Christmas is about God's humility to take the form of a baby and be born in a dirty, smelly stable, sleeping on straw in a cow's feeding trough, a manger. As an old Christmas carol goes,
"Empty he came, as a man to our race,
equal with God, yet forsaking his place,
Humbly He served in our world,
humbly He served in our world.
As a young mom, it required humility to spend my time changing diapers instead of making my mark on the world. Christmas involved the humility of setting aside my expectations of Christmas being about me receiving, and making it about my children, but I found great joy in watching their happiness as they opened our presents to them.
As my children have become teens, Christmas necessitates a different kind of giving up from me. Now it's much harder to please them. Now expensive things like I-pods lure them and memories of surprises I bought in the last two years for them which fell flat tempt me to resignation, to a kind of withdrawal of hope and involvement. That's wrong. The humility of giving without expecting enthusiastic appreciation, that's what is required from me now.
I had asked my oldest some weeks ago if I could just give her money to buy things in after Christmas sales and she had no qualms about that. My younger one wanted an i-pod. Easy. And costly enough to equal what we've usually spend in totality for one child. That was enough I thought.
But I discovered in the last few days that my 16 year old still really wants other presents, especially surprises. She told us we could go to the dollar store to buy her some surprises, but I don't want more clutter of cheap things. I've discussed with my husband. We have enough to give more and he, the one who loves to give to the poor and needy rather than spend money on materialistic stuff for us, wants to meet her desire.
So we've done a bit more shopping. And I'm trying to do it from the perspective and motivation of servanthood, rather than some hidden expectation that I be admired and appreciated for my efforts. One more growth point where I need to ask God for his grace to change my inner most being.
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