For those of you who may read this and do not celebrate Christmas, please take no offense to the title of this note.  If you celebrate any type of gift-giving/receiving holiday, I hope you find parallels in this writing.

Ask any child and they can typically rattle off any number of things they’d like for Christmas.  This year, my own son wised up a bit…he realized that his list of 40+ items last year was only partially fulfilled…and significantly lighter than the fulfillment he’d probably wanted.  This year, he got focused.  He only asked for 2 things.  Trying to get more ideas out of him was fruitless.  The boy got smarter…too fast, too.  As we age, we get our sites a little more focused in like that.  There’s just one thing we’d really like.

But somewhere along the way, we stop wanting things any more.  Those who have children learn to “experience” the holiday as a fulfillment of happiness through the reflections on their children’s faces when they open that long-desired toy.  Our perspectives change…and the season sometimes changes with it.

Years ago, I learned it was fruitless to ask mom what she wanted for Christmas.  “Oh, I just want everybody to be happy…and world peace, maybe…”  In a family that buys gifts for everybody, mom was IMPOSSIBLE!  Yet here I sit today, and I’ve become my mother.

If you ask me right this minute what I want…the only answer I could come up with would be ethereal concepts such as Peace, Love, Joy, Happiness, Laughter, etc.  Is it because I have everything?  Certainly not.  I’ve learned that everything is not equivalent to every-THING.  The old song “Can’t buy me love” pops to mind.  We can’t buy peace, love, joy, happiness, laughter and all the rest of those conceptual things.  Why?

Life.

Go with me on this a minute.

I sit here in my mid-40s in a 30-day stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas and sometimes wonder how all this happened.  Thanksgiving always reminds me back when I was around 16-17 and my dad had just made it home from a stay in intensive care for congestive heart failure.  It was a very emotional holiday and one whose memory won’t easily go away.  And frankly, when I set out to be a family man, it wasn’t necessarily on my agenda to be a single dad watching my kids go to and fro half the time.  The holidays are a time when I can really get down on myself for the way “life” turned out.

And I’m not the only one who struggles during the holidays.  Those who have lost loved ones typically have difficulty during the holidays.  There are more these days who have trouble making ends meet during the year, much less during the holidays when gifts can run a credit card bill through the roof.  The stress of shopping…trying to find that perfect gift for people who claim to want nothing…that stress causes some people to bring out their worst.  Am I hitting a chord?

Peace?  I used to define it as no more war…now I define it as no more cat fights between my kids.  Joy?  It no longer comes wrapped in a box with a bow on top but instead, comes in realizing the aforementioned peace.  Happiness and laughter are a byproduct of choosing to treat the holiday without all the stress that naturally ensues this time of year.  Love, for me, is embracing all those God has placed in my life – family, children, friends, pets, etc. – and being very thankful for that alone.

But in a time where we hear about missile tests in other parts of the world, conflict in the Middle East, fiscal cliffs and economic woes both here and abroad…I tell you, it’s darn hard to find peace.  And that’s where an interesting sermon I heard this past Sunday came into play for me.

Throughout Facebook and other social media, I regularly see Jeremiah 29:11 quoted:  “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  This verse is plastered as the mantra for so many of my positive and positive-seeking friends.  The sermon I heard this past Sunday focused on the verses just before this – in verses 4-7.  “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters.  Increase in number there; do not decrease.  Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.  Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

That’s an interesting perspective to that oft-used verse 11, don’t you think?  The nuts and bolts is this…the Israelites were exiled from Jerusalem, their Promised Land, to Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar (who had a heck of a nasty reputation).  In their minds, they were completely doomed.  In verse 10 we learn that the plan is for the Israelites to hang here for 70 years.  Trust me folks, this wasn’t the kind of news they were looking for.  They wanted to get back home and pronto!  But here was God telling them to sit and stay a spell.  Settle in.  Assimilate to the discomfort of your new environment…in fact, thrive in what is uncomfortable.  I’ll get you back to the Promised Land later – like, maybe when you’re grandchildren are grandparents.  That’s a tough pill to swallow.  But, to get to the “plans to prosper you and not to harm you…to give you hope and a future,” this was a necessity.

The parallel to the Christmas holiday to me is very real in those words.  Thanksgiving has been a bit gloomy for me for a long time.  Christmas has been tough for several years now as well.  I can choose to be defeated by those feelings, or I can plant new gardens and eat the fruit from those gardens.  Weird?  Nah…think about it.  Try new things.  Be excited for the looks on peoples’ faces.  Smile.  I mean it SMILE…A LOT!  Walk around smiling…almost freakishly…I promise you, it’ll kinda freak people out!

It’s not easy…this season is never easy for most folks…but you are the only one who can choose to make it easier.  Don’t worry about making it the perfect Christmas.  People will love you just the same.  Make it perfect for you.

Finally, I want to lift up prayers tonight for family and friends who are dealing with scary situations.  I have an aunt who had a bit of a scare but made it through surgery swimmingly.  And I have a friend whose mother has been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  There are others struggling and hurting as well…with the best smile I can put on, I want to lift all those folks up and just let them know I’m thinking about them.

Blessings,

Tim