There is always a tree of course, usually positioned in front of the living room window. At least one tree in the front yard will be adorned with lights. Battery-powered candles may or may not be lit in the windows, but a wreath will always be on the front door.

And there is always the Nativity scene.

Always.

At least it’s that way at my house. 

The Nativity is the centerpiece of Christmas for us, represented in physical form by forty dollars worth of plastic bought at Walmart. We have lights and candles and a wreath, we have a tree in the living room window, but it’s still not Christmas without a 60 watt bulb making Baby Jesus shine.

You can imagine the alarm, then, the sheer panic, that resulted when our Baby Jesus went missing last week.

To hear the story, jump on over to katdish’s blog. And if you happen to have your own Nativity and live in a place that is rather windy, take my advice–make sure you don’t let it all blow away…

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I wonder sometimes of Christmas.

I wonder how a season filled with such joy can cause such despair. How hope can become hopelessness. How a holiday meant to bring us together can leave so many feeling alone.

I wonder sometimes of my blessings too, those things I too often take for granted and so cheapen. Not so during this season. Christmas has always been my favorite time of year. It is magic and faith and wonder. The stuff of dreams.

There are many who aren’t privy to such truth. Just the other day the local news carried the story of a man who robbed a Salvation Army kettle in front of a nearby Wal-Mart. According to the reporter at the scene, the man ran away with over six hundred dollars in donations and was heard screaming, “I hate Christmas!”

I wonder of him, too.

There are those who say that Christmas is for gifts and those who say it’s for The Gift. I suppose they’re both right. For Christians December 25 is a holy birthday party. Last year my kids even baked a cake with candles and a makeshift manger in the middle. (And when the first piece mysteriously disappeared, I said Jesus ate it. That won’t get me into trouble, will it?)

I like that notion of a birthday party, I really do. Christmas should be a celebration, a time when the good things of the world are brought to the forefront and the bad things are pushed to the side for later consideration. There should be lights and glitter and candles and cake. And there should be presents, too. Lots.

But how are you supposed to give Jesus a present?

I wonder that most of all.

But then I heard my friend Terri’s story of a stranger’s gift of ten dollars, and I had my answer. I knew that the love we have for God and the joy we feel for His blessings isn’t best expressed in song or prayer, but in deeds.

And what better way to give a gift to Him than in the same manner by which that first Christmas gift was given to us? Given to the undeserving with no fanfare and no expectation of return.

And that’s what the Ten Dollar Challenge is all about.

Katdish and Peter have worked their technological magic to provide both Simply Linked and a blog button for this little enterprise. Feel free to use both to share your story and spread the word. It’s dark out there, folks. Let’s shine some light, shall we?

If you’d like to add a Ten Dollar Challenge blog button to your blog, you get the code for it in the little box to the left.

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  Last Friday I wrote about my friend Terri, her mother, and the blessing they received from a stranger while eating at their favorite restaurant. At the end of that post I proposed a challenge for this Christmas season — take ten dollars and bless someone with it. Let it be a small act with big consequences. Lift a burden or a countenance. Make someone smile.

My ten dollars sat in my pocket for about a week after Terri told me her story. I looked for opportunities. I found many. But each time I started to reach into my pocket, something told me to keep it there. That there was someone who needed it more.

But what she wants most, for all the children to get thousands of toys? Well, that’s a little more than this Santa can deliver. Funny that she thinks every child should get a set of Crayolas. I think that’s a good idea. I agree that the world needs more brightening…

To read the rest of this post, and to read my first letter to Santa in nearly thirty years, I invite you over to High Calling Blogs . Hopefully it’ll inspire you to write you own wish list. And hopefully you’ll get everything you’ve asked for…

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The room is dark save for the pink Barbie Christmas tree on the nightstand that illumines one corner but leaves the other three in blackish confusion. I step carefully around the stuffed animal that’s been kicked from her bed and over the squeaky floorboard near the dresser, pausing to admire the newest piece of art thumb tacked to the wall—a turkey and a pig wishing each other a Merry Christmas.

I stoop over the bed and, as softly as I can, hunt beneath the blankets for a hand. Either of the two will do; it makes no difference right or left and is usually dependent upon how she’s sleeping. I pull out another stuffed animal and part of her Tinkerbell blanket (“Tink’s my favorite,” she says, “because fairies are real enough if you believe.”) until, finally, I unearth a palm.

Her fingers close in on my hand, gripping me as she did almost eight years ago when we first met. She was smaller then, though just as loud. And much more innocent. It would be four years until the claws of this world sunk into her.

