1 a.m.
I always write best in the wee hours, then sleep through the morning. Sandy and Jim will be striking the Christmas set today:
- packing up carefully the Nativities from Nigeria, Burma, Austria and other countries;
- folding and storing festive runners on tables;
- putting away craft items such as carolers made from coke cans, Fathers Christmas and dozens of miniatures; bells and wreaths on doors—all packed up until next year.
- The tree itself will take a couple hours or more.
It’s an annual gift Sandy and Jim give me and friends and neighbors. This year it’s especially wonderful because Sandy is beginning to feel more her own self. She still has several treatments for anemia, but has been able to grocery shop and do a little cooking.
Also, she did some tedious year end paperwork and transferred all her datebook, appointments, and address book to a new palm pilot.
The software for Vista can be downloaded. However, after about eight hours on the phone with tech support in India, we lost all her data. Three days of keyboarding!
So I’ll do that for her. We did get the HotSync process established, though.
The truly amazing thing is that the tech support person is planning to come to the States to do graduate work in engineering in NC. We recommended Virginia Commonwealth University here in Richmond and invited him to meet us. He promised to come and bring us pickles, for which South India is famous.
I am overjoyed
- that Sandy is on the mend; I’ll remember this Christmas as a dark one, akin to 1987, which I equate to the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt. Not that we’re a Holy Family. But Mary and Joseph and the Babe fleeing on donkey into exile strikes the same minor chords I felt the year we moved from Indiana to here. We left with a sense of betrayal by people we’d trusted the care of our minor son to, if both of us should die. It’s the kind of bitterness only the church seems capable of. It was December 26. We had no Christmas that year. God, however, has prospered us here, taken us out of the Southern Baptist denomination into the wider world of faith.
- that we have prayer support of family and friends, including fellow strugglers in the blogging world.
- that we talked with Jean-Emile and Sophie Ngué. Willie, Alise, Marie-Ange and Benjamin joined their Dad and us singing hymns together. Then this morning I had a chance to speak just to Sophie, a rare treat, because it’s usually her husband we talk with. Sophie was soloist at a wedding with a choir of 300! She has many responsibilities among Protestant women of Cameroon. And she is a mighty woman of prayer.
- that we met a young man from India. When director of pastoral care at Hermitage United Methodist Home here, I had an intern from Madras, India, Stephen Satiasatchi, a professor of English who was studying Christian education at Presbyterian School of Christian Education. The tech we spent hours with on the phone yesterday wants to do graduate work in engineering in the States. He invited us to India. I wish we could go. Friends who’ve been there say it is the mother of the spirit. If only the world could learn Gandhi’s nonviolent methods! And Mother Teresa’s order is rooted there. I don’t know much about Hinduism, other than an outline from world religions.
It’s incredible to me that, from this chair, I can reach hearts and be touched by them in return anywhere in the world!
For many years, since our first bout of heart disease in 1993, I have lived with the awareness of how quickly my life could be totally ripped apart. Anyone’s can, really. I live constantly on the pain scale at 2-3, but that can quickly spike to 6-7, or more (God forbid). To stay at low levels, I am indebted to the pain medicine expertise of my physician Dr. James Levenson, at Virginia Commonwealth University medical school. His compassion and delightful rebellious streak and occasional stories of the rabbis from the Talmud make him a stalwart companion on this journey.
There are so many people struggling today. As Christ-followers we cannot afford to ally ourselves with the comfortable class. In the darkness Gaza and the borders of India and Pakistan burn. American and NATO warriors patrol treacherous mountain passes. Robber financiers lounge beside pools of cash in tropical anonymity. Street kids scrounge trash for plastic bags, and dodge kidnappers.
The star of exceeding great joy shines on a world where Herod also rules and darkness roams the streets. We are called, in moments of happiness or grief, to take up our cross daily, follow Christ, and make a difference.
God, be merciful to this sinner, and make it so in me.