Tag Archives: gifts

Recovered Gladness

I’m so grateful for my life,
My every day, the ins and outs,
The tiny occurrences
Becoming what I’m about
They flood back to me now
In joy, I’m drenched
Rewritten in laughter
After my jaw unclenched
My story returns in blossoms
Suddenly complete
And the little appearing morsels
Surprise with forgotten sweetness:
Pumping the pedals of my bike
In my brother’s hot pursuit.
Piling into a Christmas Mall
to buy my father a real suit.
Passing off my sister’s homemade cookies
As my own baking, to impress a boy-
Moment after moment,
Joy after joy,
And they were almost lost
All these wandering years
But kindness on kindness
Brings them near again-

Oh, the delight they give!
I’m so grateful for the life I’ve lived.


On Toils and Twirls

He’s in his truck while they lay sleeping,
Hard at work before the sunrise
Hammering out the tools he needs
To build their Christmas joys.
By the time he gets back home,
We’ll have tucked the sun back into bed
Then we’ll eat and laugh and love each other
Before laying down our heads.

I get up in hazy mornings,
Blend my flour and my eggs
Whisking together my ingredients
To bake their fragrant memories,
Now the hours go by harder
But the joys grow deeper by the mile
I’m storing away the things we’ll need
To build their Christmas smiles.

We’re working Christmas to the bone this year
Because the best things in life deserve it,
And the love and joy and peace we feel-
Well, all of those were free.
We’re eager for the wide-eyed wonder,
The northern lights inside their eyes,
And for the moment we recline together
To watch them dance in their surprise.

And I think about our Savior,
Coming down from His delights
To work amongst the splinters,
The stubble and the wheat,
He worked Christmas to the bone each year
Building us a mystery
And I, in wide-eyed wonder,
Dance in all I see.
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