I turn her hand palm side up and spread her fingers, holding them as close to the tinkling lights on the tree as I can. I draw my eyes close, squinting to find which of the five are the least scarred by the day’s jabs. Ten, to be exact.

It’s been a long day.

I pull her monitor from my pocket and slide a test strip into the slot, then pull back the white plastic tab of the pricker. The spring loads with a click. I set the business end onto the top of the whorl in her thumbprint and press.

It isn’t the ensuing click! that makes her jerk, it’s the feeling of the jagged piece of metal pressing through her skin, drawing blood. I hold her hand tighter, not only to keep her steady but to let her know everything’s fine. The end of the test strip soaks up a drop of blood, and I wipe the remainder off with a cotton ball.

The backlit screen on the monitor counts backward from three in a manner I suppose it’s meant to be soothing but is in fact its antithesis. I would rather have it over with—321—than with the gut wrenching, patronizing way its program dictates—3…2…1…

I let out a soft exhale that is part desperation and part fatigue. Midnight is known to some as The Witching Hour, that part of night when ghosts and demons supposedly prowl. Until three years ago, I never believed that. I believe it now. Except in our house it comes an hour early. Every night for the past four years.

I turn the monitor to face me, half praying and half willing for cooperation.

3…(it’s going)…2…(to be)….1…(okay)…

The screen blanks, adding to the drama, and then reveals her glucose count in its typical ta-da! manner.

68, it flashes. Printed on the bottom is Time for a snack?

I lay her hand down and she instinctively pulls it under the blankets and curls. I leave her there to thirty seconds of rest, then return with a glass of water and fifteen Skittles.

“Hey Punkin,” I whisper, “can you eat a snack for me?”

She huddles deeper into the bed and mumbles a “No, Daddy.”

“Please? I have Skittles.”

“Kay,” she says.

I help her up and hold my hand out. Greens and yellows and reds and oranges, mixing with the tree light.

She leans her head onto my shoulder and plucks the Skittles one by one from my hand, softly crunching down on them. Her blond hair settles between my lips and itches my nose, but I don’t move my head. The only motion is the gentle rocking back and forth that I give her, hoping to keep her closer to sleep than wakefulness. She’s not aware, but I am. I am aware of everything. Every bite, every crunch. The pock marks on her fingers and the knots in her arms and legs.

And I am aware of the ghosts and demons who visit our Witching Hour, those of doubt and grief who claw at me from the inside out.

I decide then, in that warm bed by that warm Christmas light, that if there is a hell upon this earth then it resides in this room, where there is so much joy but not enough to rid ourselves of the pain, and where there is love abounding but not enough to make my daughter well.

It is a hard fact, but a fact nonetheless. Sometimes in the darkness all we can do is huddle and rock.

This post was written for the blog carnival hosted by Peter Pollock. To read more stories about Grief, please visit him at Rediscovering the Church.

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By and large this is my favorite time of year.  I’m not speaking of Thanksgiving, per se. Not even of Christmas. I’m speaking of this small window between them, that one week or so when everything is seen with magical eyes and a thankful heart.

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Just about this time last year my friend Terri took her mother to dinner at their favorite restaurant. Buffet-style Southern cooking in the truest sense, complete with a hunk of fat in the green beans. All you can eat for only ten dollars. A steal. They ate and enjoyed the sort of company that only a mother and daughter can. They talked and laughed and tried to both remember and forget.

Then it happened.

Halfway through her chicken fried steak, Terri happened to look up and find the smile that had been on her mother’s face was gone, replaced by a pained look of perplexity. Her mother had put her knife and fork down to take a sip of tea and had forgotten how to use them. Still unsure but still hungry, she did what seemed most logical—she scooped a handful of fried apples into one hand, a handful of corn pudding into the other, and continued eating.

“It was like having a three-year-old at the table again,” Terri told me.

I suppose that was the case. Alzheimer’s has a way of reducing adults to children in a tortuous rewinding of the mind’s timepiece.

Terri never noticed the man sitting alone in the booth across from them. Never saw him watching as she carefully moved to her mother’s side, cleaned off the apples and the corn, and then proceeded to feed her. She never saw him smile as she and her mother continued right on with their laughter and conversation.

But she did see him rise from his booth and make his way to their table.

“I’ve never seen a daughter so full of patience and a mother so full of love,” he told her. “It’d be an honor if I could pay for your meal.”

He placed a ten dollar bill on the table, smiled, and left.

