Christmas is coming to a close.

Christmas Coming to A Close

I’m sitting in a Sheraton Hotel in Michigan. It’s Christmas evening. In a few short hours Christmas 2011 will come to a close. We will say goodbye to the festivities of months of preparation for one twenty-four hour period. Right now I’m anticipating a Starbucks morning before I go visit my dad and my sister to celebrate Christmas past – by just one day.

My dad won’t remember my being there ten minutes after I’m gone. He has Alzheimer’s and is also blind. I love him dearly and hate he is the victim of this cruel disease. I hate it with a passion. I hate visiting my dad and being the only one visiting. It’s not that he wouldn’t want to visit – he can’t. Recently a nurse walked into the room while I was with my dad. She said, “You understand he doesn’t know you don’t you or realize you’re here don’t you?” I replied, “Yes. But what’s important is that I know him and I know I’m here.”

Time has a way of restoring memories even when your visitation partner is not really with you. My love for my dad is not contingent on his awareness of me being with him but rather my awareness of being with him. I hope you understand that. I will also visit my sister. She was raised with my mother being her primary caretaker for all but the last several years since my mom’s passing. She is now in a group home for the mentally disadvantaged. Her mentality is that of approximately a nine or ten year old. She was placed there against her will and she has all but been forgotten by far too many in her life. I wrestle with this whole issue. She can’t help she is who she is or she was raised the way she was. She can’t help she was catered to by my mother most of her life. She is like the lion caged for many years then released. All the lion knows to do is walk in a perceived cage that is 10’ X 6’. My sister was raised in a limited environment and I don’t understand why so many want to hold her responsible for that. As D.L. Moody once said of a drunkard walking down the street, “But for the grace of God there go I.” Any one of us could have been born into the place of my sister. God be thanked we were not.

Why write about all of this? I really don’t know. It’s Christmas. I missed my mom today for some reason. I missed my dad today. I missed being with them on this fleeting day we call Christmas. A day when Christians around the world trade gifts, laugh, eat dinners together and remember times past. I love my family time. I love my two son’s with a passion and a commitment I would die for. I love their wives and my granddaughter with an unbelievable passion. I love my grandson who is on his way. My daughter in law exclaimed he was “playing soccer” the other night at a time she wished he would’ve been napping. I love them dearly.

I think of Baby Jesus. I think of his half brother James who probably didn’t accept Him as the Messiah till after the resurrection. Can you imagine dinner time at their house? I think I am misunderstood at times. I think I am sometimes not only controversial but confrontational. I can only hope that those around me can contain their lack of understanding me and simply accept me for who I am as I am who I am in Christ and He is constanlty working on who I am.  Does that make anys sense at all?  I have little patience with ignorance and none with stupidity. Kim reminds me that the problem with my theory is that ignorance and stupidity are both subjective to my definition. Oh well. It is what it is.

Back to my Christmas point. Christmas is about a moment in history when a baby would change the world. What about us? Did that baby really change us? Did the baby just give us some sense of having a free ticket to the pearly gates or did the baby really change us?   Did the baby change us inwardly? Did the baby change how we treat each other when we don’t understand one another completely? Did the baby change our patience with each other?  Did the baby help us to comprehend the deepest love we could possibly have for one another? Did the baby change our ability to change our inability to be tolerant of others we really don’t get along with?  Did the baby change our ability to not exclude those in our life that we wish we could exclude?  Did the baby really change how we look at those who don’t quite fit our litmus test of acceptance – whatever we think that is?  This is a blog of rambling but its my blog so it is what it is. I think Christmas is more than a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. I think Christmas is about extending ourselves to a world that will eventually oppose us. Loving people that make themselves hard to love. Being tolerant of those who differ from us. Being less critical of the critical who criticize all but themselves. Forgiving those who have sinned against us even when the sin against us seems unforgivable. Visiting those who have loved us but aren’t aware that those who love them are in the same room as they are. Sharing with those who most have forgotten and hold responsible for a life they could in no way be responsible for. Christmas is a powerful expression of a baby who not only changed the world but is still changing the world. At least mine. How about you?