{Originally Published on Conversion Diary}

When I was an atheist, Christmas was my favorite time of year.

The huge haul of top-of-the-line gifts stuffed under the tree each year (the spoils of being an only child) certainly helped my enjoyment of the season. But that actually wasn’t the most important thing to me. There was something else, something that stirred my soul more than any number of boxes wrapped with shiny paper ever could. I could never quite put my finger on what it was, but I sensed it every year when December rolled around.

There was a change that came over my family, my neighborhood, my town, and even my whole country in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Things weren’t perfect, but they were better. And better in a certain way.

Kitchens that were normally empty, only waystations for frantic parents to rush home from work in time to pick up the children for private tutoring or soccer practice or violin lessons, were suddenly filled with laughter and the smells of apple cider and baked goods. School was out, lessons and sports were on hiatus, workloads were lighter, and kids leaned on the counter and chatted with their parents as they cooked dinners from the old family recipe book.

Neighborhood folks who usually offered little more than a terse smile and a half wave opened their homes for Christmas parties, showering neighbors with the warm welcomes, relaxed conversation and even some homemade cookies.

Airports were filled with the sounds of high-pitched greetings of loved-ones who hadn’t hugged one another in months or years; highways were dotted with cars jammed with luggage and presents, families driving for hours and hours just to be in the same room with the people they loved on Christmas morning.

Workplaces normally filled with politics and stress came together to adopt families in need; miserly curmudgeons uncharacteristically slipped a couple bucks into the Salvation Army bucket; longstanding grudges were more likely to be forgiven; people seemed to spend more time thinking about others than about themselves.

When people would ask why my family loved Christmas even though we weren’t Christians, these are the images we’d point to.

We’d explain that the kindness, togetherness and love that permeated the holiday season were what made it magical for us. “You don’t have to be burdened by religious superstition to appreciate love, kindness and goodwill toward men,” the thinking went. For us, Christmas was a season of love, and that’s what we were celebrating.

What we didn’t understand, however, is that we weren’t as different from the Christians as we thought we were. We atheists celebrated peace, love and goodness; our Christian neighbors celebrated the One who is Peace, Love and Goodness itself.

{Originally Posted at Domestic Felicity}

One day, we will all go home.

To a place where our earthly possessions, our looks, ambitions, frustrations, demands, petty fights and competition with one another won’t matter anymore.

Where it won’t make any difference how much money we had, how big our house was, how fashionable were the clothes we wore; where it won’t even matter how much we excelled in housekeeping, gardening, cooking, sewing, or any other skill we prided ourselves for.

Our blunders won’t matter, either, nor will the blunders of others. The clumsy child who was scolded by his mother for smashing a cup, and had his little heart pointlessly broken over this, will be finally healed. The woman who felt torn apart because of cruel gossip, will have her heart restored.

There will be no more place for misunderstanding, suspicion and offense, no negative assumptions, and no need for explanation. It won’t matter what we had wanted to say, what we meant, tried, and failed to express. It will be possible to look into each other’s hearts, into our very souls, and see the goodness in there.

And finally we can cry over all the hidden treasures of goodness, kindness, forgiveness and love - tears of joy because they were found, tears of sadness because we never discovered them here on this earth, because of our human limitations.

We will be enveloped in infinite love. We will be, again, beautiful, beloved, sweet children. We will be forever with the One Who shaped us in our mother’s womb, and there will be no need to part again.

{Originally Published on Lizzie’s Home}

When I was nineteen years old, I found myself taking a front-row seat in an honest-to-God, wish-I-could-bottle-that-feeling miracle.

After a twenty-eight hour labour, an ugly, red, scrawny mess of arms and legs was twisted from my body, four weeks before his due date. The conehead my son sported from his prolonged journey down the birth canal was very pronounced and truly awesome to behold. His Apgar scores were low. He was whisked away for some oxygen.

At that point, I didn’t care where he went, as long as he was being cared for appropriately and I could cover up the bits of my person that in any other circumstance would never be displayed. It is amazing how the most prudish of women can become the most liberal when in the throes of childbirth. There were bits of me that were irreversibly altered by the birthing process but in the end those particular battle scars would fade, and new ones would take their place.

On the second day after his birth, J turned an alarming shade of buttercup yellow which had the doctors scrambling for the big scary humidicrib with fancy lights and cords. You know, the type with holes in the side where distraught parents are permitted to insert only their hands to stroke babies they should, by rights, be cradling in their arms.

My little six-pound-nothing imp modelled a hastily cut blindfold of black vinyl almost every moment of the first week of his life. We were allowed to remove him from the phototherapy unit for feedings and changes only. The rest of the time he was to lay naked and sunbathing, save for his Zorro mask, under special lights designed to speed up the expulsion of the bilirubin from his blood. There’s a reason why babies are meant to be covered up. Meconium poops are legendary, and more so for babies undergoing phototherapy…

{Originally Posted at Generation Cedar}

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” (John Lennon)

Is it possible, in this noisiest-of-ever-century, that we hardly ever hear, hardly ever see anything much?

Have you ever noticed your world when the power goes off? It’s not just that you can’t check your email… it’s a deafening silence that might drive some crazy if it lasted long enough. All the hums and quiet roars are dead, and we are left with much less-or is it more?

I think if we don’t live on purpose, we won’t live at all. If we don’t see through the daily whir, and hear through the daily buzz, we might just miss the life we were intended to live.

If you’ve lived very long, you know that life isn’t that long. Can we say as someone did,

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”

It’s not hard, really. It’s not sky-diving and Rocky-mountain climbing…

It’s another warm hug today; choosing to cast a gentle glance in the direction of one you love, rather than a day-worn scowl.

A walk outside, closing your eyes, and raising your face to the warmth of an autumn sky. Saying out loud to your children…”Isn’t this world glorious-the one our Lord created?”

Curling up to read Dr. Seuss again, ending with a tickle. Speaking words of life into someone’s heart.

All these smallish things, woven together over a lifetime make a life well-lived.

{Originally Posted at Mom to the Screaming Masses}