Nativity

I think it was probably four or five days before Christmas in 2006.  Ben and I had had a pretty rough year: things were tight financially, Ben wasn’t having much success in the job department, and I’d lost two grandparents over the summer and was having trouble coping.

When I say “things were tight financially,” what I actually mean is that we had no money.  We’d used all of our savings when we moved to Texas a year and a half previously, and I had encouraged Ben to stay home and work on growing his business rather than go out and find a regular 9-to-5.  As a result, we were trying to live on my meager teaching salary supplemented with some odd construction jobs Ben did here and there.  One of my favorite parts of the Christmas season is picking out a tree, but that year, we couldn’t afford one.  The mood around our house was anything but festive.  I’m not going to mince words here: it sucked.

Then we had a red-letter day.  I don’t remember why, but I went to work late on the morning of December 19.  For some reason, we’d gone to Lowe’s and seen that all of their Christmas trees were on clearance.  For $5.  We picked out a grand tree.  Who knows, maybe in reality, it was actually quite Charlie Brownish, but I remember it as the most beautiful tree I’d ever laid eyes on.  I think it came in at just under 12 feet tall.  Ben worked on the lights while I was at work, and by the time I got home, it was a tall, shimmering, glowy wonder of a tree.

In the middle of my 7th period U.S. History class – sometime around noon – my brother called me to tell me that my nephew had just been born.  My students awwwwed over the news with me.

I was visiting the new parents in the hospital later that afternoon when my phone rang.  It was Ben calling to tell me Washington Mutual – who’d turned him down several weeks prior – had just offered him a job.  And not just any job: a position in their exclusive management training program.  (It turned out he was one of just 16 chosen in the entire state of Texas.  Yeah, I’m still pretty proud of him.)

I remember crying on the drive home because I was so overwhelmed with the goodness – and, quite frankly, the miraculousness – of the day, and I couldn’t find any other way to process it.

Anyway, I think it was the next night that the nativity started to show up.

We opened our front door that evening to find a gift bag sitting on the doorstep.  In it were a couple of shepherd figurines and a note with the first lines of the Gospel of Luke’s account of the birth of Christ; specifically, the lines pertaining to the shepherds.

The next night, an angel appeared wrapped in tissue paper, accompanied by the next part of the Christmas story – the part where the angel appears to the shepherds.

This continued for two or three more nights until finally, on Christmas Eve, we found a package containing the figures of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, again with the corresponding Bible verses attached.  Having received these pieces, we found ourselves in possession of a complete – and completely gorgeous – nativity set.

We have absolutely no idea who it came from.

And I’m glad we don’t.  The thing is, every year, I pull out this nativity and I’m reminded of that very difficult time, of the faith that sustained us when we had nothing else, and of the day that everything changed.  Every Christmas, I look at these figures and remember that all things work together for my good.

Not some things.  Not most things.  ALL things.

Even my grandparents’ deaths.
Even my parents’ divorce.
Even the loss of a child.

All things.

At the top of our Christmas tree this year was an ornament that I purchased for that tree in 2006.  It says, simply, “Hope.”

Ultimately, that’s what I feel every time I look at our nativity.  If the person who gave it to us reads this, I want you to know how thankful I am to have it, not just because it’s lovely to look at, but because of the lesson that it’s helped me learn.  Am I curious as to your identity?  Yes, of course.  But I think that if I focused on figuring out who you are, I’d end up missing the whole point:

Hope.  The point is hope.