The Curse of Jo March

The tags on this article cover everything. Anger. Resentment. Rejection. Grinch. Scrooge. Bitterness.

Bah humbug.

Fear not: I sound worse than I really feel, and I promise to end this post on a positive note.

When I first got the email this morning - two days before Christmas - that the manuscript I submitted eight months ago had been rejected - well, let's just say I felt like pulling my hair out.

Oh, and that's another thing. I've always had quite the mane, but lately, more than a few gray hairs are winding up in the brush and on the pillow.

Alopecia, anyone?

My prayer partner, too, is feeling bereft, for reasons of her own (not least of which is that corona fear has kept her under house arrest since March 13). That places her aggravation a good month and a half ahead of mine, since my book proposal didn't hit the agent's inbox till April 21. I guess if there's a prize for longest running exasperation, I'll have to defer to Tina.

Interestingly, I woke up wondering what message God would lay on my heart to share today or tomorrow. I always seem to receive an emphatic heavenly nudge right in the middle of my holiday hysteria, when it's least convenient to sit down and write. 

Somehow the Lord never seems to mind upending my schedule.

So, I find myself back to counting blessings. It's the soundest strategy I know for laying resentment where it belongs, in the dung heap with the rest of Satan's tactics.

And, oh, the blessings I still have to count, in a year when disease has stolen so many loved ones from family hearths and gouged gaping holes in legions of pocketbooks .

A daughter-in-law who sends a video of me cuddling my grandson and listening to his laughter, just when I'm missing my cherubs the most. Another soon-to-be daughter, who invites me to her family's Christmas table so I won't have to celebrate Christ's birth alone. Two loving, responsible sons who have been there for me more times than I can count. A host of trusted friends - some long standing, some arriving later in life - but all cherished and held dear. A school year that, while strange and challenging, includes an adorable student who even loves my singing and storytelling!

What was I upset about again?

After reading the agent's refusal, but before counting my blessings (which I was in no mood to do just then), I decided to cheer myself up by throwing a few ornaments on our heretofore barren Christmas tree. First on the list: my Little Women figurine of Jo March, aspiring author, but in her rightful place, just below Jesus.

There, lest we forget, is where all aspirations belong.

God bless us, everyone.

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say rejoice!" 

~Philippians 4:4~

"In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you."

 ~1 Thessalonians 5:18~

Check out this terrific tune from Matthew West: The Hope of Christmas

Woe is Me... or Who is Me?

COVID is really messing up a lot of plans for me. It threw a mega monkey wrench into my summer, preventing me from meeting my granddaughters for six weeks. It interfered with Thanksgiving (although my son and I had a very simple, low key holiday, just the two of us, which is a memory I will always cherish). Now the latest outbreak of the virus is threatening to undo all my Christmas plans.

Woe is me.

That's how I felt the other day when my kids and I had to face up to the realization that Christmas, like everything else since last March, is going to be very different this year.

But then I did a 180, and guess what? Woe is no longer me!

I had a little help from the Almighty (imagine that). While ruing my fate and licking my wounds the other day (as if I'm the only person in this world being kicked around by COVID), I found myself behind another believer at the dollar store. We had plenty of time to get to know each other, masks notwithstanding, since the line we were in snaked through two aisles and moved at about the same rate at which my nephew eats vegetables (he once looked aghast at his mother over a serving of broccoli, demanding to know why she expected him to eat that "tree"). 

All I know is that, after bemoaning the national plight with this smiling Christian sister, who started out a stranger but wound up a friend, I felt my own Christmas spirit ramping up quite a bit.

The following day again found me in a Christmas crowd. As I wended my way through the store (itself a miracle - with corona cases surging daily and restrictions being issued faster than the old woman who lived in a shoe could pass along hand-me-downs to her bulging tribe, isn't it a blessing we can still shop?), I kept hearing a cell phone ringing. It was always the same tone, a familiar one, but not my own. I found it odd that so many people had the same ring tone, and that no matter where I went in the store, everyone was getting calls using this same bell signal. 

Then the light dawned, the same way it did once when I was driving in traffic and kept being disturbed by an ailing muffler. It took awhile, but I finally realized the reason the obnoxious sound wouldn't go away was because my own car was the one making all the racket!

Sure enough, I searched around in my cart, and hiding under a stray bag lay someone else's cell phone! I picked it up and apologized to the owner, who had been calling for 20 minutes, and we both had a good laugh about my "smack me brow with heel of hand" moment. Long story short, I held on to the errant device till she returned to the store to reclaim it. Of course, I had to give her a Christmas tract and well wishes. 

