The first time I bought gifts for my family was when I got birthday money from an aunt and saved it up until Christmas. I went to the mall in my Massachusetts town and was careful to spend it just right so I'd have enough for everyone. I knew these wouldn't be the best presents under the tree, but I was proud to be able to contribute even in just this small way.
Things had been tense at home, and they were always more stressful around holidays. I was 13, the same age my son is this year, and I could feel the bonds of family between all of us breaking apart. My father and step-mom had been coming undone for a while, I was on the outside, my baby brother was just that, and I had this vague notion that I could fix things, or at least not break them anymore.
As we unwrapped gifts Christmas morning, I was struck, again for the first time, of how much more heartful it feels to give rather than to receive. I was anxious that my dad and step-mom should like the gifts I got, and as the presents dwindled, there were only a few left, including the ones I'd bought and wrapped myself.
I handed my gift to my step-mom.
"I don't think you deserve to have me open your gifts this year," she said.
I held the gift out, my arm extended.
My heart dropped like lead in my chest. It had been a rough year. It often is with parents and 13-year-olds and I'd gotten more than my fair share of restrictions that year. The bulk of the tumult had been on the parental side, the full force of the pyrotechnic divorce would not hit for another year and a half, and I sat there on the floor by the tree, all of us in our pajamas, arm extended offering this gift.
"No," she said.
I put it back under the tree.
I left it there over the ensuing days, when presents still live under the tree before they are integrated into the normal possessions scattered about one's own room.
I began very deeply to lose my faith that day.
Faith is a gift. And it's one with which I was not blessed. Moving on from that Christmas, with a family life that continued to deteriorate, with a relationship between my parents and myself where communication was impossible, where reconciliation had already proven to be unwanted, I felt abandoned by God, I felt left out of Christ's love.
Actual parenting essentially stopped. I prayed daily for God to make it right. I assumed that the worsening domestic situation was evidence of His lack of care.
I turned away from God. I began to seek other perspectives on the nature of reality, like existentialism which tells us that in the absence of God we must find our own basis for right and wrong and take responsibility for the condition of the world. I stared into the void, the same void I encountered that Christmas morning.
When I came back to faith, when the sheer weight of that void on my heart was too much, the process was so much more painful and difficult than my abandonment of it all those 20 or more years earlier. There was so much I had to overcome in finding my way back to faith, and even as I did so, the doubts stayed. I decided that part of faith is to have doubt and to press on anyway.
I turned to the outstretched and welcoming arms of Jesus Christ, it was his eternal love and grace that I sought. It is with flawed faith that I reach out, extend my arm with my small offering.
This is not the Christmas column I'd intended to write. The one I'd planned was on the importance of faith, sure, but how key faith is in upholding our nation, our democracy, our society at large. "Have faith in America," I'd intended to say, "America has faith in you." Something like that. I'd planned to write that Christmas is not a secular holiday but one that celebrates eternal hope in the birth of Christ, a life of grace and sacrifice in Mary and Joseph.
Instead I could not get the memory of this extended hand out of my mind.
It was a week or more before the unopened gift made its way down to my room. I left it under the tree until the tree had been undressed, ornaments boxed. It was even longer before I could bring myself to open it. It was a lime green shirt, such was the fashion at the time. I wore it once before realizing it would never feel right.
We give with faith the gift will be received. The Christmas story itself is full of faith in giving, faith that a gift will be accepted, cherished. God gives new life to Mary, to Joseph he gives the responsibility of family, to the world he gives his only son. In each of these gifts, with each extended offering to humanity, all we must do is hold open our hands, our hearts, and reach out for it.
This Christmas it strikes me that there is so much amazing love and light and all we have to do is share it.