That small act of kindness and appreciation could have ended there, but it didn’t. Terri and her mother now had ten dollars they didn’t feel they deserved. Using the money to pay for their meal wouldn’t do, then. But what would? After much discussion, they decided to donate the money to the local food bank. Ten dollars bought four canned hams. Four hams for four families who would otherwise go without. And no one should go without, especially during the holidays.

That’s the story of the ten dollar blessing. And it’s gotten me thinking.

I’ve heard tell that life is all about circles, about beginning and ending and beginning again. I think there’s something to that. And not just when it comes to life, but when it comes to what’s been bestowed to us. A stranger in a small-town restaurant felt blessed enough by watching a daughter care for her mother to pay for their meal. That daughter and mother in turn felt blessed enough by him to give the money to those in need. They continued the circle, and by doing so they revealed one of the great truths of existence—

God does not intend for us to be the keepers of our blessings, but mere borrowers of them.

It’s no secret this has been a tough year for most everyone. Money’s tight and jobs are scarce. But even more than that there seems to be a thick fog of cynicism hanging over us. We’re tired. Stressed. Afraid. We’re running low on the essentials—hope and faith and the power of grace.

So this year I’m proposing a return to what Christmas really means—the giving of a gift without the expectation of return. An expression of love and encouragement. A lifting up of the spirit.

Sometimes the best way to pick yourself up is to pick up someone else. And in that light, I’m asking for a favor. I’m asking that you set aside a few dollars and bless someone. It doesn’t have to be ten, doesn’t have to be five. Let it be as much or as little as your situation deems possible. The amount doesn’t matter. It’s what you do with what you have.

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In the coming weeks katdish and I will set up a blog carnival for you to share what you did, whom you blessed, and how it changed you. And trust me, it will change you.

‘Tis the season for joy and song and laughter. For miracles. And it’s come at just the right time, because there are many who need all four. Yet while we pray for God’s blessing and while we embrace that Christmas magic, let’s not forget that God often gives joy and song and laughter not through the divine intervention, but through the feeble hands of mere mortals like you and me.

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My sixteenth Thanksgiving meal was the first one eaten without my family present. Also my last. Because I learned my lesson.

My girlfriend’s family was planning the mother of all Thanksgiving feasts. Everything was to be meticulously planned and prepared by the family matriarch, a hard-looking woman who chain smoked Marlboro 100s but did so with a whiff of proper daintiness that harkened back to her ancient Virginian roots.

Meals would be served in four courses and include fancy table settings, crystal glasses, and food I couldn’t pronounce. Relatives far and wide were more summoned than invited. A new dining room table was purchased just to accommodate the thirty or so people. “It’s going to be quite the soiree,” my girlfriend said. “Can you come?”

Yes.

For two reasons. One was that I was her boyfriend and so had boyfriend obligations. Second was that her family was what I referred to as Important People. Successful and powerful and rich. They drove BMWs and wore J. Crew and ruminated over the stock market. They were, in essence, both everything my own family was not and everything I wanted to become.

I had no reservations about going because I wasn’t likely to miss anything of real substance at home. They Coffey version of Thanksgiving celebration involved little more than a turkey, some stuffing, and my own relatives gathered around a simple pine table. People who drove trucks and wore Wal-Mart and talked about hunting. Not that there was anything wrong with that. There wasn’t. I just thought that maybe it was time I broadened my horizons and saw how the other half lived.

So I went. And my girlfriend was right, it was quite the swanky affair. Fancy people arriving in fancy cars to eat fancy food. You would think all of that would translate into a fancy time. But then again, some things get lost in translation.

For one, I soon learned that all the wealth and power my girlfriend’s family had accumulated resulted in some bad feelings. Some were jealous of others, others were angry at some, and it seemed all of them had something against somebody. The meal, tastefully prepared, was given without prayer. And the table that was bought specifically to bring so many people together didn’t. Squabbles broke out. Arrogance was displayed. Pettiness was front and center. And before long my girlfriend’s mother, the properly dainty matriarch, jumped up from her seat and ran like a mad woman for her smokes, screaming through her tears that she “should have never done this!”

I sat there, lost in wonder at the sight. Here were people who had worked hard and labored much to enjoy the fruits of success, only to find that they had lost one another and a bit of perspective in the process. Far from being one of the family, I had been relegated to mere spectator. Which was fine with me. Those people were nuts.

My girlfriend had become accustomed to the shouts and accusations. She leaned over just as her mother slammed the front door and said, “Life’s a beach, huh?”

She said that often. And it seemed to me as though her family had lived up to that philosophy. They had all staked their claim on the shoreline and built their castles, marveled and worshipped them even, and then forgot that it was all sand in the end.

