Goodness and Light
I haven’t shown up here in a while.
Not because I haven’t wanted to be here… I think about writing every day. But I’ve also wanted to be fully present other places during this season – one to which I look forward all year, but that can often pass in a blur of hustle and bustle and busyness. Can you relate?
This year, I wanted to become more intentional than ever about really savoring it.
For me, “this season” begins with Thanksgiving, which I’ve come to love almost equally as much as I love Christmas. That becomes a little truer every year. Around here, Thanksgiving comes with its very own special kind of anticipation, and Christmas does not begin until we have honored and celebrated it to the fullest.
Somehow, over the course of the past half-decade or so, our family has accidentally formed a tradition. What began with Pennsylvania Antlered Deer Season has expanded to include Thanksgiving. It’s the one time each year when we all know “for sure” (or at least as “for sure” as one can know anything in this life) that my two brothers will travel nearly a thousand miles and come “home” to Pennsylvania.
Thanks to my brothers, we spent a couple of decades as a military family. So many holiday seasons found one - if not both - of them deployed overseas. In those years, I decorated my Christmas tree with yellow ribbons and American flags. Not a year goes by now that I don’t, while decorating my tree the regular way, offer a little prayer of heartfelt gratitude that they both came safely home every time; that I don’t need to hang those ribbons for them anymore. Nothing has ever made me more aware of what a blessing it really is for a family to be together during the holidays than that experience and those memories have.
This chance we have now, to put dates on our calendars and plan a visit with both of them, especially at holiday time, is something for which we once prayed. Often and hard.
I couldn’t have imagined that anything could feel like more of a blessing than that, but it did get even better. One at a time, a few years into this little tradition, my nieces… those sweet, beautiful, smart, funny “little girls” began tagging along on the “deer camp” trip. Having them at our Thanksgiving table and with me for that week has become a precious thing that I treasure more than they could possibly know. Those “little girls” are now 19 and 16-years-old. I know that things could change any year now with regard to their opportunity (or even desire) to spend Thanksgiving week this way. I promise I will gratefully be fully present for it - for as long as they and God continue to bless me with the gift of their presence.
This Thanksgiving and our family’s entire visit felt like the very nicest we’ve ever had.
…...
Then, the morning after Thanksgiving, I woke up, told Alexa to play Christmas music, and began decking the halls!
From that day on, it’s been “Christmas” around here.
Every day, I have appreciated the chance to live in this season.
I committed to an Advent study with She Reads Truth, “The Everlasting Light,” and have felt so blessed by the quiet beauty of it. I’ve found my heart touched in new ways, bringing even more meaning to this time for me. It truly helped inspire the message I chose for our family’s Christmas card this year: “May He Bring You Goodness and Light.”
When I sat down to write those cards, my heart felt full of so much more than a simple Christmas card message could express. That’s when I knew I needed to write one thing this season… and that I wanted to send it with my cards.
Getting the words from my heart onto paper in a way that felt “right” took time, and don’t we know how short we often feel of that during this season? Several times, I reminded myself it would be way easier to just address the cards and mail them. Yet, every time I decided that’s what I would do, I saw or heard “something” that nudged me back toward sharing the things I held in my heart.
When “something” nudges me enough times, I believe it’s God. I can’t know His plan, and I don’t need to. I only need to trust and obey.
So, I found the time. I wrote the letter and mailed it out with our cards. I only need to know that I did what I felt led to do; I don’t deserve to know if it meant anything to anyone. Yet it has touched me to hear that it has.
In recent days, I’ve repeatedly noticed one more thing: The thought that, since I’ve already done the work of writing the words, maybe I should find a few more minutes and share them here. I don’t need to know why. I just need to trust and obey.
So, to you today, I offer the same letter: The same thoughts - the same wish - I offered to the family and friends who receive our Christmas card:
May He Bring YOU Goodness and Light.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
- Genesis 1:3
Last year, for the first time in my life, I wrote and sent a Christmas card letter. Quite a few “first-time-evers” happened for many of us in 2020, didn’t they? At the end of that year, I just had a lot to say. I intended that first Christmas card letter to also be my last - but then something happened: I kind of never stopped writing.
I don’t know if writing that letter was as much a catalyst as it was a manifestation of the longing I’ve always had to express my thoughts in writing. Regardless, it happened first in a series of decisions I’d end up making toward finally prioritizing the practice of writing in my life. In the spring, I launched my website and my blog – a space where I share my Real Life experiences with the hope of helping others through what I learn from them.
