Important Three-letter Hinge

 

"Don't be afraid," the angel could have said to us in a Wisconsin snowstorm, "FOR unto you is sent this morn a snow plow driver." 

On a recent Sunday morning during Sunday School, I learned about the important little word "for" that appears in fearful situations frequenting the Christmas Story. Our lesson was taken from Isaiah 43, where there are phrases such as "Fear not, for I have redeemed thee" and "Fear not, for I am with thee". One of the ladies in the class pointed out the similarities of these God-declarations in Isaiah to the messages that angels delivered to fearful Nativity characters. 

God didn't scold these anxious humans, He acknowledged their fear and gave them a reason to trust Him in the midst of that fear. The word "for" is the hinge connecting His directive for them not to be afraid with the reason they didn't need to be: Don't fear, Mary, FOR you have found favor with God. Joseph, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, FOR her coming baby is conceived of the Holy Ghost. Fear not, Shepherds, FOR unto you is born this day a Savior who is Christ the Lord. 

"Don't be afraid in fearful circumstances, Dear Child of God, FOR your Heavenly Father is provisionary and trustworthy" seemed to be a takeaway from the lesson. What a great truth, I thought, as I left Sunday School. I will need to remember that for my own anxious moments. I had no idea how soon I would be able to put it into practice.

Later on that same Sunday, Ken & I and Kerra headed out on the drive to Hayward, Wisconsin for our "Christmas" with the Schrocks. We began our trip several hours earlier than we had initially planned because of a significant snowfall forecast for northern Michigan and Wisconsin, areas we traverse on our typical route to Hayward.

We made excellent time as we drove through the night on bare roads with minimal traffic. Near the town of Iron Mountain in Michigan, though, we hit snow. The first snowflakes in the air soon turned into a full-blown snowstorm of the thick, swirling, mesmerizing, hypnotizing brand.

Ken drove well, but slowly. The more we crept along the trackless, desolate stretch of road, the more tense I became. Ken asked me to help him keep an eye out for the edge of the road and an ear out for the rumble strip embedded in the center line of the road, so I hunched forward and peered out the windshield into the storm.

The 3.5 hours it usually takes to get from Iron Mountain to Mom & Dad's place in Hayward stretched into almost twice that long because of the driving difficulty. We navigated areas of poor visibility, and a few times we pulled off the road for a breather and to see if the storm would let up any for us to go on. (These ten-or-fifteen-minute breaks did seem to make things easier.) In some places, we pushed ahead through deep unplowed sections, and then slowed way down when the snow we were "plowing" with the van whooshed up over the windshield, creating sudden whiteouts. 

At one point, when we were an hour or so from Hayward (under normal driving conditions, that is), Ken pulled off the highway onto a side road to de-ice the windshield wipers. The van was just nicely off the main road, headed down a slight dip on that side road, when another vehicle came toward us and we had to get off to the side of the narrow road to let that driver by. 

When we came to a full stop, we were quite close to the snowbank at the edge of the road and when Ken tried to back the van up onto the side road proper again, the right front wheel slid farther into the bank and we were stuck. 

The knowledge that we were very stuck gradually sunk in after a lot of tire-spinning and passenger-pushing and hands-shoveling of snow away from the van wheels and a futile putting of van floor mats behind said wheels. "We'll need someone to pull us out of here," said Driver Ken, who is also known as Mr. Optimistic.  

Oh, dear! If Mr. Optimistic says we can't get unstuck by ourselves, it's bad. My fear kicked into high gear even though my senses were somewhat sluggish from having travelled all night with little sleep. How will we get out? It's still dark out! The snow is so deep! We're too far from Hayward to call my brothers and bother them to come get us unstuck. We're in a very unpopulated area of northern Wisconsin. If and when a vehicle does come by on the main road, we're too far in this side road to be seen by its driver... 

And then, after Kerra and I had climbed back into the warm van and Ken had walked off into the cold without telling us where he was going, (we ladies didn't know yet that his destination was up beside the main highway to flag down some help) I noticed the gas gauge light had come on. The next thing I knew, the distance to empty reading on the van dashboard was 0 km. Oh, great! I thought. Now we're going to sit here until we run out of gas yet. As if we don't have enough running-out-of-gas stories in our repertoire! Fine, I'll shut the motor off and just hope we don't freeze before somebody stops to help. 

