Bustle
Mark and I have been intentional this year about keeping things simple. We plan to travel this Christmas, so knowing how much that takes out of us and the kids, we preempted chaos this year by beginning Operation DeWeerd Family Christmas well before Thanksgiving. Scoffers may now scoff. But yes, our tree went up on December 1.
E has been practicing an old Shaker song this week for her piano lesson. Many of you are probably familiar with it. "Tis a Gift to be Simple" is a song I've sung to our littles since they were born--I whispered it in the late hours of bedtime darkness, in the early hours of first light feedings. I've always liked its melody and the words ring true to me.
Tis a gift to be simple
Tis a gift to be free....
While Miss E plunked that tune out on the keyboard this evening, those words rehearsed themselves in my head. And the aha moment came. I've always thought of those two lines as independent clauses caroling independent ideas: It's a gift to be simple and it's a gift to be free. Arms scrubbing pans to the keyboard's plucky pound called the lyrics to mind and I realized, knew that the two lines together mean something much more: It's a gift to find freedom in simplicity. The Shakers sang this song afterall; it was their theme and their lives were banked on simplicity, on service. Simplicity offers freedom.
***
"It's so hard to buy Christmas gifts for three kids!" I declared the other night while swiping left through Amazon's Holiday Toy shop."Why's that?" asked Mark.
"Because one wants the most expensive gifts and has a list a mile long and the other wants only one thing that hardly costs anything! Then there's the boy. He's just hard to shop for--too big for baby toys, too destructive for big kid toys. How can I possibly make it fair?"
"Who cares?" asked Mark. "They'll like whatever we give them."
Simple.
***
This afternoon, I arrived home from the mall with a bevy of bags only to find two enormous boxes from Amazon sitting on my front steps. It's fun, don't get me wrong, but it made me wonder...how much is too much? I let A test drive K's Christmas gift this afternoon while he was napping and E was at a friend's house. I saw her face fall just the littlest bit when she saw what he was getting. She wanted one, too.
"Honey," I began, "I'm sure he'll share." But I was worried. Would she be disappointed with her gift Christmas morning? "The thing is," I continued, "The things on your list are so expensive. Would you be disappointed if something different was under the tree?"
She thought for a minute, while I wrung my hands in distress. And then, I should have known, should have trusted her more: "Mom," she jumped into my arms, "I love all kinds of gifts. I like books and crafts and games and anything you give me."
I could have twirled her through the room, my generous-spirited girl who reminded me to keep it simple. "What's the most important thing to you about Christmas?" I asked her, giving her a big hug.
"Mom! Jesus, of course!" she grinned.
"Uh-huh," I agreed. "How about family?"
"Nope! Jesus," she reiterated.
Simple.
***
Tonight on all fours, I dragged boxes of gifts from under my bed intending to tackle wrapping. I stared at them spread out on the floor, shoved them all back under again, and picked up something to read, instead. "We cannot take part in the unfolding of creation...when we don't pay attention to it, when distraction gets the better of us," reminds Jane Zwart, professor of English at Calvin (and a former classmate of mine). Distraction is the mounds of material goods catching dust bunnies under my bed. Distraction is the number of times in a day I pick up the IPad to search for a new gift idea, the amount of time I devoted today to navigating the mall with a three-year-old boy. Do you know what the best part of Christmas shopping today was? It was spending time with my son during our Starbucks break, sharing a seat in the noisy mall corridor, sipping a coffee, while he crunched potato chips and pointed to every passerby, "Who dat?" It was watching him (decked out in a black skull cap ringed with giant yellow smiley faces) dance to the music that was driving me nuts in Urban Outfitters and tilting his sunny smile up to everyone who walked by him. Fifteen beautiful minutes in a day full of distracted hours and all of that precious time was free.
***
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world" (Psalm 19).The sound of a river rushing, the pulse of stars across a black night, the silence of snow, the intricate lace of flake--this is the extravagance outside my front door. Zwart writes in her article "Making Words in a Contemporary World" that "[David] defines creation as a poem without words." Can we still the distractions long enough to "revive reverence" for all that has been given? I should fall to my knees to take that first step into the cold air that cuts to my flesh, to hear the rush, see the expanse, touch a flake.
It's only when we quiet the distractions--put down the list, shove the gifts back under the bed for another day's work, put down and sit down and silence, that we will taste and see.
I am a lover of all things Christmas. I've been playing the same Amy Grant Christmas CD for the last fifteen years. Bing and Frank croon the hours away in my living room. The tree drops its needles and I happily sweep them up day after day. The mall calls me in with its festive decorations and happy shoppers. I click the mouse with my right hand while sipping eggnog with my left. We bake and frost with the best of them. We sing carols and attend services. I love the repetition of old traditions and the excitement of following my kids' lead as we establish our own family customs. But in all of this, under all the paper and bows and between the lines of unfurling lists, there is the pressing urge to set it all down for something bigger and better. Something freer. Something simpler.
"I love our family, Mom," A told me today while we were chatting, "But I love God more."
I grinned. There it is in a nutshell. In a small girl who says it true and simple and free. That great Love, that gift. We don't need all the trimmings of Christmas to remind us. The gift is everywhere around us all year round. Never old or cliche. Never tired or stale. May you find it and find it and find it again.__________
Credit: Zwart, Jane. "Making Words in a Contemporary World" The Calvin Spark Winter 2014 25-8.