Have you ever jumped into an icy swimming pool after sitting in a hot tub for thirty minutes? You know that feeling of shock as your nerves explode in transition from hot to cold? Every now and then the feeling of gratitude hits my system just like that.
For the last three weeks we’ve had the honor of hosting a writer from the online magazine called World Next Door (www.worldnextdoor.org). Today she had a flight to catch at 6:30 am which means she would have to be at Newark Airport by 5:30 am. I volunteered to give her a ride because knowing my two kids, there was a 50/50 chance that I would be up anyway.
Sure enough 4 am arrived and my son started making noise.
I got up.
I started a podcast and walked outside. It was raining. Not a fierce rain like we had where I grew up in West Africa, this was a misty rain like I stepped into a cloud that was crying.
I picked Sarah up and took her to the airport. As I merged into the lane of traffic exiting the airport, it was like I had jumped out of the hot tub and was falling into a cold swimming pool of gratitude in slow motion.
It was still dark out and I had too much time before work to head back to the office so I decided to go back home and lay down on the couch in my living room. It struck me that I have a house with heat just sitting there, waiting for me should I ever have an hour to kill and nowhere to be.
My roof works. The rain that saturates everything outside is powerless against the shingles intentionally and meticulously installed to keep the people and the contents of my house dry.
It occurred to me that there is a couch with soft pillows inside this warm dry house, which at this hour would inevitably be reserved just for me.
I went to the store yesterday and got some coffee. I have french vanilla creamer in the fridge. There is cereal and milk there too. Just sitting. Waiting for my signal.
My kids are upstairs. Eden is probably curled up in a ball with her Goofy and Mickey Mouse stuffed animals close by. Ahron turned one last week. As of this morning, they are both healthy and strong. Making my life challenging by getting smarter and more creatively rebellious and destructive every day.
Chelsea is upstairs too. Hopefully she is asleep. She agreed to marry me ten years ago this month. Neither of us had any clue what that meant or what we had in store. But yet, to her credit, we are still best friends.
The downside to having a functional nervous system is that the human body will inevitably adapt to changes in temperature. I can already feel my senses adjusting to the gratitude that I felt fifteen minutes ago as I drove from the airport to my house.
But yet, I want those of you who read this to know that you are being used by God to make moments like this morning possible. I can’t begin to say “thank you” enough for loving my family so well. I can’t even list all the times we were living without any clue how the math was going to add up and someone randomly sent us a check. I can’t even list all the necessities we have as a direct result of one, or many, of you guys simply deciding to make it happen. Everything from our children’s winter clothes, to the oven we cook with, to the house that we get to call home, and everything else in between.
I tell people a lot that living on the financial support and generosity of folks like you isn’t very different than just getting a paycheck from a company or organization every two weeks, except that we don’t even have the option of living under the illusion of self-sufficiency.
Your job, your house, your food, your family, and everything else, come from the same place that ours do. It says in James 1:17 that “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
There’s a reason the Church is referred to as the “Body of Christ.” Sometimes people think that God isn’t real because He is invisible. Well, let me just tell you, our family has seen Him. Every day that we wake up indoors gives us a glimpse of the divine. We see His hands, His feet, His eyes. We see and feel His love every day that we wake up and have food to feed our children.
We’ve seen his body; we see you.
Thank you, and Merry Christmas,
