Reality Reflection: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

Did you get everything you wanted for Christmas (or any of the other holidays celebrated in December)? One of the many things I love about the holiday season is the number of gifts that are given to us throughout. Companies give us gifts of discounted products and services, organizations give us gifts of cheer and wrap-ups about the difference we made together in the world, we’re given a reminder to slow down and enjoy life, people decorate their homes and make them all light and beautiful which makes a difference during dark winter nights, people willingly get together and share meals, and people give each other gifts of all kinds to share love and celebrate the holidays.

I think I struggle more with the people who want to wrap Christmas up on 11.59pm on December 25 than the people who don’t want to celebrate in December, and that’s even coming from someone who doesn’t just celebrate on December 24-25 but for most of November and December. I don’t see a reason to rush it out the door and pack it all away like it never happened. As I was struggling with the loss of Christmas music on the radio today the DJ mentioned something about gifts and it reminded me that as much as what ends up under the tree each year is a “Christmas gift,” we don’t pack the gifts away until next year, they’re usually things that enter our daily lives and bless us in a multitude of ways.

Yes, the gatherings we attend and places we go make great memories and we bring those memories with us throughout the year and they can warm our hearts and give us reassurance that we’re not alone but they’re not tangible like the things we’ve wrapped and gifted (unless you carry the pictures taken at those gatherings with you everywhere and look at them often I suppose). We can’t incorporate those memories into the places we go and the things we do through the next 12 months or beyond. We can however include the gifts we’ve been given and the people we’ve gotten to know better in this special season in our lives going forward. It doesn’t extend the holidays, but it makes it a little more bearable to move on past it. What gifts did you get that will keep on giving to you?

Reality Reflection: Apple Pie vs Apple Crisp

Do you know the difference between apple crisp and apple pie (or any kind of crisp vs pie for that matter)? The difference is usually in the ratio of apples/fruit to crust/carb contents. Now, I certainly love pie, key lime pie is one of my favorites as is pecan, and I know that there are so many different ways to make crusts that it’s not right to say pies are all boring and lacking in taste, because that’s not the truth. But there’s just something about letting the filling really shine through in ways that it can only do in a crisp and not a pie because the crust isn’t the focus, the filling is with just a touch of topping to make it not applesauce or any other type of fruit compote. And then we have to have the discussion of whether to add some whipped cream or ice cream or if we’re purists and we don’t add anything to the pie or crisp, plus whether we prefer it room temperature, warm or cold. So many decisions!

This conversation started because my partner and I went apple picking this week and of course we bought some apples with the intent of making a crisp. My mom is really the baker in the family and she even worked for a season baking many things including apple pies and other types of pies, and I can remember many autumns when she would make her apple crisps too. When we gather with friends or family for holidays she’s always asked to bring one of her pies because people love them, which of course I’m thinking about as we head into the holiday season of this year, starting with Halloween in just over 2 weeks. And all the memories have been stirred up by the loss of a close family friend who loved mom’s apple pies, with vanilla ice cream of course.

For me this week has been reminder after reminder of how much we’re connected, how many things we have in common, and how easy it is to find a way for things to work for so many people. Rather than bake a huge pie, make a small pie and a small crisp. Rather than double the cookie recipe, make two regular batches so you can make two kinds. Buy smaller containers of ice cream so it doesn’t go to waste but people have options. Buy smaller bags of Halloween candy so you can buy a ton of varieties. Ask for everyone to contribute one activity suggestion they want to do in the holiday season and do your best to work it in between now and the end of the year. So often with a little negotiation, creativity, effort, flexibility, patience and team work we’re able to make so many people feel like they’ve been heard and are a valued member of the team, whether it’s a family or work team. There’s usually a way to avoid the stuff you don’t love, like crust, and still enjoy the things you do like, like the taste of baked apples with crumble topping.

Reality Reflection: A Celebration of Life

Life should be appreciated and celebrated. This weekend my partner and I were able to attend a wedding that had been postponed several times for different reasons and it was nice to be with family and friends again, celebrating a couple that is very much in love and happy to be together. It was nice to see people reconnect, sit back and relax a bit and not think about work that had to be done, what was going on in the world, or the challenges going on in our lives or the lives of those we love. It was a reminder to me how important it is to stop and see the world around you and be assured that not everyone is having a bad day, acting crazy, self-centered, or doing something wrong. There are a whole lot of awesome people in the world, and we need to remember that they’re out there and worth spending time with.

