The Angel: Seeing The World Through A Child's Eyes

Holiday celebrations are some of the best parts of living in a small town, and my town does not disappoint. As Christmas approaches, our Main Street. is decked out in wreaths and ribbons, with beautiful storefront window displays glittering and gleaming in the soft white lights.

Early in the season, the entire downtown closes to traffic for an evening to make room for Santa's sleigh, where, after several hours of music and merry-making, the crowd gathers for a countdown at the end of which Santa magically turns on the Christmas lights that surround downtown's centerpiece, the Millpond (we won't dwell on that one year we counted down like six times but the lights still wouldn't go on- even Santa has technical difficulties). It's a pretty big deal around here.

Many of the homes leading into downtown take their celebrations just as seriously. There's the house with the nearly 50-foot pine tree that is adorned from top to bottom with ornaments the size of watermelons. Smiling snowmen on every corner. Enough reindeer to pull a dozen sleighs. And my favorite- a giant lighted angel which stands in front of a quaint, brick gingerbread-style home on Main St. I look forward to seeing its warm glow every year, and then I forget about it until the next. Christmas angels aren't there when it's not Christmas, right?

Unless they are and you just don't see them.

Fortunately, someone in my world does.

I think it began around sometime around February or March. We'd be driving through downtown and all of a sudden, my then 6-year-old daughter would nearly leap out of her booster seat with excitement.

"Mama- there's the most beautiful angel standing there, and she's holding a present in her hands! What do you think is in it? Do you think it's for me?" She'd breathlessly blurt out as we navigated the roundabout in the middle of town.

"Mmm hmm...," I'm sure I muttered distractedly, the first few times, glancing up about 2 blocks after the fact, which is typically the time it takes a verbal message to trudge through the muck of my overloaded brain, and to trigger some sort of a response. Of course by then, I saw nothing.

But she wouldn't stop. Whether it was on the way to ballet, coming home from the grocery store, or heading to a friend's house, she saw an angel. I saw nothing but places to go, errands to run, and time ticking away on the clock.

Though she only mentioned the angel when the two of us were alone together in the car, on those rare occasions I was a passenger, I'd try to remind myself to look for it. Unfortunately, by the time we got close to downtown, my attention had been pulled away by a beep or a buzz or a tweet or a tap or a swipe. But never an angel.

Finally one day, I remembered. As we made our way downtown on the way to dance class, I told her to tell me when we were getting close to the angel. I slowed waaayyy down until I heard her gleefully  squeal: "There she is!"

Sure enough, she was right- there stood the frame of the giant lighted angel I so look forward to seeing each Christmas. I'll be honest- in the light of day, she looked a little shabby- just a twisted shell of metal and wires on a soggy, bare lawn.

"Oh, you mean the Christmas angel!" I said. "I didn't see her because the lights aren't on this time of year."

"She's not just a Christmas angel, mama- she's there all the time," she insisted. "It doesn't matter if the lights are on. She's an angel- she's always shining. I see her all the time. You just didn't LOOK for her. "

DUH.

And just like that, my thought process sped through the roundabout and took a hard right turn into the oh-so-familiar parking lot of Mommy Guilt. Between work, activities, obligations, and the pressure of getting everyone from Point A to B (and points C-Z), what else had I been missing?

But then I realized- maybe we're not meant to see it all alone. Sure, my little girl sees things where I don't- she looks at a puddle and sees nothing but joy. I see a stealth mess that's looking to attach itself to a host so it can spread entirely new messes throughout the house. She sees cotton candy dinosaurs on a cloudy day, while I mourn the absence of the sun. And she sees angels shining even when the lights aren't on.

But I know it works both ways- it's my job to see things that she can't yet understand. To shield her as best I can from harmful germs and harmful strangers, bumps on her leg and bumps in the night. To guard her heart and raise her to see the world with both wisdom and joy.

Light and dark.

Angels and demons.

Between the two of us, I think it will work out just fine.

She'll be my angel and I'll be hers.

A Tale Of Many Easters, And The Time I Celebrated In August

The first time I ever celebrated Easter, I mean REALLY celebrated Easter, was in my living room on a hot, sticky Friday afternoon in August.

