by Christie Purifoy | Feb 2, 2012 | allergies, Family, Jesus, poverty
It’s another dinner conversation with the little people, and you never know where it will take you. This night the middle child suddenly recalls the Christmas boxes we filled months ago.
Who opened those boxes, he wants to know. Who’s playing with those toys? I don’t know, I tell him, but I’m sure it’s a child far away who might not have opened anything else on Christmas Day.
He absorbs my answer and says, “I’m glad we’re not poor.”
Oh, honey. I’m glad too. I can’t imagine facing dinnertime with an empty cupboard. Every time I dole out another of the boy’s pink asthma pills ($100 for the bottle with good health insurance!), I wonder how some parents do it. I imagine them holding out for the really bad wheezing, hording those pills like gold.
Oh, honey, I’m glad we’re not poor.
But there’s something I don’t like about his comment. Something that doesn’t feel right. Am I sensing a bit of “us vs. them”? As in, we are the ones who fill the Christmas boxes (thank you, Jesus), and they are the ones who open them? Yet I know that when it comes to Jesus’s kingdom, we’re all in it together. No “us vs. them.”
What did Jesus say to the rich young ruler? Give it all away, then come follow me. But, he couldn’t do it. Can I? Will my kids?
I’m not asking my kids to give it all away. I’ll keep on giving them gifts as long as there’s still money in the bank. But, there are a lot of ways to be poor, and maybe it’s time to teach a few of those?
To be poor is to know that you don’t have what it takes.
To be poor is to know that you’ve got nothing worth standing on.
The poor in spirit give it all away because they know it was never really theirs. The poor in spirit willingly let go of everything in order to stand on the Rock. They know that money, good looks, good health, good behavior, none of it is as strong and steady as that Rock.
Oh, my little boy, I’m afraid you’re wrong. We are poor. Maybe not in our bank account (though who knows what tomorrow holds), but we are poor. We aren’t good enough. Or strong enough. We’ll never have it all together. But, there’s One who was and is and always will be.
He is our treasure. Our pearl of great price.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 20, 2011 | Advent, Family, God's Love
In our family, we always celebrate Christmas with a birthday cake. Sometimes, birthday pie.
No, it isn’t in honor of Jesus. We don’t sing “happy birthday to Jesus,” appropriate as that may be. We sing to our own birthday boy. My husband. Born on Christmas Day … well, not too many years ago.
Three days after Christmas and birthday we celebrate fifteen years of marriage.
Once upon a time, we raided a Christmas tree lot the day after Christmas, collecting free decorations for our reception space. Once upon a time, we filled clear glass Christmas ornaments with birdseed. Once upon a time we ordered a few simple arrangements from the florist, grateful the church was already full of poinsettias. A Christmas wedding.
Fifteen years later, I know that marriage is no fairy tale. I know that it’s harder than we imagined it could be. I know that the children we count as blessings also make it very difficult for us to talk to each other at our own dinner table. Last night, with the kids distracted by a movie in the upstairs playroom, we actually sat down to eat without bothering to let them know that food was on the table. They figured it out eventually, but, in the meantime, oh joy! ten minutes of quiet conversation. Ten minutes to remember who we once were and who we will be again someday.
Perhaps, marriage is no fairy tale. Perhaps, there is no happily ever after. And yet … I don’t speak this truth out of disappointment but out of gratitude. Fifteen years ago it was romance. Today, it’s love.
It’s a husband who says he’s sorry. It’s a wife who cooks dinner even when she has a chest cold (though not, necessarily, with a good attitude). It’s a husband who wakes up every single night to soothe a baby who has long outgrown babyhood but still can’t quite manage a full night’s sleep.
It is love in the gritty details. Love that still puts twinkly lights on a Christmas tree and is grateful to accept a free poinsettia after the holiday concert. Love that dreams dreams about the future at a table sticky with maple-syrup fingerprints.
Love in the flesh.
God with us.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 13, 2011 | Advent, Family, motherhood, Waiting
It is St. Lucia’s Day, the day the poet John Donne called “the year’s midnight.” It is a short, dark day even here in Florida, thanks to a windy, rainy nor’easter.
The firstborn and I are determined to mark the day as they would in Sweden. Whether this is because of our drop of shared Swedish blood, or because we are firstborn girls, I’m not sure. But, we do it.
We make a crown: soft wool felt for the evergreen leaves, battery-powered candles for the light. She lays out a white nightgown and red ribbon sash while I set her alarm clock. She’s never used an alarm clock, and I must show her three times how to turn it off. She practices her lines for me one more time: “St. Lucia invites you to breakfast!”
We forego the traditional saffron buns, but the gingerbread cookie replacements are prepped and waiting on a tray.
“Goodnight, Lucy/Lily,” I say, as I shut her bedroom door on the eve of Lucy’s day.
Tiptoeing through the dark hallway, straining my eyes to avoid the Lego casualties scattered across the tile, I remember how dark my days were before this girl. Those days of praying and waiting and living without.
I remember, too, how bright the full moon was that winter night when I first knew that she was on her way. Nine years ago it was a bright light of answered prayer, of hopes fulfilled.
It is winter again. I know now that when the days are short and the nights are long, the only right way to see ahead is to look back.
So, I look back and remember: “… weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” Psalm 30:5.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 7, 2011 | Advent, Family, Jesus, motherhood
Is Advent a hushed season? A time for quiet reflection?
I’d like it to be. I love quiet like few other things. “Silent Night” is my kind of carol.
