Christmas Tree Redemption

The western holiday season officially began last week with Thanksgiving! There are some things I just love about this time of year- extra time to spend with people I love while we all have a bit more free time as we have off from work, the opportunity to buy gifts for people (and receive gifts! It's always been my top love language, in case you were wondering), quite often there's more chocolate around at the holidays and watching Christmas movies!

However, this season also carries some things that make my heart ache. Each year I find myself un-excited as I think about many of the things that used to give me warm fuzzy feelings. Things like traditions being passed on in families, conversations my friends have about which family members they will spend Thanksgiving or Christmas with, conversations about buying gifts for family members and decorating for Christmas... 

Although I grew up surrounded by people using and selling drugs, adults using money for their own addictions before the needs of the kids in their lives, lots of verbal/emotional abuse and a bit of physical abuse....still, until I was about 10 years old my mom made sure the holidays were special. We decorated our house for every holiday. We had massive Thanksgiving meals at our house, Christmas eve was alwasy spent with family coming to our house and there was always a real, taller than 6 feet Christmas tree piled underneath with gifts! As kids, my cousins, siblings and I were able to obliviously have fun during these times while adults got high and drunk together. When you're a kid you don't care that the gifts came from church charities, they were awesome gifts! 

But, as I got older 

                            I began to realize that every holiday was visited by police officers due to family violence that disturbed the neighbor's holidays....

                           and I began to realize there were other people whose families were really poor and we were taking their spot at those Christmas charities...

                            and I began to realize what hangovers and coming 'down' after a Christmas eve of being high looked like....

Even as I began to understand these not so festive things about my family, decorating the tree was always my favorite part of the holidays because since my mom was an only child we had all the ornaments my grandparents had saved for years.  We would dig into boxes of ornaments that were carefully, individually protected in layers of newspaper and tape. As we unwrapped each one there would be the "ooohhh" and "aaahhh" as the memories were discovered once again.  Glass icicles, tiny bibles with gold lined pages, beautiful bells that we hung on the doors, a full nativity set... I loved that these things were ours, I loved that I knew the stories so well I could recite them, I loved that it was something we all did together each year!

Then there was my 11th Christmas. That year we got the boxes down after the lights had been put on the tree, we opened them and found only about a third of the ornaments and none of the really good ones.  My stepdad had been selling them throughout the year.  

We didn't decorate a tree after that.  My mom went balistic, the police came and decorating a Christmas tree has never been the same again. The rest of the ornaments stayed in their boxes for 3 years and then we were evicted and the landlord burned our stuff. 

Oh, but Jesus is a God of redemption.... Like, really good, sweet, unexpected, amazing redemption! And, I have been made for capturing moments of redemption in my own life and the lives of others.  

 This year I had created a plan for redemption-I would get a small tree and have my friends come over for a meal and they would each make a paper ornament for my tree.  It would be a great way to catch up with lots of people I love and include them in my own new tradition! 

I also know the fact that paper ornaments aren't expected to survive through years so it would be normal to just have new ones each year.  

                        No holding onto things, 

                                                            no getting all sentimental, 

                                                                                                    no chance of things being destroyed. 

I could safely keep my distance from tradition and things mattering to my heart.  

Then, a freind gave me a real ornament before she left for the States in October. I put it in a drawer and thought about it.  

Then, other friends sent me 2 real ornaments  and I kept them in the package hidden from view and thought about it.  

Then, I saw some ornaments at a store here that I thought were beautiful- simple gold and red glittered balls and I didn't buy them but, yep, I thought about them.  

I couldn't bring myself to get past the pain and fear of becoming attached... It felt safer to just do paper and think about the real ones.

On Thanksgiving last week I had plans with 2 of my favorite people, my Khmer brother who has been part of my life for almost 6 years and his girlfriend who I've known for almost 6 months and I love already!  They knew I wanted to make ornaments with them during the day, he even offered to make the star! We went to lunch together and as we returned to my house he said he'd be back and got on his moto and drove off. No big deal, us girls went to my apartment and talked about our upcoming plans to go shopping together.  

After about 20 minutes he returned carrying a plastic bag from a nearby store.  He stood there holding the gifts, looked right at me and said, 

"You deserve real ornaments. God is a giver of good gifts and He has only the best for you."

Then he pulled out the exact ornaments I had been looking at a few weeks ago.  

Seriously-the. exact. ones. 

And a gold star. 

And even a Merry Christmas bow with bells that are now on my door. 

I feel so seen and loved by God through their actions.  He knows our hearts, His timing in our lives is perfect, He delights in restoring and redeeming.  I look at that Christmas tree, my Christmas tree, and I cannot stop smiling, every time! 

God has begun a new thing in my heart and decorating a Christmas tree will never be the same again. 

There are times in life when we experience pain and awful loss of hope but He really does delight in giving joy instead of mourning, beauty instead of ashes and restoring what's been stolen.  

Oh, and I'm still making paper decorations with friends and they are being used to decorate walls and windows :-)

    
                         

Wrapping Presents (Written Dec. 15, 2006)

****Written December 19, 2017, 11 years later: Tonight, I was wrapping some gifts and had the very same experience of lots of laughter and shaking my head at the ridiculousness of the excess paper and gobs of tape used on each one.  I've learned that the joy in giving a gift outweighs any fear of what people might think about the outside package.  Thanks, Lord, for the constant joy I receive in giving! 

December 19, 2017

Tonight as I sat on my living room floor and began the task of wrapping a few Christmas presents I almost had to stop a few times because I was laughing so hard. This is a normal occurrence  in my life since my wonderful roommate has such a great sense of humor...but she wasn't even home!!

It was just me and Jesus. Let me tell you why wrapping presents is so much fun for me...

As a kid I was never taught the 'right' way to wrap presents. We rarely even had the 'right' material for wrapping presents. I loved to give gifts anyway and so I would go about wrapping them in any old way as long as the entire gift was covered so the recipient couldn't guess what was inside I was happy. I can remember lots of gifts being wrapped (are you ready?) with aluminum foil and masking tape! At least they were totally covered and nobody was gonna guess what was inside!

I was never self-conscious about my unique gift-wrapping skills. My mom has some great qualities and one was that she always encouraged me to do what makes me happy even if others didn't like it. Because I'm legally blind I've had to make lots of adaptations to the way things are done in life and as I grew up doing things just a bit differently than everyone else, she never pointed out those differences. So, she always enjoyed my uniquely wrapped presents :)

Now I'm 23 and it's almost Christmas. I began my gift wrapping tonight. My first task was a large, round pot-type thing and as I wrapped it I just burst out laughing, I do have actual Christmas wrapping paper this time, but alas my skills have not improved since I was 4. This gift is sitting on the floor with its gobs of tape and surely a massive amount of excess wrapping.

And, you know what? I'm still not self-conscious about it, I kind of enjoy the way I wrap presents, no other 'adult' wraps like I do (not on purpose anyway). I get lots of joy from the fact that, if you ask me, there is no such thing as the 'right' way to wrap a gift. I don't want to know how to 'fix' my gift wrapping technique either, I like it just the way it is and actually I pray that I don't ever become self conscious about it.

Thank You Lord for tonight, for good memories of when I was a little girl, for the joy of being able to see certain aspects of the world with the eyes of a child and for the wonderful people You've placed in my present life who will be blessed enough to experience the gobs of tape on their gifts this year :)