Let me back up a bit. I am what is sometimes referred to as a "cradle Christian" and consider myself a person of great faith. I've attended Holy Week and Easter services my entire life, usually doing double duty, celebrating the resurrection of Christ as it falls on the Western calendar as well as on the ancient Julian calendar according to the Eastern Orthodox tradition in which I was raised. Occasionally, my worlds collide and both Easter celebrations occur on the same day, but they can be anywhere from one to as much as six weeks apart.

The difference in dates was a great source of frustration for me as a child and even young adult. My scholarly father offered the historical explanation: that the Eastern Orthodox Church, in accordance with the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, adheres to a rule that Easter is to be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon, following the vernal equinox, but always after Jewish Passover; while Western churches do not use the astronomically determined date for the vernal equinox, but a fixed date (March 21). And by full moon it does not mean the astronomical full moon but the "ecclesiastical moon," which is based on tables created by the church and may or may not follow Passover. Got that? Me neither. My direct, to-the-point mom had a more Nike-esque answer: because the church says so, we just do it.

But I was still hung up on why we were feasting on lamb at the end of April, when my American friends had long since hunted for eggs and consumed all their jelly beans. Were we not "many parts, but all one body?" Why would we the whole body not be together in this holiest of holy days, the one that truly made us who we are? How could the love of Christ, which "surpasses all understanding" not surpass and transcend the political schism that put members of His family on opposite sides of the same coin?

But let's fast forward a few decades and return to my living room. There I was on that August afternoon, a brand new mom, home alone with my newborn son. My colicky, fussy, wanting-to-eat-all-the-time newborn son. If he wasn't eating, he was crying. Which meant that if I wasn't feeding him, I was probably crying, too.

I tried everything I could think of to comfort him. We went for long walks in the stroller. We snuggled. We swaddled. We bounced. But the only thing that consistently soothed him was music. More specifically, my singing. Now, I can carry a tune, but I am not someone you want to hear in solo concert all the livelong day. But since it seemed to pacify my little one, I did the only thing I could: I sang.

I sang nursery rhymes, children's song, pop music, show tunes- you name it. I sang church hymns in Arabic, church hymns in English, church hymns to which I couldn't remember the words, all the while praying that God would forgive me for my crimes against music and to be my soundtrack on this new and somewhat terrifying path of motherhood.

One day, during a particularly awful crying spell (for both of us), I picked him up, closed my eyes, held him close, and sang the chorus of a hymn that for some reason popped into my head:

We remember how You loved us, to Your death,
And still we celebrate, for You are with us here.
And we believe that we will see You, when You come,
In Your glory, Lord,
We remember, we celebrate, we believe.

At the end of that verse (the only one I knew), I cautiously opened one eye and peeked down at the tiny face clutched to my chest. He was silent...briefly...but after a few seconds, the crying began again...so I sang it again. And again. And again.

I'm not sure how long this went on, but at some point, he fell asleep. I set him down in the swing, buckled him in, and collapsed to my knees. Tears flowed from my eyes as a realization set in: this child had made me into someone new. Someone fiercely protective. Sacrificially giving. Unconditionally loving.

As I knelt down, I looked closely at him, and for the first time, I knew deep in my bones, that should the need arise, I would die for my child.

I watched him swing back and forth and thought about how much I loved him, and how that love was giving me a glimpse into God's heart. How my feelings for this innocent baby were a mere whisper of the love God has for me, and for all His children.

Hot tears stung my eyes and ran down my face as I thought about how He could sacrifice his perfect Son on a torturous cross for the sins of humanity.

I cried that day as I thought about it all: pain and suffering, sin and salvation. I cried for motherhood, and for the Mother of us all who watched her son die. But mostly, I cried for love beyond all comprehension. The love of a parent for a child. The love of the Father for His son.

I cried for Easter.

And all the while, the words from that hymn ran through my head:

We remember how You loved us, to Your death,
And still we celebrate, for You are with us here.
And we believe that we will see You, when You come,
In Your glory, Lord,
We remember, we celebrate, we believe.

I never spoke of that day, not even to my husband, who returned from work to find both of us still asleep: the baby still swinging, and me at his feet, exhausted but at peace on the floor. An ordinary, but extraordinary Friday.

I still pray that one day all of God's family will celebrate Easter together, on the same day- Lord knows we need each other now more than ever. But the different dates don't bother me nearly as much as they used to, because now I truly understand that what matters more than Easter on the calendar is Easter in your heart.

And every time I hear that hymn, every time I see my kids, every time I feel that tug in my heart,

I remember
I celebrate,
I believe.