postscript

This is a sneaky way to say more without making the previous post-of-Icelandic-saga-wordiness even longer. :-)

There is another un-photographed Christmas week reality that I want to mention. Namely, heartache and trial in the lives of much-loved friends. Underneath my flurry of activity and cheer there was a continual reaching up, a pleading in prayer for friends in crisis.

A precious couple, fellow members of our local church body, spent the holidays watching by their baby boy's ICU hospital bed. A dangerous infection had taken him there, and there he stayed all through the week, in a sedated sleep and breathing through a tube. The faith and testimony of his parents, as they waited, surrendering their hopes to God--acknowledging Him as their sovereign, wise, and loving Father--was breathtaking. They are not strangers to loss, and they are certainly not strangers to radical, wholehearted trust in God. But what dark hours of waiting they endured and how courageously they fought the temptation to fear! God was faithful to sustain their hope in Him and to give them back their little boy from the shadow of death. Praise Him! They are now back home--their family of six reunited and grateful.

There were other, less urgent prayers for less 'acute' conditions. One friend is passing through a time of deep loneliness, grieving the death of her mother and best friend. She's another example to me of steadfast faith in hard times.

I could go on. There are the sorrowing, chronically ill, financially stressed, and just plain weary among us. I simply wanted to acknowledge this other part of real-life holidays. They are often mixed (always really, if we look far enough) with varying degrees of sadness or suffering for many of us. I want to have eyes to see and a heart to pray, as well as comfort where I can.

I've always loved how Edith Schaeffer addresses this subject in her books. This "mixing of realities of life in strange but important and realistic combinations". She says, on page 91 of What is a Family,

"We must say to ourselves and to our children, 'There is never a series of little packages of time given to you in life labeled: TIME FOR ILLNESS, TIME FOR A WEDDING, TIME FOR A DEATH, TIME FOR A BROKEN LEG...TIME FOR THE HOUSE TO BURN DOWN, TIME FOR DISAPPOINTMENT. You can't face the sickness...the disaster or even the headaches unless you realize there is never a convenient time set aside for joy or sorrow protected by neat little walls so that the two things will not mingle and spoil each other.

This is a two-way understanding. We need to remember, as finite, limited human beings that we cannot care perfectly for others' needs nor can others care perfectly for our needs, even when we or they want to. Life has to go on, and we can only do the best we can in the melange, the mixed up nature of what there is to be done. There are no protected little boxes of time which will not be invaded by a mixture of demands upon us. Life is not like that. It is another case of the danger of demanding perfection or nothing, and ending up with nothing."

So practical, that Edith. You have to love her, do you not?

Well, I don't promise that I have no more to say on the subject, but this is it for now. :-) Boy, it never rains but it pours at the Home and Heaven blog, eh?

Love always,
Melissa