Grace: After Midnight in a Bar

Among the list of posts unpublished this year are six drafts
~ the second draft entry reads:

Grace meets you exactly in the moment when you're
most terrified that you're going to be found out, and when
you're most acutely aware of everything that you're not.
Grace meets you in that moment and ... frees you to
own all of the things that you aren't.
—Rob Bell, Marshill.org

A messily-divorcing-twenty-something-brunette sits in a too-familiar local bar, her children visiting the soon-to-be-Ex and his girlfriend this July 4th weekend. She simply wants to be left alone.

A tall man walks over, asks in a Texas accent, "May I sit here?"

Her reply, "You can sit anywhere you want," is caustically dismissive. She returns to her drink, is surprised as he sits down.

The scene is dark, lacking the sparkling hope of magic endings, the Once Upon A Time promise of a bedtime story suitable for children.

Research has revealed that the best predictor of the
security of our children's attachment to us is our ability to
narrate the story of our own childhood in a coherent fashion.
—Daniel Siegel, Mindsight

Ours is a story of three rings without story-book proposal. The first wedding ring, a simple gold band purchased for me by me in a shopping mall jewelry store in the city where we first met ... just days before our courthouse wedding when the romantic within me realized the no-ring-thing wasn't really working for me. The second ring, a secret purchase, a gift for my husband after our parish priest, Father Richard Gubbels, walked me through the hoops and healing of annulment. The third ring, an anniversary band, a surprise gifted to me by my husband.

In the good years, marriage is fun and easy. In the years when I can do nothing but whine and complain, the tall man stands by me. In the years when he is unhappy, I hold onto him.

23 August 1991

God met us in the darkness brought us into the Light.

Do everything without complaining or arguing ...
shine like stars in the universe. Philippians 2:15

Rw
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Christmas Countdown Day 2

4 ... 3 ... 2 ...

Dec 3 bake cookies with daughter, mom, sisters, nieces, nephew
Dec 5 write annual letter, begin mailing cards
Dec 12 think about getting a tree
Dec 13 help with a club Christmas party, bring cranberry juice and dessert
Dec 19 dust banister, hang stockings pine-garland and lights
Dec 20 think about getting that tree
Dec 21 wash sheets, prepare guestroom, deliver cookies and gifts to a club
Dec 21 invite our adult children to Christmas Eve dinner
Dec 22 shop for modest gifts with hubby, take time for lunch
Dec 22 attend beautiful wedding of friends, enjoy dinner, dance
Dec 23 write and mail remaining Christmas cards
Dec 23 wrap a gift for our mail lady, mail a book to a friend
Dec 23 clean house, get groceries, consider a last-minute dash for a tree?
Dec 24 cook dinner, bake chocolate cake
Dec 24 gather to worship, share late evening meal with our adult children
Dec 25 meet loved ones for coffee, gather to worship
Dec 25 lunch with our children and my family of origin

The stemware and holiday mugs, cloth napkins and winter stoneware wait for me, ready to replace the coming and going of Christmas cards on the dining room table. Pledge, the one with the broken top, mists the lemony smell of clean onto my dust rag, probably for the final time. The plastic top broken over a year ago symbolizes the deliberate frugal focus of this past year, a pledge to living on less, creating and celebrating more. The corner where I had envisioned our tree remains waiting and empty ~ perhaps anticipating a commitment from me to a new legacy, a Christmas that begins with the sundown of pre-holiday chaos and spans the twelve days to Epiphany?

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea,
during the time of King Herod,
Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked,
“Where is the one who has been born
king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east
and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed,
and all Jerusalem with him.
When he had called together all the people’s
chief priests and teachers of the law,
he asked them where the Christ was to be born.

“In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied,
“for this is what the prophet has written:
“‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.’”

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found
out from them the exact time the star had appeared.
He sent them to Bethlehem and said,
“Go and make a careful search for the child.
As soon as you find him, report to me, so that
I too may go and worship him.”