It felt appropriate to be at this celebration of life on this weekend leading up to the anniversary of September 11, a day when so many lives were lost and countless more changed forever. Should we spend time grieving for those we’ve lost? Absolutely. We should spend time remembering them and including them in whatever ways seem most appropriate in gatherings we have throughout the year. Maybe it’s with a picture or a treasured recipe or bringing out gifts and treasures they’ve given us or sharing stories about them, but their impact can linger long after they’re physically gone if we choose to celebrate them and share them with the next generation.

Take some time as we head into this year’s holiday season as well as this solemn day to reflect back on the people whose lives have touched yours. For those who are still alive, make time to talk with them or see them and let them know in small ways or big ones that you appreciate them being in your life. Make an effort to attend these celebrations, and treasure the moments you have with them. And for those who have passed on, thank God for their time in your life and find a way to honor them that brings a little of them back to life. Remember who they were when they were alive, not the fact that they’re not still with you.

Reality Reflection: Serendipitous Celebrations

Today I realized that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in the US coincide with what is typically graduation season around the US (schools finish up between the beginning of May before Mother’s Day and the end of June after Father’s Day). When they could have been celebrated at any point in time during the year, it was decided that May and June were the best times for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Why? I think one reason might have to do with school graduations. Graduation season this year is special for my partner and I because both of his sons are graduating to their next level of education. As we have been reflecting on the incredible journey they’ve been on and the amazing men they’re growing to be, I made the connection between the holidays celebrating parents and graduation season because there’s no one who has truly been there to witness a child’s journey from the start of their education until their graduations like their parents have.

Many parents sweat right along their kids to help them get their projects done (or at least stay up with them to make sure the projects get done), study for big tests and navigate challenging school situations, so in some ways the graduation is a relief and reward for parents too. But unless you’re graduating or you’ve got an immediate family member who is graduating, it can be easy to forget the journey that often requires sweat, tears, and maybe even some blood (or at least some sleepless nights and walking uphill both ways to school through snow or hurricanes). And you may also forget exactly how hard they (and you) worked to get to this point. So in these years that are few and far between where graduations, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day line up, there come a few opportunities for extra reflection and extra meaning during this season of celebration.

The graduation years are very tangible evidence of your efforts as a parent. Yes, it’s all about the kids and their ability to show they’ve completed a set or level of schooling and now get rubber stamped, if you will, to move to the next step in their life. But without parents (biological, honorary and adopted) there wouldn’t be kids who are able to reach those milestones. So yes, graduations, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are all opportunities to celebrate individuals, but they’re also reminders to pay attention to the serendipities that happen in your life and the lives of those you love. Maybe there is no such thing as a coincidence, but I find it hard to believe that things don’t happen in our lives in such a way to remind us to see the bigger picture, to remind us to see how everything and everyone is connected, and to remind us to celebrate and appreciate each other. Who has helped you get to where you are in life so far?

Reality Reflection: Making Room

What is Mother’s Day (today in the US) really about for the women who we call moms? It’s about their incredible gift and choice to make room in their hearts and lives for the next generation. It’s not something everyone can do or is willing to do, something we know from the too many kids who choose to separate themselves from their birth moms as soon as they can. Because yes, being a mom can be about physically bringing a life into the world, but I believe it’s so much more than that and separate from that. Because real moms, whether they bear children or not, are women who care, teach, shelter, laugh, feed, learn, play and sacrifice for the next generation.

Yes, the gift of being able to bring life to the world is powerful, but it’s such a small fraction of what has to happen next, and what comes next is much more work, responsibility, time consuming, resource consuming, and stressful than those 9 or so months of pregnancy, and not all women are committed to or able to commit to doing that. There’s a big difference from just having a kid and raising a kid, and not all parents consider the difference before they have kids.

So this Mother’s Day I want to thank all the women who have opened their hearts and lives to children around the world. Thank you for stepping up and setting a good example. Thank you for loving us even when we screw up. Thank you for listening. Thank you for patiently teaching us stuff that we make you teach us several times because we just aren’t as good at it as you are. Thank you for not giving up on us. Thank you for believing in us. Thank you for showing up for us. Thank you for being you.

Reality Reflection: Meetings and Partings

This week a family member got some bad news, which as it often is was actually a relief because now there were answers, even if the outlook and the answers weren’t good. In the processing of the news the quote from one of my favorite versions of A Christmas Carol came to mind: “life is full of meetings and partings…” Loss is a topic that we think about this time of year as we reflect on who isn’t here to celebrate with us this year, whether because they’re physically distant from us or because they’ve passed on in the past year or even years past. Some years it doesn’t seem as painful while other years it seems like every other thing makes us think of them, and still other years we’re able to incorporate new things that were special or important to them into our holiday celebrations and it makes those holidays all the more special and memorable.