I think it was at that point, when cynicism was about to join hands with my despair, I thought about praying. I don't think I actually remembered in detail my earlier commitment to fear not, FOR my God is trustworthy, but I did remember that I can cry to Him for help. So I did. Later, I learned it was right then that Ken specifically prayed God would send a vehicle along on the main road - someone with a rope or chain - to pull us out. This was after he had waited on the shoulder of the main highway for a very long time without seeing a single car or truck on the road. 

Very shortly after we both prayed our separate but joined prayers, a tow truck approached, slowed down somewhat, and drove on by. Soon after that, we heard...what is that, a flutter of angel wings? No, wait, that's a rumble of snow plow blades! 

Ken talked to the snow plow driver, who said that yes, he has a chain along, and no, he's not allowed to stop his highway work to pull somebody out of the ditch, and yes, he would want someone to stop and help if he was the one stuck in the snow at the side of the road, so no, he was not going to obey the letter of the law (my words), and yes, he would hook up his chain to our van and "walk" us right outta there. (pretty much his words)

It was an easy piece of work for his plow to pull our van out of the snowy ditch to the middle of the side road, facing away from the main highway. The driver accepted our immense gratitude for his help, but he wouldn't take any of the money Ken offered him for his trouble. After he left to continue plowing the snowy highway, we still had to back out of the side road before we could get out onto the main road and continue on our way to Hayward. 

Ken tried backing the van up the slight rise toward the highway, but he couldn't gain enough speed and  momentum to do it. The tires started spinning again. Since there was no room to turn around on that narrow road, eventually Ken drove ahead farther into the side road's snowy depths. He figured that way he could get more of a run at it when he put it in reverse again, but that move put my worrying into gear again. I was almost sure we would shimmy right back into the ditch, and then what? Wouldn't that be tempting God or something, to require a second rescue? 

But Ken steadily backed the van through the deep snow and out onto the main highway, where we were soon once again pointed toward Mom & Dad's place. Thankfully, both lanes of the highway were plowed by that time. The snow had stopped falling, and daylight had come. 

We made it to a gas station just outside Hayward to refuel before our vehicle ran out of gas completely (the angle the van was in from leaning into the snowbank had distorted the gas gauge reading). And, after some second tries and maneuverations through the ten inches of snow on Mom & Dad's unplowed road, we "skittered into their driveway" at last. 

What a happy reunion with my parents! And what a happy time we had with the Wisconsin Schrocks in the coming days, celebrating Christmas and delighting in the privilege of being together in person. It definitely was worth it, to go through our travel difficulties to get to the good family times in the end.

I feel a bit more connection to the once-fearful people in the Christmas story, now that I've encountered my own "fear not, FOR..." experience. The details of my story have implications of far less significance than theirs have, but the God to whom they surrendered their fears is the same One who assures me of His trustworthiness in any current situation. "FOR unto you this morn I send you a snow plow driver..."

Done With Me

I do it every time. Even during a Christmas season in which I am intentional about slowing down, in spite of ramping up the expectations by telling other people about my intentions, no matter that I definitely plan not to, I do it: I GET UPTIGHT.

Making lists helps me to feel more relaxed, probably because it gives me at least some sense of being in control of things. If I can pull down items out of the thick, swirling nebula of Everything I Could, Would, and Should Do, and get them down on paper in concrete terms, I don't feel quite so anxious. This year, though, in spite of intentionally slowing down and in spite of making numerous lists, I started feeling the Christmas-planning-and-preparation crunch around the middle of December. 

So timely, then, was the reading for the day from Ann Voskamp's book "The Greatest Gift" on Dec. 16: "...we are most prepared for Christ, for Christmas, when we confess we are mostly not prepared. Rest here. There is only room in us when we are done with us." 

It's my annual tradition to read through "The Greatest Gift" from Dec. 1-25, marking passages that are meaningful to me that particular year, as well as answering the questions in the daily Moment for Reflection sections. 

Because I can read back over my notes in the book from year to year, I am beginning to notice themes that connect my present circumstances and wisdom from the Book (through Ann's words). Two basic themes I see recurring are 1. I am not enough 2. He is. 

In view of my yearly notations, it seems that I should expect uptightness over Christmas time. I should also expect HisLightness to be offered. Why am I surprised by both?

Perhaps Ann has experienced both, as well. She writes as though she has. There were other timely gems that I treasured during my slowing down times with her Advent book:

"You are most prepared for Christmas when you are done trying to make your performance into the gift and instead revel in His presence as the Gift."

"You most take hold of God when you simply receive Him in the moment taking hold of you. Taking hold of your unsure hand. Taking hold of your unseen needs. Taking hold of your unknown stress."