The good life didn’t look so good to me. If that was having it all, then I’d rather keep my nothing. So I did the only thing I could. I left. Quietly and politely.

I went back home, back to the plain food served on the plain kitchen table to my plain relatives. Back to a place where the bonds of God and family held true not merely for one day a year, but all of them. And you know, that wasn’t just the best Thanksgiving meal I’d ever had, it was also the best Thanksgiving period.

Because that was when I learned I shouldn’t just be thankful for what I had, but for what I didn’t.

But like all super heroes, my wife isn’t impervious to everything. Like Superman and Kryptonite, she has a chink in her armor.

Luckily, she has me there to make sure that chink doesn’t get any bigger. Every super hero needs a sidekick to serve as comic relief and to get into trouble now and then. That’s me.

But also like any sidekick, I have a job to do. Robin saved Batman more than once, and how many times did all those whales and sharks come through for Aqua Man? And I tend to save my wife. A lot.

To find out what that chink is and what sort of saving I do, head on over to katdish’s blog. Chances are you have your own sidekick who does this sort of thing…

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Lately I’ve taken my lunch at the park, enjoying a bit of the country in the middle of the city. I’ll park my truck by the baseball field, climb a small hill to sit on a smaller bench, and stare across the street. Just to see if it’ll happen, finally happen, today.
 
The facelifted but tired house is home to a family I’ve never met and a young man I’ve come to know only from a distance. Ten or so from the looks of him. All boy. Grass-stained Levi’s, alternating Transformer and John Deere T-shirts, and a filthy baseball cap. Always the cap. Homeschooled too, I suppose, since he’s home every day and I’ve yet to see a truancy officer.
 
For about a week I sat and watched him take scraps of plywood and two-by-fours from behind his father’s shed, gather the pile in the middle of the driveway, and proceed to hammer and nail every boy’s first serious attempt at engineering—a ramp. It started small, not much more than a pine speed bump. But either his ambitions or an innate love for hammering and nailing got the better of him, and that bump got bigger. Much bigger. So much so that the upper part of the curve on the finished product nearly came to the bill of his cap.
 
This was someone not merely content to give a gentle tug at gravity’s suppressive bonds. No, he wanted to break them with impunity. To fly.
 
He hammered the last nail a week ago and then pulled a muddy bike out of the shed, backed it up a good twenty feet, and climbed on. And then climbed off. A practice run, I supposed. The next day he actually pedaled halfway to the ramp. Halfway and half-hearted. And like any act undertaken with half a heart, it was doomed to fail. He squeezed the handlebars just as the front tire went from pavement to plywood.
 
And that’s how it’s been since. Every day I come here for my lunch, and every day he inches closer to that ramp but never quite close enough. And right now he’s there again, sitting on his bike and staring.
 
I know why.
 
From where I’m sitting I can look to my right at a tight circle of iron tracks. The train runs at the park during the warmer months and is quite the attraction, both for the kids and the parents who once were kids.
 
As a child I was terrified of the train, convinced the tunnel on the far side was in fact a door to the underworld that swung only one way. Boarding it would mean the end of me. I would race through the tunnel and be swallowed by it, lost in the darkness forever. When I turned eight, I knew it was time to put up or shut up. I rode the train. I jumped. And to my unbridled delight I found that not only did the tunnel have an entrance, it had an exit as well.
 
And I can look to my left and see the spot where as a teenager I parked one Saturday night and listened as my girlfriend serenaded me with Poison’s “I Won’t Forget You,” promising to never-ever-ever if I just fell in love with her. I liked the sound of that, so I jumped. She forgot about me three months later.
 
Which is why I understand the boy’s apprehension. It’s tough to jump. Tough to gather the nerve. Because you never know what’s going to happen after. You never know if you’ll land or crash, laugh or cry. And so we all sit and stare and wonder whether the chance to fly is worth the risk to fall. The good things in life are like that. They cost much but are worth more.
 
I look out over the park and see him tug on the bill of his cap. He rubs his hands and adjusts the pedals, positioning them just so for the right amount of initial oomph. And just as I think he’s about to squeeze the handlebars again, he doesn’t. He pushes harder. His eyes open wide.
 
And he jumps.

***

It’s a twofer today, folks. I’m also guest posting over at my friend Bridget Chumbley’s place, One Word at a Time.  If you don’t know Bridget, you really should. She’s a great lady and a fantastic writer. So hop over there and find out why us guys are so necessary. Hope to see you there!