the house on Christmas Day. Kerra was still in her mandatory two-week quarantine following her entry into Canada from Faith Builders, the school she's attending in the States. She wasn't supposed to be working at my elbow in the kitchen just yet, so Ken offered to help me create the meal we wanted to be special for Christmas Day. He thought we should add mashed potatoes to the menu I had planned  (ham and butternut squash and salad), and he offered to do the peeling to make that happen. He also peeled apples for our dessert - apple pie. He made the filling while I made the pie crusts. Teamwork with him like that in the familiar space of my kitchen makes my heart so happy.

 

...the discoveries of bird life in our woods on Christmas Day. We3@home decided to take a walk together that day, since it's okay for someone in quarantine to leave the house and get outside for exercise periodically. Ken and I wanted to show Kerra the cabin back in the woods. We had described the cute little structure to her, but what we didn't think to tell her about were the cabin birds, and the possibility of chickadees eating right out of her hand. Before we even got within view of the resident flock though, a huge bird swooped in pretty close to Kerra, startling her into a shrieking question, "What was THAT?" When I saw the "bird as big as a crow, but with a red head" later, high up in a dead tree, I recognized it as a pileated woodpecker. What a treat to be able to watch this fantastic bird doing its mealtime drill for quite a while. It was also a treat to introduce Kerra to the perky little chickadees near the cabin, too.

...the inspiration I received from various things that I've read and heard in recent weeks. I especially resonated with something that podcaster Nathan Rittenhouse said, in commenting on the aspect of hope during Advent in this crazy Covid year: "Real, legitimate hope brings us peace in the present... Celebrations of the goodness of what will be [don’t] negate the beauty and the blessing of what is in the moment." He pointed out that the angels sang with joy the very night Christ was born, that Simeon, when he held the Baby in his arms, was grateful right then, and that Mary pondered those current events in her heart. Knowing what Christ has done for us and what He will do for us need not hold us back from celebrating Him this year's Christmas. "Hope for the future does not exclude joy in the present; in fact, it opens us up to a level of gratitude that brings us peace in the present." 

I think that sounds like a blessed way to approach the New Year, too. While I'm longing for the time when Covid regulations will be behind us, I don't want the negatives of the past nor the bright expectations of the future to obscure the beauty of what is right in front of me. 

If going into the new year like a five-year-old means entering 2021 with a childlike heart full of wonder, count me in.

What are some ways you've experienced the recent season "like a five-year-old"?