Of course, my children prefer “Jingle Bells.” The five-year-old, especially, loves singing it at top volume at the dinner table.
I suppose there’s room for both of us this time of year. Room for quiet as I read the Advent devotional each night by candlelight (well, we’re at least aiming for quiet each night). Room for joyful noise from kids too excited to keep it all in. Presents! Parties! Bunkbeds at Grammy’s house!
Scripture, I fear, is not on my side in this tug-of-war. Once again, the child-like response may be the more spiritual (regardless of my own headache at one more round of “Jingle Bells”).
Mary did not wait in silence. Having responded with child-like faith to the angel’s strange pronouncement, she sang a song.
The silent one? Zechariah. Having heard the impossible news that he would have a son who would prepare Israel for the coming Christ, he said with the reasoning of an adult, “How can I be sure of this?” And, so, his mouth was shut (I suppose in order to keep him from uttering any more foolishness). His tongue remained tied until he held his miracle baby in his arms.
Somehow, this time of year, our house is actually noisier than at any other time. The volume, in every sense, has been turned way up. As much as I’d like to dial us all back down, I do believe (deep, deep down) that joyful noise is the only honest response to the story we’ve been given. Do you truly believe that God himself once visited us? That God both created and then walked upon the dirt beneath your feet? How can silent solemnity be the most appropriate response to such glorious ridiculousness?
Yes, I do mean to write ridiculous. We Christians put so much effort into trying to make ours appear to be a rational, reasonable faith. Personally, I think the whole idea of incarnation is so marvelous, so impossible, so unimaginably good, that to call this faith reasonable seems to do it a disservice.
Alas, my faith is not reasonable. God is not reasonable. A King born in a stable? Totally unreasonable.
Remembering this, I want to laugh like Sarah laughed.
Maybe tonight, after the Advent reading, we’ll sing a rousing rendition of “Jingle Bells” by candlelight.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 2, 2011 | Advent, Chicago, Family, Florida, Jesus, Seasons
I live in the “Sunshine State.” This is no mere tourist slogan, I assure you. This is the truth. And, after ten years in Chicago, I was utterly unprepared for it.
Do you know what it is to long for darkness?
Recently, our skies were heavy and dark for four days. This is unheard of here. Oh, we get plenty of rain: towering, fierce clouds and thunder to rattle your bones, but it rarely lasts long. But this was a nor’easter. For four days it rained, and the leaden clouds never dispersed. Until … they did. The sun came back, the blue sky that is our constant Florida refrain finally returned, and I could have wept. I wanted those clouds back.
Foolish? Perhaps. But here is what I love about darkness: it is the fitting backdrop to hot tea, hot coffee, and hot cocoa (I do like my drinks hot). It is “cozy” weather, as my kids say. Poor things. Here, in Florida, when a summer thunderstorm begins they out-shout the thunder: “Let’s get cozy!” We burrow beneath pillows and blankets on the sofa, but we’re lucky if the sun isn’t shining again by the time we open our storybook.
They’ve inherited my darkness-loving gene, I suppose. Or maybe it comes by birth. I may have been raised in Texas, but I was born in Rapid City, South Dakota, and my children were born into Chicago’s urban darkness, where winter means clouds and tall buildings cast deep shadows on even the brightest days.
In addition to hot drinks and storybooks read by the light of a flashlight, we love dinner by candlelight, Christmas books by the twinkling light of the tree, moonlight on snow (oh, how I miss this, though moonlight on ocean waves is lovely, too). In other words, we love the little lights, like fireflies on a summer evening. Like boats at night on Lake Michigan or the St. Johns River. Like warm lamplight on the pages of a book.
We love the light that shows up best against a backdrop of darkness.
When the light of the world came to us, our world was very dark. And His light was small. Cradle-sized. Today, his face may look “like the sun shining in all its brilliance,” but when he was born to us, it was with a delicate, fragile light (Revelation 1:16).
His birth was like the moon.
His return will be like the sun.
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by Christie Purifoy | Nov 29, 2011 | Advent, Family, Seasons
What is the point of darkness? Have you ever wondered?
In the beginning, we read, God created light, and he separated the light from darkness. Why didn’t he banish darkness?
We might argue that darkness is not inherently good or bad. It simply is. But something deep within us fears otherwise. One of the plagues sent to torment the Egyptians was a plague of darkness, after all.
If light is good and life-giving (in the natural world and in metaphor), I like to remember that it is most beautiful when it appears in darkness.
Each December at their Chicago preschool, my children walked an advent spiral. The usually bustling preschool classroom was silent and dark. The only light came from the candle burning at the center of a child-sized evergreen spiral on the classroom floor. In turn, from smallest to biggest, each child carried an apple, hollowed out to hold a candle, from the spiral’s entrance to its heart. Carefully lighting their candle (with the help of a preschool teacher dressed as an angel), each child walked slowly out again, depositing their candle along the spiral until the room filled with candlelight.
It always felt, to me, like one of the most spiritually profound moments of our year. Perhaps only excepting the year my then-two-year-old daughter caught her hair on fire. Well … maybe that year too. The angel did her job, and, ultimately, no little girls were harmed in the making of this magical, advent moment.
But, oh, those lights … we needed the darkness in order to see their beauty. In order to appreciate their message of hope.
For a while, we may sit in total darkness. Darkness, however, is never the end of the story. Ours or the world’s.
The darkness will not last forever. Morning will come. Your Light will come.