After they had heard the king,
they went on their way, and
the star they had seen in the east
went ahead of them until it stopped
over the place where the child was.
When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.
On coming to the house, they saw the child
with his mother Mary, and they bowed down
and worshiped him. Then they opened their
treasures and presented him with gifts
of gold and of incense and of myrrh.

Matthew 2:1-11 NIV1984

Rw
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Christmas Countdown Day 7

The whirl of Christmas, the world of Christmas,
There’s both magic and madness in the air.

Rich Perrotti, Christmas 1985

8 ... 7 ...

Santa and Elf in the Sleigh Pulled by Reindeer

In a whirling
of Christmas
magic, crayon
Santa in sleigh
transports me to Dec 1988 – designing our own greeting card, sharing a child's drawing, an image created by our daughter-artist age five.

Within days of sending our first homemade card we will officially become a family in a late-December wedding. Mom, Dad, Daughter and Son, young lives woven together, ready to celebrate this one on our own. My parents' house is no longer the place we call home for Christmas. For the first time we stay in, opt out of traveling, not-so-gently breaking my mother's heart.

Our plans for a first quiet Christmas Eve, a new tradition, are dashed when my soon-to-be-mother-in-law calls ... she is
alone tonight, could we visit, for 64 miles is not that far to go?
I begrudgingly bundle the children and we set out in the cold, drive miles north for a visit, then more miles back home.

This sounds like a Christmas giving story, though it is not.

In the days between then and our wedding, a plan is revealed. My soon-to-be-sisters confirm and agree, that multiple Christmas Eve invitations were extended, their mother turned down not just one, but three! Did SHE choose to manipulate, fake HER distress? In betrayal SHE pushed me away with both hands. My heart hardens in anger! Her scheme takes a toll.

I did not learn to love her. I mourn this today. All those years wasted! This cannot be the way.

In the pain and the hurt I discover a key: I choose Hope and the Strength to love differently.

Winter Thyme

Then Joseph woke up. He did exactly what 

God's angel commanded in the dream: 

He married Mary ... He named the baby Jesus.

Matthew 1:24-25 MSG 

Rw
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24 Dec 1988 Weather low 19º with winds gusting to 28 mph

Cattails

Sunday was a bad hair day, one marked by puffy eyes and dark circles of sleep deprivation, a fading spray tan (oh the vanity); rented tables to return and borrowed linens to wash; a garage littered with empty coolers and a dining room overflowing with rumpled tuxedos.

It is Monday, the Monday following the weekend our son -- our baby -- got married.

I maneuver my bicycle around the coolers and out of our garage. A few minutes later, as I ride down a country road in the early morning sunshine, I see the cattails in the marsh, puffy and fading, survivors of a long Wisconsin winter. I know how the cattails feel.

Seeing a son get married is a beautiful thing. The woman beside him, radiant and in love. Our son completely in the moment, his eyes only for her. Family and friends gather to witness their joy, to share a meal, to raise a glass, to dance, to laugh, to celebrate. I celebrate too, share the joy of two people in love.

The wedding day is full of promise. Like the toddler's first step, the start of kindergarten, or the day he got his driver's license, his wedding marks the passage of time. For our son and his bride this is a new beginning -- a fresh start -- like the rich lush greens of a spring meadow.

When did the little boy and girl grow up, learn to rely on each other, become a groom and bride?" my heart asks.

When did we find time to grow old?" my knees reply, aching with every rotation of the peddles.

Ignoring my knees, I relax into the solitude. I am like the cattails, beautiful in my own season, but faded in comparison to the radiance of the meadow.

I let my mind drift. "...Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly..." The grace-filled words touch my heart. I pray my son and his bride spend their lifetimes loving extravagantly.

And, like the fresh green cattails of summer pushing upward from the earth, I will grow to discover a new season in this life, my own groom by my side.

Written June 14, 2010. Verse: 1 Corinthians 13:13 MSG