Old Christmas Cards

On the coffee table in our living room are many old Christmas cards. Each year held by a ring, it’s fun and entertaining to flip through the cards and see familiar faces years ago. Wandering through last year’s cards, though, brought other emotions.

There’s the family, full of smiles, whose parents separated not long after Christmas . . .

The newlyweds who are now expecting a child . . .

The beautiful family in the dunes who has spent the year wrestling with the horrid implications of ALS . . .

The family that now knows the wonders of recovery, and the one that should . . .

The family that moved this spring . . .

The family who lost the husband and father this summer . . .

They’re all here, vividly reminding me of time’s relentless march. “All of that in a year,” I sigh. The child within, the one who always gets the first say, wants the change to stop or find a humane pace. To be truthful, he wants to jump into time like a river and change its course, make things the way they were, but the weathered child eventually has the last word. He knows he has to find peace with the way things are.

Ecclesiastes reminds that “to everything there is a season,” but do there have to be so many seasons, and much they change so rapidly?

Walking on the loose sand of today, I can only imagine what changes are underway as I write. What will this year’s cards say when they sit on the coffee table? A gust of wind blows outside, reminding me of the cold front approaching, and I rise to put the lights on another year’s tree.