The List

In my experience, grandmas are Christmas-gift ninjas. In this family, about one day after all have recovered from turkey and football and Macy's (so-bizarre-during-Covid) Thanksgiving Day Parade, the grandmas start asking for "the lists." And my kids are certainly happy to produce them, spending hours scouring Amazon for their hearts' desires and click...click...clicking the "add to list" button to create perfect, personalized, itemized, virtual, "there's-no-way-you-can-get-this-wrong, Nanny," indexes of what they would like to have waiting for them under the tree on Christmas morning. And because they are so loved, because shopping for kids who get a year older and a year more complex every 365 days is hard for a grandma, and because our grandmas genuinely want their children's children to receive the little things they long for as an extension of their heart-felt love for them, the list-thing works. Yes, they are spoiled. But grandmas love to give good gifts to their children, as do parents. I can't remember a Christmas when these lists haven't been transformed into tangible, wrappable, ribbon-donning, joy-inspiring gifts. 

Adults aren't exempt from the hopeful anticipation that comes in a wish list, as evidenced by the fact that I have been developing my own list with the same confident expectancy I have seen in my children at Christmastime. It has grown over months and I pour over it daily. My own personalized, itemized list lives loudly on my refrigerator as a constant reminder of my own hearts' yet-to-be-remedied desire...and reminds me to pray. To ask. Some days I agonize over it. Some days I am just quietly aware of the longing and hope that is attached to every, single petition recorded on it. Many days, it provokes a phone call or email or (wow, this is so 2020...) Marco Polo message seeking new information with which to update or add or alter or remove something I had previously scrawled out in messy handwriting through messy emotions. My list isn't cataloging trinkets or toys or gadget I long for. No, my list is a list of names...names of women I love who are currently enduring the painful reality of separation and divorce. And while this list won't get emailed to an eager-to-bless grandma or any other human being, it is handed over with absolute assurance that the receiver, the only One who can truly deliver the longings of hearts, will respond with the perfect provision in the perfect time with the perfect outcome. 

Today, on Christmas Day, I am painfully aware that while the Reids enjoy togetherness as a family, easy-going pleasure and light hearts, the flesh and blood objects of my list are patching together a Christmas morning for their cherished babies that will offer a fleeting wisp of peace, of laughter, of normalcy. They will have made sure their children were dressed in their best and out the door in time for a late-night Christmas Eve service that in days past would have been chauffeured by a loving dad. They will have spent money they can't afford right now because of costly lawyers fees and splintered finances to ensure gifts are under the tree when little feet pitter-patter into the living room at the first hint of daybreak on Christmas morning. They will have poured their own coffee after having stayed up late..screwdrivers and instructions in hand while children slept, putting together bikes and baby doll strollers that in another time, in another reality, their husbands would have been there to assemble. They will have single-handedly spearheaded the family-telling of the Christmas story, answering questions about virgins and wisemen and shepherds, assuring their children, with truth and quivering voices, that the gift of that baby was for them.  And I am painfully aware as I sit here, my husband's foot touching mine while I write this, that they will be lonely today in a way that is unmatched by any other day of the year in this totally painful, totally unanticipated journey they find themselves on. Lord, remind them that this Christmas is fully and totally about them.

While breakfast casseroles and wrapping paper and battery-sucking, electronic toys litter family rooms adorned with Christmas lights and ceiling-high trees and "Jesus is the Reason" throw pillows, let us not forget what we are actually celebrating today. Single parents, take into your hurting hearts this encouragement...you are SO, SO not alone. And you are not on the fringes of any Christmas celebration, left on the sidelines as the rest of the world has genuine reason to celebrate. Oh, no. In every sense, the celebration of Christmas finds its greatest purpose in the depths of your mourning. The acknowledgement of brokenness...our broken hearts, our broken world, broken relationships and our broken capability to make it right is where the genuine joy of Christmas finds its catalyst. The generous, sacrificial gift of Jesus is the result of a desperate need for Jesus; the Messiah, the only hope for rescue from a dismal, desolate eternity apart from God. But...the Good News! On Christmas morning, our mourning was answered. On Christmas morning, the pleas of our grieving, lonely, hopeless plights find their answer in the form of a baby who would become a man, who would live fully, yet sinlessly, with the purpose of dying, on our behalf, because we are clearly so incapable of taking even one effective step on our own toward holiness, to rip every curtain down that would be a separation of you and a Holy, capable, loving God who has overcome the world and the many troubles in it. He has overcome this separation. He has overcome this broken marriage. He has overcome the selfishness you've seen and the injustice you've experienced. He has overcome the hurts of your children's hearts. He has overcome the deceit. He has overcome the paperwork and custody calendars and alimony checks. He promises justice and peace and rest. It may not be tangible and wrappable and ribbon-donned, up under the tree like you long for it to be, but trust Him and keep walking in His truth. That baby was born for you. For now. For this moment. For these tears. For this feeling of chaos and desperation that you are experiencing today. To give you hope and a future.  To give you peace.

Jenn, Angie, Christy, Heather, Cortney, Laura, Jamie, Katie, Kerri, Emily, Laura and others...I am thinking of you today. I hurt with you today. I celebrate with you today, through the mourning, the morning that provided the hope and provision that would sustain you. For single dads, and for widows and widowers, and for the lonely and isolated and heartbroken and forgotten...you are on my list as well today. 

Confidently, I am taking your name before the One who delivers. He lovingly responds to our asking, just as you do to your children. It is so clear how committed you are as parents to giving good gifts to your children. I am so inspired by you! How much more our Heavenly Father loves to give good gifts to those who ask. Merry Christmas. May God keep you and sustain you. May you embrace like never before, in your most difficult season, the most precious riches of knowing Him and walking with Him. And may this be a special season of experiencing God, the Gift and the Gift-giver, as never before.

"Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel (God with us.)"  - Isaiah 7:14

"Therefore,