Approaching Christmas

Christmas is half a week away and here in my office I've just lunched on the leftovers from a Lund's Christmas Breads platter. A salad would have been preferable. This morning we had our annual TDDesign Wednesday Morning Christmas Muffin open house for the people in our building. Lots of folks showed up and we had a great time.

This afternoon, I'm reflecting on several real-life stories from there and elsewhere that have converged in the last couple of days.

One of the guys down the hall, a doctor, held back tears as he told me about his approaching Christmas. Tomorrow he will bring his wife home for the first time since hospitalization and institutional care began last June. She's finally just able to try making it at home. I had picked up from casual "how's business?" conversations earlier that there were some unique stresses in his life, but I had no idea what he's been going through.

From another office party guest came the story of a recent trip to a Liberian orphanage. Letters now arrive from little survivors of that country's chaos. "Dear Daddy Tim, Please pray that somebody will adopt me...."

Yesterday an email entitled "Sad News" arrived from a client of ours in Louisiana. The funeral would be this morning for the 27 year old son of one of the people we work with regularly. Suicide. Can you imagine what Christmas will be like for them this year and in the years to come?

Gosh, my issues don't look like any big deal do they? Should I not approach Christmas with a lot more thankfulness and a lot more compassion than I usually do?

But if you really want to be touched and then be uplifted, read this blogger's December 18th post.

Merry Christmas!