The Future "Us"

She is tall. With brown boots hugging her calves over brown leggings. A long grey sweater with a wide ruffled bottom and broad bell sleeves is buttoned with a single large button over her chest. Hundreds of tight twirls of hair, the color of twine, are wrestled into submission by a clip on the back of her head.

He wears jeans and a blue work shirt. His hair and beard are grey but between the two is a pair of bright eyes behind black-rimmed glasses.

We are standing outside Giovanni's, waiting for a table for two. "Only four of us waiting," he says to us as they approach from the parking lot, "I thought it'd be packed." They step inside, and immediately return to wait with us. "Ten minutes," he says. "That's not bad." We all smile at each other and in a few minutes, Husband and I are called in by the hostess. She leads us to a booth and we sit down across from each other. When the waitress comes, we order a Coke and a lemonade and Ranch Cheese Fries. When they are led in a few minutes later, to a booth across the room, they sit down together, on one bench of the booth, next to each other, and talk animatedly about something.

They are us. In maybe 35 years. A handsomely aging couple, still excited to eat out together. With plenty to talk about as they enjoy pasta and salad and garlic breadsticks. A couple proud of each other, a couple who are friends. Even after many, many years.

Merry Merry

It's Christmas Eve. The year is nearing its end, and I'm looking forward to preparing for 2012. For today, though, I reflect on a few delights of Christmas.

1. Tom, our new Christmas bear. Mom used to get Sister and me each a stuffed animal for Christmas and Husby has revived the tradition this year with a Christmas bear which sits on the bookshelf above my stocking. We have named him Tom and I'm pretty excited that he's joined our family.

2. These homemade caramels which our neighbor/landlord made. I can't stop eating them!

3. The greens I cut from the cemetery next door and placed around the house. I didn't realize they were supposed to be in water, so they're all turning a bit brown by now. But they still lend a cozy Christmas atmosphere.

4. The Nantucket Cranberry Pie that's in the oven. I'm taking this to my in-laws' house for our Christmas celebration this afternoon.

5. Merry Christmas ribbon I got at Michael's. Loved wrapping presents with it!

6. Our cute tree on the windowsill.

7. Vintage ornaments, like this one from Husby's mom.

8. Christmas cards, especially this one from my favorite client at work. She painted this.

Merry, Merry!

Hark! The herald angels sing, "Glory to the Newborn King! Peace on earth and mercy mild; God and sinners, reconciled." Joyful, all ye nations rise! Join the triumph of the skies! With angelic host proclaim, "Christ is born in Bethlehem!" Hark! The herald angels sing, "Glory to the Newborn King!"

Twenty-Five

I thought I’d have a lot to say about my twenty-fifth birthday. It seems like an important year: ¼ of the way to 100, a halfway point between decades, the beginning of my “late twenties.” But I feel the same today, on December 10^th, as I felt waking up two mornings ago, on my last day as a 24-year-old.

A day doesn’t do anything. This December 9^th did the same thing each of the last twenty-five December 9^th’s has done: merely marked another year since God brought me into the world. What will make my twenty-fifth birthday important, I think, is what happens in the next 52 weeks. How will I spend my twenty-sixth year? What does today kick off? What will I begin today that will define my life as a 25-year old?

While I have a few goals for my twenty-sixth year, the defining characteristic I most want to develop in the next year is peace. At the root of all discontent in my life, all arguments with those I care about, all restlessness is a lack of peace. I fail, most of the time, to put my future into God’s hands and to leave it there, taking with me the peace He promises. Don’t we all tend to snatch our plans back from His hands, confident that they’re safer under our control? I don’t pretend to be any different. But my goal this year will be to develop the silent, trusting peace of someone who doesn’t need all the answers. I aim to be a person who is content under any and all circumstances, not resorting to grumbling, not wallowing in worry, and not questioning the purposefulness of what I’m called to do each day.

“My peace I leave with you,” Christ said. And he meant it. With twenty-five years under my belt, I think I’m ready to accept that peace. And doing so will make this year extremely worthwhile.

The Eyes Have It

In the check-out aisle in Target, there is gum for sale with a picture of a famous snowboarder on it. It’s named after him, in fact. I guess it’s supposed to have a snowboard-y flavor. It’s the size of a credit card, and costs less than two dollars, yet the packaging has been designed to attract buyers who wouldn’t otherwise pick up a pack of gum at all. Of course for Stride, this is a great marketing idea and probably a successful way to rake in more sales.

But when I saw this product in the check-out aisle, it wasn’t the gum company I thought about. It was me, the consumer. Why, if I liked Shaun White, would I buy this pack of gum? Surely it can’t taste much different from spearmint or wintermint or peppermint. It doesn’t fit better in a pocket or purse. It’s not cheaper and it’s not likely to gain me any friends, make me any money, secure me any crowns in heaven, or otherwise offer fringe benefits. I conclude, therefore, that buying this gum has everything to do with the image on the front. If I like Shaun White, I want to have something with his face on it in my possession. Even if 12 sticks later, it will just be tossed into the trash like any other gum package.

This conclusion led me to reflect on other image-related choices we make every day. Things like home décor and clothing are obviously sight-based decisions. We buy these things primarily for what they look like. But other decisions, and not just shopping decisions, are less obviously but equally sight-based.

This weekend, I had a friend over for breakfast. This was a perfect opportunity to use the tea party dishes I inherited from my Grammy. They’re white with gold edges and different designs of fruit and leaves are painted on each one. Each plate has a round divot where the tea cup sits. I set the table with these, some glass tumblers for orange juice, and dark plaid cloth napkins. For breakfast, I planned to make buttermilk pancakes which in my head were perfect circles, golden brown on both smooth sides, thick and puffy like a good diner would make. This was wishful thinking. They were lopsided, flattish, crinkled from bad flipping technique, and of varying shades from something you could kindly call gold to something you could most certainly call brown. They were ugly. However, they tasted quite perfect with butter and syrup and a cup of hot coffee. If I closed my eyes they were even diner-perfect.

After breakfast, we worked on some craft projects which will be Christmas presents for our family members. This was most certainly an eye-driven activity and we aimed to make creations that will please our loved ones visually while also serving their function. (No more details or the surprises will be spoiled!) Our vision made these projects possible and our attention to sight-based detail made them beautiful.

Later in the day, I went for a walk and clipped some branches from a big evergreen tree dotted with tiny pinecones. I propped the branches up in vases and bottles and jars around my house and set a Christmas-y mood in just a few minutes.

I say “the eyes have it” because I think if we don’t keep them in check, they really do. More than our other senses, sight is immediate, constant, works from a distance, and is often out of our control. Sight, more than our other senses, is the reason we desire certain things. I wanted pine branches in my home to signify to anyone who comes in that this is a festive place, laced with seasonal spirit and made cozy with personal touches by its thoughtful caretaker. This is not wrong. I wanted my pancakes to look like creamy moons because it would signify my domesticity, my skill with a frying pan, and my ability to make a stellar, diner-quality breakfast. This was slightly more wrong. While buying WhiteMint gum would not have been wrong, buying it for the simple reason of having the name and picture of a celebrity in my purse would have bordered on obsessive.

I caution myself, with these reflections, to be alert for things that merely attract my eyes. I think Jesus meant it when he called the eyes “the lamp of your whole body.” Are my eyes full of light? Or easily drawn to darkness? I hope that I will have the wisdom to shine a clear and revealing light on that which is appealing to my eyes, rather than being a servant to them. May my eyes – and yours – be filled with pleasing things this Christmas season, but always slow to feast greedily on easy pleasure and quick to look more deeply at things deserving more than a cursory glance.