So since life is full of meetings and partings, we have a choice to make: how do we handle them? Do we avoid them so that we don’t have to deal with the discomfort of adjusting to a new relationship or the pain of losing one, or do we welcome them into our lives knowing that each opportunity we have with them is truly a gift and to make the most of it? In some ways the way we think about the holiday season is a good way of thinking about relationships: most people only spend 40-70 days on the holidays each year during the months of October-December, not all 365 days of the year. The holidays are to be special and we appreciate them all the more each year when they roll around because we know that we don’t get all year with them and on them.

Of course, even the best of holidays come with some challenges, I’ve certainly spent more than one holiday feeling less than awesome because of a bug or something, and there are tons of other aspects that aren’t always our favorite like the amount of money we spend or the delays in travel or terrible storms that knock out power and cause damage. But the holidays are also full of cookies and traditions and meals spent together and songs and sharing of gifts with those we love, and I think the benefits far outweigh the challenges every day when it comes to the holidays.

So yes, I’ll welcome in the meetings knowing that the partings will come with them as well. And while those special traditions and pieces of those who are no longer with us that are left behind like pictures and gifts like ornaments or other holiday decorations can never take the place of the actual person, it’s not only the next, best thing, but also the best way we can make sure that they’re never forgotten and with us in spirit to be shared with the world and part of holiday seasons that they’re not able to be physically with us. What meetings and partings will you honor this holiday season?

Reality Reflection: Let’s Come Together

There’s something about holidays that make people sentimental and get them thinking. I know we’ve done a whole lot of reflecting over the past 2 years about our lives, our relationships and our role in this world, and yet with another holiday hours away I’m thinking some more. There’s a gift some people have that is especially relevant to the holiday discussion, and that’s the gift of glue. Often it is a biological mom of the group or it could be a woman who’s in the mom role of the group, but sometimes it is a man (my partner is often this person). My dad’s mom had this gift, and her funeral really showed that because everyone showed up: all the kids, most of the cousins and many of her friends who were still alive at the time. It was because of her that I knew my cousins and aunts and uncles on my Dad’s side, and without her I’m sure there would have been many quiet holidays spent around a much smaller dining table.

People like Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr, Sojourner Truth, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, Michelangelo, and so many more have made an indelible impact on our world with leadership, kindness, compassion, caring, honesty, perspective and so much more. Over the past two years our world has been shaped by the men and women who have been in the hospitals and food stores and have provided essential services to keep our world alive through the pandemic, as well as the men and women who have stood up for civil rights and continue to do so. In recent months another leader has decided to make his mark on history and has decided the way to do that is killing many and destroying homes and lands, joining the ranks of those who impacted history in a negative way.

If you have the gift of “glue” I want to thank you today for stepping up and encouraging people to get together. I know that it’s tough to navigate the squabbles that may pop up or figure out seating to keep those who don’t get along the best separate or to make sure that there’s enough food at the event, let alone find a time and place everyone is willing to meet, but what you do is important. You’re the person we rely on to teach our kids what it means to be part of a family (biological or otherwise), to connect us in ways that those of us who aren’t as social don’t have the courage to do, to pass on the stories of family long gone, and to remind us how important it is to be together.

Your name may not go down in history with the names of those that I’ve mentioned here, but you’re just as important as they are because you’re part of the hope for the future. Without people like you we’ll continue to separate and divide ourselves, to go our separate ways and build our separate worlds. When we choose to bring people together we have a chance at making the world a better place for the next few generations, not a place that they look back on and wonder how we managed to trash it all in the span of a few decades. Who will you help bring together?

Reality Reflection: “Why Me”?

The other week I was talking with a young child of a friend as she was upset over what she perceived to be her getting second place again to one of her siblings. She said how unfair it was that her sibling “always” got their way when it came to getting to work at the table rather than having to work somewhere else on homework and other things. My answer to her was how she got to do so many more things than her sibling because she was better behaved and more helpful in general, which while true wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Over the years many parents have heard something similar in many situations including on Christmas or Christmas Eve over who got what gift, why one sibling got more gifts than another did, or why someone got bigger (and apparently cooler) gifts.

As I was thinking about Christmas a week away and the journey that Mary and Joseph went on from hearing from the angel to meeting the shepherds and eventually the wisemen with baby Jesus, as much as both of them were so humbled and thankful to be given the gift of being Jesus’ earthly parents, there had to be some “why me” discussion over how changed their plans were for their first years of marriage, how people treated them, and how not normal their years with Jesus were. I don’t think it’s impossible to have both gratitude and confusion, to be able to know how blessed you are and yet at the same time wonder perhaps if there wasn’t a different (easier, better, smoother, less confrontational) way you could get to where you eventually end up.

