What will we do with this weird year?

The kids call her Beeka.

My mother-in-law is an angel.  As a child, she rode her horse “Pet” to the one-room schoolhouse in Wyoming. Both ways.  They didn’t have indoor plumbing until, oh, high school.  Then as a devoted newlywed in the 1950’s she rode confidently behind her pilot husband in their two-seater Piper Cub with a baby on her lap and enough room behind the seat to hold a small paper sack for diapers. Leap forward to the 70’s, with two teenagers in tow, Beeka was the trusting and essential companion as her husband’s work took the family to foreign lands and back to farmlands, and then back again to foreign lands.  This girl has seen a very big world from the vantage point of a sweet God-fearing farm town.

That’s to say: Beeka knows adventure; the kind of adventure that comes from trusting love. She is the one who gave us the motto by which our family approaches any unexpected foible:

“You can do it the normal way or you can do it the memorable way.”

Recently, when she and I were chatting about the plans for travel and celebration around our geographically challenged family this Christmas season, we realized that once again, we weren’t dealing with “normal.”

Mom said, “Yes, this will be a weird year.”

I said, “Mom, every year is a weird year.”

Last Christmas we faced two chairs left empty by Dad and Mary who went home to heaven only months before the holiday. There was deep hurt amidst the fun of gathering for a joyous celebration. Last Christmas we also knew that pending corporate mergers would change our career circumstances in ways we couldn’t yet know.  We raised glasses with associates, each one aware that we wouldn’t likely be together again in future celebrations.

Neither did we know that some of our kids would walk into the Christmas season of 2012 facing the pains of broken relationships; jagged edges slicing open their precious hearts, and not knowing anything except how much it hurts.  No experience to help them understand that growth comes, and God soothes.   They only feel pain.  We grown-ups can see that they’re each building new muscles to cope, and bones that will form their heart’s safe places… and shape their future relationships.  We pray they are healthy. Parents Hurt. Kids Hurt.

Our opportunity this Christmas is once again to seek the places for gratitude, even if they’re tiny and hard to touch.  We are reminded again that in all this pain, there is a deeper, greater joy to be shared.  We have one life to learn about God, and that He wants us to figure out how deeply He craves relationship with us. Direct relationship.  It is why Christmas happened in the first place: so we have a permanent, powerful place in which to place our trust. And as we learn this more every day, we experience a deeper meaning and understanding of real security.

Then we can do more lifting, and laughing and re-discovering child-like joy.

The question might be whether we can use this sweet season to mark pain or measure the growth of our own muscles and bones, to reach for our loving God in all times.

Because every year is a weird year.  It’s just how we roll.