"We struggle to receive. Sometimes we are better givers than getters. Grace? For me? I don't have to bring anything? What if someone sees how empty I am? How I am not enough, how my gifts are not enough, how giving all I've got is never enough? ...your greatest gift is not your gifts, but your surrendered yes to be a space for God."

"Nothing is harder for capable people at Christmas than to simply come and receive."

I've made a mental list for myself:

Simple Reminders for an Uptight Dani

1. Rest. 

2. Receive.

3. Repeat.

One of my favorite gifts to receive this season is time spent with family. The following pics are a sampling of those times in the weeks surrounding Christmas. 

I enjoyed helping Kerra (a Junior Sunday School superintendent) choose, purchase, and wrap Christmas gift books for the preschool children at our church. 

One evening when Kayleen & Carlin were at our place for the holidays, we took them out for supper to a local Swiss Chalet restaurant. In a sweet moment of serendipity, we met Ken's sister Colleen and her family in the parking lot when we arrived. Neither of our two families had known the other would be there! We were able to sit at the same table to enjoy our meals and conversation together. 

At the Kenites' Christmas gathering, Grandpa and Seth "played" several games of chess together.

Favorite family gathering games include Codenames.

At a meal during the Kenites Christmas Gathering we included our friend "Debbie", who was highly appreciative of the food and fellowship.

Ken's mom and sisters (Laurel, Janet, Colleen, Sharon) are wonderful ladies in my life!

These lovely young ladies are only two of the bunch of Martin Family nieces and nephews that has been accumulating over the years. Aren't I such a lucky aunt?

What gifts have you enjoyed receiving over the Christmas season this year?

God Rest Ye Weary Women

God rest ye dear ones

~ who get the weary more than the merry part of Christmas

~ for whom December is a dark and dreary month wherein you just wish to get alone and weep for all the gathered losses of the past year

~ who have not enough reserve energy for navigating the tension, the indifference, the silent hostilities that are sure to show up at Christmas Dinner with the family

~ who were so looking forward to being with family after months (or years) of absence but whose plans have been dashed by pandemic-related restrictions of some kind

~ whose physical pain is intense or chronic, or both

~ who believe that your baby who cries half the night and your preschoolers who bicker half the day are not only stereotypical little people but terribletypical as well 

~ whose Christmas season will be the first one without the child or spouse or parent or good friend you lost this year

~ who are so bound to perfectionism that you want even your failures to come off looking pretty decent

~ who have had unspeakable things done to you

~ whose identity has long been tied to performing and producing - the more, the better

~ for whom Christmas will happen in a hospital at the bedside of a loved one dealing with cancer

~ whose mother-heart throbs with pain over the choices of a wayward child 

~ who are being held hostage, literally or figuratively

~ who compare yourselves among your co-workers' or inlaws' or peers' or you-name-thems' selves and feel you will never measure up

~ who aren't sure you have enough time or nerves to practice the school program on repeat these days, or enough hope that your students will truly get their act together before performance night

~ for whom Going Home For Christmas is only a dream and not a reality because your foreign mission station is too remote or your finances are too slim or your health and safety risk is too great to do so

You, weary ones, don't let anything bring you dismay, because Jesus Christ, your Savior - your Salvager - has come!

And, as Ann Voskamp puts it, your ache is not the last word, Jesus is.

Rest assured that He is your Comfort and Joy. 

Rest merry for He is your Present Gift.

Rest, dear ones, rest.

                        (for the heart-sisters I meet with regularly or irregularly and for those heart-sisters I have never met, but would like to)

Kits and Caboodles

Today involved kits and caboodles, if caboodles can mean oodles of cookies. I baked several dozens of chewy brownie cookies for the Gospel Echoes Christmas Cookie Project, in which cookie bags will be gifted to people in prisons. The cookies I made will join oodles of other likewise colorful, festive cookies and be distributed into individual packages of four, along with a scripture booklet and a short handwritten note. 

While I was baking, I slowed down long enough to look out the kitchen window, to ooh and ahh over the gorgeous sunset, and to grab a few pictures. 

Tonight I also put together some care kits for a local ministry which helps to provide housing for disadvantaged people. I hope the items I tucked into Christmas gift bags will cheer the recipients and help them to sense at least a touch of God's love on them personally this Christmas. Every December, I am re-awed by the meaning of Emmanuel. It would please me greatly to know that one little act of love that I do for someone else actually gives them a glimpse of the with-ness of God. 

What are some ways you like to share God's love with others at Christmas?

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"?