December 27, 2012

Merry Christmas!


Our 2012 Christmas Card and Letter
(I didn't know if it was going to happen this year)

The Christmas card genre stems from some deep desire to arrive, I think.  We reflect on our year and measure it in terms of movement and arrival, and we feel satisfaction recounting to ourselves and others where we’ve been and what we’ve done.  This works most of the time because our years are filled with goings and doings, increases and decreases, gains and losses.  Mostly though, this is a flat and uninteresting rubric for understanding life.  Movement and arrival may quantify our year- tell us what landmarks we’ve passed- but it doesn’t measure the meaning of our life together.  And it doesn’t account for the parts of our life that can’t be measured by movement and arrival.  Like waiting and wondering.  We’ve waited and struggled with unexplained infertility for about a year and a half.  This has been surprising and hard.  We’ve found that we don’t know how to wait, which, I guess, is a nice way of saying we’re impatient to “arrive” at a family.  This has made Christian hope a sturdier reality in our life, and it’s forced us to be better listeners-with God and each other. 

Mindy continues to enjoy teaching 4th grade, especially now that it’s part-time.  I (Nick) was fortunate enough to go full time with our church and have enjoyed the challenges of being a pastor.  We said good-bye to Grandpa Kinnier in February.  It was good to celebrate his life with family and remember all the ways his gentleness and presence was such a blessing growing up.  We’ve successfully negotiated a number of remodeling projects on the house and hosted the McKinney wedding in our back yard.   All without serious bodily injury or marital counseling.

I try to get out of writing this card every year, mostly because I don’t know how to make it all “fit” together in some meaningful, glossy-Christmas way.  Then, I write the letter and am reminded that our lives don’t need to fit.  That our lives just are.  And that our life makes sense and is meaningful, not because it “fits” or we “arrived”, but because God is with us.  Emmanuel.  Blessings to you all.  
This is what the completed card looked like, sitting on our nice new gray countertops, which I have yet to blog about.

More posts from our many Christmases coming soon.


2 comments:

  1. Beautiful card. I pray that you get blessed with a baby this year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beautifully written...God IS with us...not only at Christmas but during our heartaches and our joys. And "fitting in" is way over-rated, not that we'd know because God has blessed us in ways that were SO MUCH BETTER than we ever imagined. Love you both so much. Thanks for keeping us close. OXOX

    ReplyDelete