The Things That Matter

December 11, 2018

Beloved:

              I’ve lost our Christmas stockings and fear they may be gone forever.  I ordered four of them from Land’s End twenty-three years ago, each one embroidered with our names.  When I discovered I was pregnant again, Land’s End searched their clearance stock but there were no more.  So my friend, Becky, sewed the fifth to match.  Four years ago we added three, for my son-in-law and two boys my son brought home from college – the same stockings that held pacifiers and Hot Wheels before graduating to gift cards from Amazon and Starbucks.


             Maybe they will still turn up but I can’t imagine where.  We had a dumpster in the driveway last fall, which had me purging high and low.  The dead and broken went to the trash, but loads of stuff went to Habitat ReStore and Goodwill.  I sorted boxes into piles, some to keep and some to give away.  One box must have gone astray.  Or maybe I stored them in some new place last year.  But my 53-year-old self would have known I’d never remember.  She would have written me a note I’d be sure to find this year.


             I love thinking some other family somewhere named Carl, Annie, Mariah, Ben, Emy, Jeremy, Seine & Yang might find and enjoy them.  Or a family with their own names who thinks it a hilarious joke upon their mantel.
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              They are only things.  I can buy or make new stockings that we enjoy just as much, eventually.  And all the things that matter are here, alive and warm and well:  Carl, Annie, Mariah, Ben, Emy, Jeremy, Seine & Yang.  I have everything to be grateful for and nothing in the world to count as loss.  I pray the season is gentle to you and yours.

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette