It's the time of year when family gathers and celebrates, whether around Christmas or New Years.
This year Kenn and Iva were here for New Years Eve.
Here Jonathan is reading a couple New Year's poems before we have family prayer,
after which we played hilarious games, including one Crystal learned at Penn View, till bedtime.
(We prefer to wake up rested on the first day of the new year.)
We had a simple New Years Eve supper with ham left over from the night before when we had Jonathan's parents out with Uncle George and Aunt Irina and her friend's son-in-law from California. Lawrence Liberty (what a nice last name!) had kept us royally entertained with talk about his very intercultural family of six siblings, three of whom had married either a Russian, a practicing Jew, or a Muslim.
Used to all sorts of people, he seemed to have a very good time with us and our family of seven.
That night I had served tea after dinner, with my pretty Ukrainian tea set brought all the way from Ukraine.
It had been such a privilege getting more acquainted with Aunt Irina, and our whole family just loves her already!
But anyway, this is the time of year when you spend New Years Day with cousins, aunt and uncle, taking down the Christmas tree and putting away Christmas decorations
and emptying the kitchen wastebasket an extra time or two!
Unfortunately, when Danny took the bag out of the waste basket the night Kenn and Iva were here,
the bottom of the bag split wide open.
Danny burst into tears.
And that is when I heard something I don't hear often enough around here.
A kind voice saying,
"I'll help you!"
Yeah, when company is here, it's embarrassing when your kid bursts into tears just over something spilled,
and it's embarrassing when your kid makes a mess.
I think often we parents are afraid such things reflect on us as parents,
and it is too easy to scold for carelessness or clumsiness or for being too quick to cry,
all of which seem to reflect on either our genes or our parenting skills.
But before we had time to react in any way, all of a sudden, another child's parent was saying to my kid,
"Here, I'll help you," and stooping over to help the distressed child clean up the mess.
And yes, my child's mom snatched up her camera because she could just feel a blog post coming on.
That picture up there, it is priceless.
An uncle, with plenty of messes in his life, gently helping my kid who has just made a mess,
and by his kindness and gentleness lifting a load off the heart of a mom with plenty of messes in her life.
So after stooping down and scraping up a pile of mess,
uncle gets a new bag ready for the trash.
And yes, we all have trash bags that split open somewhere along the way--
right when you'd like to keep it all hidden away.
Just when you think your life might be a bit more together than it used to be,
just when you think you've managed to forgive and perhaps even forget,
just when you think you might be safe and sound again,
some duncy kid or parent or other relative or--help us!--your own self does some duncy thing
and out comes a whole bunch of your past trash
or your family's past trash
or some significant other's trash
that you wanted to keep from everyone else's view.
There it is!
And you feel, like Isaiah wrote, "you worm, Jacob!"
Maybe it's about teaching us a lesson about humility.
Why go around like we have everything all together
when there is a split wide open
in our soul?
Why hide the hidden tears that spring sometimes?
"Fear not, I will help you!"
It's a blessed promise for the new year.
There will most definitely be times when our bags of trash will split wide open
and we will want to burst into tears all over again.
But if we, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children,
and can stoop over to help them even when we have our own messes to contend with,
how much more will our heavenly Father
come to our aid this new year when He sees us in our next predicament and humiliation
saying, "Fear not! I will help you!"
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