Just another example of the Lord dumping opportunities to spread joy amidst the everyday reality of corona chaos.

Most of my 57 Christmases have been pretty joyful. Sure, some have been lackluster and a few even painful (it's tough to feel like celebrating when you're in the process of saying goodbye to loved ones or facing the breakup of a marriage), but what of it? Did God ever promise me every day would be an ice cream cake topped with pink frosting? Why should holidays be any exception?

The more I think about this, the more I like how the Whos in Dr. Seuss's classic tale handled the downsizing of their Christmas. You remember the story. The grumpy Grinch robbed them of all their
holiday trappings, but what he couldn't steal was their Christmas joy. They woke up singing, just as they had every other year, refusing to let the presence or absence of stuff dictate their peace of mind.

We could learn a lot from those colorful crooners. Rock on, Whos, and while you're at it, how 'bout replacing our Grinch-i-tude with your Who-titude, and making the latter as contagious as corona.

Unstoppable

Yesterday as I drove to work on my usual route, something unusual stopped me in my tracks.

Literally.

I pulled the car over to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.

Sure enough, it was one of those Christmas inflatables - the kind my sister can't stand and is always threatening to take out with a BB gun.

If you knew my sister, you'd know she'd never take out a squirrel, let alone a harmless Christmas decoration. She just likes pretending to be tough.

But someone or something did destroy this humble lawn ornament, which lay crumpled in someone's trash.

Now, this wasn't just any inflatable. I had never seen one like it, and it held particular meaning for me each morning as I passed by because it stood out in the sea of commercialism and secularism that has overtaken the greatest miracle ever known to man - divinity stooping down to earth to save humanity from itself.

I speak, of course, of the birth of Christ. The inflatable that made me catch my breath each morning, reminding me of the true meaning of Christmas, depicted the Nativity scene.

It was pretty simple - just parents and Baby in their humble surroundings - but Amazon prices it at over $100.

As if one could put a price on the Incarnation.

Now, it's entirely likely that the thing was old and weather-beaten and couldn't withstand another Christmas out in the cold. It's also possible, in our increasingly hostile world which is increasingly hostile to all things sacred, that some piteous person took out his or her aggression on this symbol of redemption.

Either way, as the Grinch found out, it won't keep Christmas from coming.

Puncturing plastic won't halt the impact of what happened 2,000 years ago any more than the removal of tinsel and trees and toys could thwart what the Who's down in Whoville were singing about in Dr. Seuss's classic tale.

Christ came. He lives even after unenlightened hearts tried to stop His unstoppable one. He reigns, despite much evidence to the contrary, even as our fallen world slips ever further into madness and mayhem.

He asks only that we do our part to remind others of these facts, and that we remain faithful to His call on our lives.

After many months of allowing my pen to sit idle, herein lies my attempt to do just that.

Grinch Pinch

In this season of peace on earth and good will towards men, many joyfully lay down resentments and take hold of compassion. There’s just something about the lights and carols and festivities that beckon us to reach out to others and share the joy.

Why, then, am I in the grip of the Grinch?

We all know this guy. He’s the legendary scoundrel who tried to steal Christmas from the unsuspecting Whos Down in Whoville by cooking up an elaborate scheme to abscond with their Christmas goodies. He found out in the end,
though, that he couldn’t spirit away their Christmas spirit.

Would that I were a Who.

I’m not going to delve into particulars because I don’t think I’m unique in the slightest. See, behind the lights and carols and festivities lie labor and cash and family stuff, any of which can squeeze joy out of the well-intentioned faster than December 25^th turns into December 26^th.  I have my baggage, you have yours, but the bottom line is we all have the “I” word: issues. Just because the calendar flips to December doesn’t mean those issues are laid to rest; on the contrary, they’re often exacerbated by the very season we celebrate.

What to do?

The only means I know of to combat the Grinch Pinch is the one that inspired a young, unmarried woman to welcome a pregnancy that could ruin her societally. It’s the same guidance that caused her fiancé to stay the course with his betrothed and spurn voices that would label him a cuckold and a fool. It’s the same force that led an unnamed number of stargazers, AKA, wise men, to travel well over two thousand miles round trip to worship a divine baby.

It’s a little thing called the Incarnation, which in simple terms means God laid aside His royalty and became a peon for 30 or so years. He put His immortal nature on hold temporarily and took up humanity, ultimately dying a sinner’s death in our stead. He asks only that we accept His sacrifice into our hearts, not just our heads, and try to pattern our lives after His.

A good start to sending the Grinch packing.