And now, here I am - writing another Christmas card letter – for really the same reasons. I once again want to say so much more than a simple Christmas card message can express. Not about the things we’ve done this year - but to try and honor what I’ve learned in the process…
I learned so much about the power of saying “yes.” And of saying it right now, rather than waiting for “someday.” For starters, we finally said “yes” to Ian bringing Drake into our family. (“No” had been our emphatic position on that for quite some time…) Knowing now the love, joy, and warmth that “yes” would bring to our home and all our hearts… I just can’t imagine the world where we missed that by clinging to “no.”
I can say the same about so many of the brightest spots in our year. Tommy and I said yes to so many new experiences together! From literally sailing into unknown waters, to reconnecting with family and friends for the first time in decades: Things we have long said we would do “someday” – until this year, we said, “Why not now?” As a result, we not only made some of our best memories together in a long time, but we also discovered so much that we look forward to doing again! …Maybe it’s just the way we live, but I have come to realize and accept that no matter our phase of life, something will probably always threaten to stand in the way of the things we want to do. Obstacles are inevitable. Choosing to allow them to stop us, however, is optional.
To that end, I am also learning the beauty of saying “no” where I need to - in order to make room for the “yesses” I want to say right now. How many of the constraints I have felt on my life, have I put there myself? The good news in that (slightly painful!) realization is that I can also decide to remove them and to learn how it feels to live a life free of them!
I learned about the kind of joy that comes from living in the moment. We lived so many really beautiful experiences this year. Looking back now, I realize how little documentation – other than in our memories and our hearts – there exists of most of them. That strikes me because it is so different than the way I have lived at other times in this very digital, very “connected” world we inhabit today. Good different. Somehow, having lived moments fully - without the distraction of a preoccupation with capturing them perfectly to “share” - makes the memory of them all the more beautiful. Will I someday wish I had more photos of these times? Maybe. But, even if I could go back, would I live them differently? Would I trade this feeling I have now; knowing that some of our brightest memories live on only in our hearts? Not a chance.
I have learned the value of simple, genuine encouragement. I have received so much of it this year, especially when it comes to my writing. Knowing how much that truly means to me makes me so much more aware of the opportunities I have to give that kind of encouragement. I know I have them every day. I believe we all do. The kind word it costs us nothing to say just might mean everything to someone else.
I am learning the life-giving nature of embracing change. Our kids have grown up. We’ve received the blessed gift of the chance to grow another year older together. Our lives continue to change. Quite honestly, the changes happening now – in so many ways – feel more rapid, more major, and certainly more permanent than any have before. Tommy and I recently talked about a change we never saw coming to one of our beloved, long-held traditions. We thought it would never end. We never wanted it to. But at least for now, it has. “I do miss it,” I told him, “But I miss it the way it was, and I know it just wouldn’t be that way now. So, it’s time to let it go.” Sometimes things do just fall away. Sometimes without our consent. But I’m also learning that, when they do, something new always emerges. We get to choose between longing for the past or embracing the present and living it to the fullest. I choose the latter; and to believe in a future as bright as we decide to allow it to be.
I am learning that I can always learn. And that I want to! By paying attention. By listening more than I speak. Even - or maybe especially - to people with whom I might not agree. I am learning that one size just doesn’t, never has, and never will fit all. I am learning that I really can and do believe that most people are good: That in our shared humanity, despite our differences, we really do all have more in common than it sometimes feels like the world wants us to believe. I’ve learned that I can sit at a table and genuinely enjoy the company of people who don’t believe everything I believe: That I can even still enjoy it if they never even know we don’t believe the same things! In the process, I’ve also learned the value of never assuming and speaking as if everyone at the table believes the same things I believe.
Looking back over these reflections - at the things I’ve learned this year, I realize how much time I’ve spent thinking about, looking for, and trying to fully appreciate the brightest parts of life. Even amid the difficult parts. Seeking light over darkness, really. For many, 2021 was a hard year - that followed a hard year. Some days, hasn’t the world felt dark? The news. Global events. Personal experiences. It seems we need never look far to find someone or something ready to tell us that “this world is a mess.” The bad news is that it is. The good news is that, if you consider history – you realize that it always has been. (How is that “good” news? Stay with me, here…)
When God created the world, the first thing He did was to bring light.
Have you ever tried to make a room totally dark? It’s difficult to do, isn’t it? It only takes a tiny sliver of light, even one that shines through a crack, to illuminate the darkness. Once that happens, it becomes impossible to not notice the light. How grateful I am that the same is true when it comes to seeing the light still shining through all the cracks of a broken world!
There is still so much light! The very kind that the darkness of this world can never drive out.
As I close this letter, I’m saying a prayer for you: That you can see that light in your life - even on the days when it only finds its way in through the cracks.
He can bring you goodness and light. May you receive it and feel it.
This Christmas.
Always.