Each day during The PURSE-onality Challenge: "A Holiday-Ready Heart" in October, Untangling Christmas by Karen Ehman and LeAnn Rice, will be our give-away prize!
Day 11: MASTERPIECE (+ Being Content With What I DO Have)
Like the recipe for your streuselkuchen. Your almond kuchen. Your nut roll. And especially your nut candy.
This Christmas Eve, I will sit at the piano and play O Holy Night (and give an extra dollar when children's offering basket comes around at church.)
One of the #1 holiday struggles for many is missing loved ones who are no longer with us, especailly if it’s our first holiday season without them.
Today’s verse is such a powerful reminder that even though we may be separated from people who gave us love, we are never separated from God and his love.
No power in the sky above or in the earth below –
indeed, nothing in all creation
will ever be able to separate us
from the love of God
that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:39 (NLT)
For years, I’ve held back all memories of my Grandma Pudleiner because my final ones are so painful: her lying unconscious in a hospital bed, full of tubes, fading rapidly.
But God is walking me along a healing path, teaching to grieve my losess without losing myself in them.
In fact, in the process of honoring my sadness, I’m re-discovering so much of myself that has been locked behind decades of stoicism.
Writing this letter has been a slow dance back through the pages of time. Tears fell freely as I wrote, freeing me to revel in fond memories rather than stay chained to regrets.
Dear Grandma,
You’ve been gone for more than half my life, now.
I think about you when we go to California Pizza Kitchen. I always order their Dakota Smashed Pea and Barley soup because it tastes ever so vaguely like your amazing split pea soup.
I think about you as December approaches. Christmas Eve was doubly special in our family: the night before we celebrated Jesus birthday and the night we celebrated your actual birthday.
I think about you when I hear the first few notes to the Alleluia chorus. How you loved singing in the Messiah each year!
I think about you when I hear the first few notes of O Holy Night, your favorite Christmas song. You lured me to the piano every Christmas Eve, where I’d play while you sang for pure joy, hitting even the “oh hear the angel voices” and “oh night divine” notes with utter abandon. And you always left me a dollar on the piano as a thank you.
It was your birthday, but I got the dollar.
Somehow that made sense back then.
Now, not so much.
I wish I’d taken the time to get more than the yearly dollar.
Like the recipe for your streuselkuchen. Your almond kuchen. Your nut roll. And especially your nut candy. We have the wooden molds shaped like walnut halves. But no recipe.
The top half was always light brown and tasted a bit like butterscotch, and the bottom half was darker brown and chocolate-flavored.
When I took the halves apart, I could see the tooth-pick holes from when you pulled each half out of the mold. (I think I remember seeing you run your finger under tap water to moisten each half before sticking them together but it’s been so long, I might be making up that memory.)
I miss more than your German sweets, of course.
I miss passing our shared copy of Lad a Dog back and forth, re-reading it over and over until it’s all but fallen apart.
I missing walking to your house on Wednesdays after school, sitting at your kitchen table (spread with the crocheted gold tablecloth–your own “fancywork”!) and having you ask me about my “boy-a-friend.”
I miss all the wacky baldness cure advertisements you'd cut out of magazines and surreptitiously leave on Daddy’s desk.
I miss the crush you had on Daniel. I didn’t realize you were so crazy about him and so excited about us getting married until we found the envelope marked “Daniel and Cheri,” full of carefully saved dollar bills, in your desk drawer after you were hospitalized.
(You would love our kids. Annemarie has your creativity; Jonathon, your quiet mischief!)
I miss hearing you tell your childhood stories. You always laughed at how you were such a slow runner that the only prize you ever won was an unexpected “last place prize” one day! And you always wept when you told about crying through your eighth grade graduation because you wanted so much to continue schooling.
You worshiped the ground teachers walked on. The medical fields were all fine and dandy, but to you, there was no greater calling than education. In your last few weeks, I don’t know if you knew that I was starting my first year of teaching. I tell myself that you did.
I miss the unconditionality of your love. You needed nothing from me and wanted everything for me.
This Christmas season, I will attempt a streuselkuchen. It won’t be the same, but I’ll keep playing with the recipe until I get it close to yours.
This Christmas season, I will crank a CD of The Messiah up to full volume (and, yes, I’ll be sure to stand when the Alleluia chorus comes on!)
This Christmas Eve, I will sit at the piano and play O Holy Night (and give an extra dollar when children's offering basket comes around at church.)This Christmas, I will bask in the blessed memory of 22 years with a grandmother who loved me so very dearly.
Ich liebe dich, Großmutter.
Cheri
Your Turn!
- Is there someone you will be especially missing this holiday season?
- How do you / could you incorporate a special honoring of a loved one in your holiday celebrations?
- What has helped you learn how to grieve losses so that the memories bring more blessing than sorrow?
- Anything else on your heart?