I am usually very critical about the gifts I receive from my husband. I have been spiteful, I have been heartbroken, I have been resigned and resentful about gifts he has given me. What I have not been very often is grateful. In fact, it has usually taken me quite a lot of time and effort to reach gratitude. My expectations are so unrealistic (and too often distorted) that it has only been in hindsight, months, sometimes even years, later when I've been able to appreciate the thoughtfulness of his gifts to me. Once, a therapist recommended I read a book called The Five Love Languages. It helped me, explaining that the expressions of love take different shapes in different families and people. I was able to see that for my family of origin, gift giving is the language of love.
Spouseman's experience is very different. When he tells me that cleaning out the gutters, and painting the house, and finding a clever new way to keep the sun from hitting so hard against the back of our house on hot summer afternoons are all acts of love, he really means it. If the gifts he gives me are off the mark, that does not mean he is indifferent or passive aggressive or just plain mean. I am the one imputing those things and those interpretations are wrong.
Even if sometimes my heart cannot accept or understand that simple truth, I "get it" about this not so lovely truth about me and my relationship with my husband. For a while, I thought the "trick", now that I am grown up and trying to be all mature and competent about dealing with my frailties and less than admirable qualities, was to go out and buy myself the gifts I would like to receive. That was the most hollow, worthless, pathetic thing I could possibly have dreamed up to do. It was awful. So I settled for self-pity for quite a long time and worked instead on letting go of expectations (very dramatic sigh).
I can also see the absurdity of all this and even laugh at myself. Now something new is happening in me. It has to do with writing. Books, words, have been my lifeline to God since I was a child. Jesus reached out of the pages of Surprised by Joy (C.S. Lewis) to take my hand and lead me into the life of faith and hope I have found as a Christian. I think I've written elsewhere in my blog that taking the risk to apply to participate in a writer's workshop/retreat at the National Cathedral was my first open admission, especially to myself, that I wanted to write, almost more than anything else at all. Getting or not getting the “right present” from Spouseman or anybody else simply disappears as a concern or need, if I can keep learning how to write. Keep going deeper into the word.
This open acknowledgment has given “gift” a whole new meaning for me. I don’t know if I have a gift or a calling to write. What I do know is that it is something to live with and reach for, certainly something that insists I both stay still and move far out into a new place in myself. A few months ago, Reverend Mother wrote a fascinating blog about hearing Ann Patchett, the author of Bel Canto, speak about creativity and writing. Patchett describes herself as being capable of sitting still for "extremely long periods of time". This allows her to reach beyond the surface, to where life is stripped of our protective veneer and defensiveness--to places that are scarier and also more interesting.
A lot in me says "YES!" when I read those words and think about them. Writing is about that kind of sitting still for me. And Advent is a time that invites us to those places. What I don't know is if I am able to sit in the stillness for the kind of length of time Ann Patchett describes. But I don't think I can know that until I begin.
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