The Present

December 2, 2023 Saturday

The present. Oh boy! I so want to get everyone the perfect present! The pressure is on. What oh what will I get for the most important people in my life for their present? Three things are making it more difficult. Number one, I don’t drive anymore. Number two, what gift will be the gift of gifts that will tell my favorite people how much I love them and number three how much money will I spend? Deep breath. It will all come together, and after all there is the internet. I will just Google it.

I have been celebrating Christmas for three quarters of a century. You would think, this present thing would be getting easier. You would think that would be true, but it isn’t. How do you say I love you? Instead of feeling in the usual zone of happiness as I sit at my desk at 4:48 AM, I am feeling a bit stressed, which is putting my happiness on the back burner. What is wrong with this picture? Why is my happiness for life, and my gratitude for life, being put on the back burner?

What is the real meaning of Christmas anyway? Do we celebrate the love we have for each other by decorating, and cooking, is that what Christmas is all about? Someone buys and someone gets. Is that it? Is that all there is to this once-a-year day? I thought Christmas was the appreciation of God for Jesus’s birth. A day when God came to Earth as a human to teach everyone about love. To teach everyone about God! When did Christmas become a shopping spree?

I am glad I am not young anymore because it takes too much energy to keep running in circles. Now, sometimes it feels good to just sit and think about all the things I have to be grateful for. To think about the things that are really important to me. How do you wrap up love? How do you wrap up appreciation? How do you wrap up gratitude, and hardest of all, how do you wrap up God? I am sitting and thinking. I do not know how to put bows on those four things, but all of a sudden, I am starting to feel my lips smiling. That is, it! Christmas cannot make its way into anyone’s heart by buying, buying and more buying!

It is now 10:48 AM. I had to have time off to think this thing through. You can’t buy happiness, you can’t buy love, you cannot buy anything of great importance! Wait a minute, THAT IS IT! Don’t the people you love know that you love them every day? Don’t they know by your actions and your words that these wonderful people mean the world to you? Every time one of them walks into the room where you are, don’t they see you smiling? Don’t you tell them over and over again during the year how much you love them, and appreciate them? Do they need a gift under the tree on December 25th. Do they need to open a card and see money fall to the floor after Santa has eaten the cookie and has finished the milk? What is the story here?

Now that I am really old, the only present I would like to have is love! Love that comes from the heart. Something I can treasure forever, because it came from your heart. Other gifts I have received, with return it if you don’t like it receipts, have long been forgotten. When or where or from whom they came are sometimes a confusion to me. Now, when I look at the tree and the decorations they are pleasing to my eyes, but my real value of Christmas is the gift we were all given so long ago. The gift of Jesus. Jesus, the gift of a lifetime and for all of eternity. I say wow and I say thank you! I say Happy day of your birth Dear Lord! I am glad for all you were, all you are, and all you will come to be for ever and ever. Thank you. I am grateful for your love, your power and your grace! I am grateful for my life, all of your miracles and for all the people you have put in my life as I journey back to the light.

One more thing, the greatest present God ever gave to all of us is TODAY! Why do you think we call today THE PRESENT? It is a present that can be unwrapped day after day, and the gift that is always in style. God’s gift is LOVE!

Today is the second day on the Advent calendar. Countdown to Christmas has begun. Keep the faith, keep your peace, and be grateful for all the wonderful people and things in your life that come from the heart not from the store.

Love to every one of you… today and always! Granny-o

PS… It is now 11:23 AM. Have a wonderful wonderful day!