Recreation of the Heart

I’m thinking today about the life I’ve always dreamed of, what I’ll think about my life when I’m old, how this is a turning point of the direction of my life.

I’m thinking about dreams and how I don’t want a career. I’m wondering, what am I good at?

So I escape to this coffee shop, a haven in the suburban shopping center near the town where I grew up. It’s corporate, but it’s quiet. There are no demands. I can stare as long as I want, look confused, be…alone. I can see how these places have become sanctuaries for people everywhere when church for many has become meaningless noise.

I like the din of the heater, the conversations of people I don’t know and never will, the smile of the man sitting next to me —the anonymity of it all is refreshing.

I’ve never thought of myself as someone who has trouble at the holidays. How can you not be excited, I always used to think. Yet this Christmas, I found myself wandering through the colorfully lit streets in the midst of the holiday music, thinking–what is Christmas all about again?

Of course it’s about Jesus. Of course it’s about celebrating Christ’s birth. But how do we feel it? This Christmas involved a lot of trust, trusting that even though I didn’t quite get it this year, God was going to pull through.

And, then God did. At the Christmas eve service, when I was so tired, I could hardly stay awake, somewhere in the midst of singing all the songs, of lighting my candle, of finding the deepness of the “Silent Night” I felt alive again. And I went home happy to sleep, happy to awake Christmas morning, finding myself overcome by a realization of how precious life really is. My dog, my husband, my dad, my grandfather, my grandmother, my mom, my brother, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law…I could go on…their hugs, their smiles, their listening ears, their physical presence in my life are just hints of the Christ child who made holy our humanity in his birth.