Life isn’t always fair, this is something many of us learn a hard lesson about. And while I frequently talk about how important the journey is, sometimes the destination is more important to focus on than the journey. Sometimes it’s not worth reliving the journey when what really matters, the only thing that will matter in the future, is the fact that you succeeded. It’s often easier said than done, because we’re really good at rethinking and analyzing things, and often it does help us to spend time thinking about the journey because it can teach us important lessons. But sometimes, what we need most is to not be distracted by the challenges that we experienced and instead just be in the moment and appreciate what we have, who we are and where we are.

As we head into the new year as much as it can help to review all that’s gone on in the past 11+ months, we’re also in the season of Christmas and what might be best for you is for the next week to not ask “why me” and review the past year, but instead to focus on the gifts and moments of the season. Enjoy the moment and let the challenges, problems, and unfairness meet you again during the last week of the month as you think ahead to the new year and what you might want to change or grow through.

Reality Reflection: What’s Important

The last three months of the year are packed with awesome holidays, some that many celebrate in different ways and others that are only recognized by a segment of the population of the US or the world. Even if the holidays aren’t part of my culture I still enjoy learning about them: why and how people celebrate them. Often I learn things that I can apply to my life and celebrations during this time of year, and it also helps me better understand some of the other people that we share this world with, and what’s important to them.

This is a question I’ve been thinking about over the past two weeks: what’s important? I think we would probably have some similar answers like our family or having enough resources to care for ourselves or leaving the world a better place than we found it. But many people say that certain things are important to them (like being healthy for example) and yet how they live their life and the choices they make don’t reflect that.

I do think it’s important to have holidays and to celebrate. Holidays are full of traditions that teach us about our heritage, that allow us to share our heritage and culture with new friends and new generations, and give us the opportunity to make new traditions and memories too. The celebrations bring us together in ways that little else in our world does these days. They remind us that we need celebrations in our lives. And maybe most important they remind us of the bigger picture and get us to lift our heads out of our life to see the world around us and reconnect with people we don’t see often.

What else is important? I think it’s important to put our best foot forward in life. I think it’s important to be a blessing to others and considerate of them. I think it’s important to have people in your life that you can trust and turn to when you need a late night ice cream run or a family member is in the hospital. I think it’s important to care for yourself and about yourself. I think it’s important to have faith. I think it’s important to be someone others can rely on. I think it’s important to make time for learning and exploring the world that we live in. I think it’s important to have passions and pet projects to play with in your free time. I think family is important, whether it’s family by blood or choice. What is important to you?

The Example God sets as Father

Yesterday was Father’s Day and the official beginning of summer here in the US. I really enjoyed seeing all the posts celebrating dads on social media this weekend, it was a good reminder that there are lots of awesome dads out there who are helping raise the next generation, and shared a post on my other blog about some of the things that makes a dad great. This month so far we’ve touched on a couple of topics about God being our Father, today we’re going to touch on one of the tough ones, one of the ones that makes people dislike or have a hard time celebrating Father’s Day. Psalm 68:4-5 says:

“Sing praises to God and to His name! Sing loud praises to Him who rides the clouds. His name is the Lord—rejoice in His presence! Father to the fatherless, defender of widows—this is God, whose dwelling is holy.”

It frustrates me how many dads aren’t there for their kids, and how many kids believe their dad (or parent) is so perfect (superhero-esque), only to learn that they’re so much less than perfect. So many kids are not able to see the truth when they’re young, and in many ways that’s a good thing, but it’s also a difficult thing because it means they still have to face the truth some day, even if it’s when they’re older and better able to understand (or try to understand) the choices their dad made. Sometimes there are no good answers to discover and no logical reasons to understand about why their dad wasn’t or isn’t in their life (and there really aren’t any good excuses as to why it happens). Knowing that God is your father and loves you like a father doesn’t replace the need or desire for an earthly father, but it does provide comfort and support when you’re navigating these very difficult situations.

God cares for those without dads and widows and we’re also supposed to do so as well. A friend just got back from visiting Hawaii and they remarked on the number of homeless people there. There are so many reasons why people become homeless, and I’ve always struggled with why there are kids who go hungry and can’t afford school lunches, or why we don’t do a better job with our veterans when they come home, or why we don’t find ways to support the men and women who are living on the street. There are no easy answers or quick fixes, it’s up to all of us to be considerate of the other people that we share this planet with, and knowing that God makes it a priority to do so is an indication that we should as well.

I often think of days like Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day as a reminder to care for each other and especially the people who matter most to us in the world, doing our best to live up to the example that both God and Jesus set for us to follow. How will you care for others this week?