An Everlasting Life-giving Gift

Pulling this post out of the rafters and down onto the shelf to enjoy this Advent as we prepare for the Prince of Peace.

I still remember the words that shook my school age skin.

"Christmas is not the MOST important Holy Day....EASTER has that title"

What?? Tell, me NO!!!??

But she continued, little Sister Anita, dressed in a traditional  habit that seemed too black, too heavy and too long for her petite 4"10" frame.  

"God, the Father, created earth in seven days, he created everything on it, He could have choose to create Christ and the story of Salvation in an entirely different fashion than as a child born to a mother." She paused, and I remember the pause, because I was hanging on to every word she said. 

This was Christmas after all - the windfall in my home, the holiday that I looked forward to the minute the day  rolled over to Dec 26th. Yes, the waiting started immediately each year.  Do you remember that feeling?  I was maybe in 7th or 8th grade, "my world" consisted of the desire to shave my legs, to have the clothes that my friends had, and to get the attention of that certain guy... OK, I realize now he was a kid.but to me, then,  he was a Guy;).CAPITAL G kinda guy, like we were almost grown up or something.

Back to little Sister Anita.....She paused.....Although, now, I realize that maybe the pause was truly for effect but maybe it was to think about what it would have been like to know Motherhood?

She boomed her petite voice as boomingly (word??) as possible: "Easter is the most important holiday, Easter brought all of us back to LIFE, to HEAVEN, to our future beyond this world as we know."

No more pauses, immediately she went back to the English lesson.

She was our Sentence Structure mixed in with Life Structure. 

Easter, the most important holiday, really?  Grade School Reality check: the world is bigger than my home and this classroom?  Amazing to me!  I learned the "wildest" things when I switched from a Public Middle School to a Parochial School for three years.  The wildest things that played over and over in my mind and in my heart.  The wildest things that saved me from loosing myself to the empty promises of the wild teenage life.  

I learned that Christ's Gift of Salvation is the most important detail of our life here on earth   He came for ALL, not just one, not just a certain group, not just for a certain number (those are all Biblical interpretations gone bad). 

He came for ALL that who so every chooses to OPEN the gift, UNWRAP it - layer after layer every year of their life, learning TRUST in God goes hand in hand with LOVE for God; may have eternal LIFE, with HIM-- the gift giver :)

This is the little church that was attached to the little school that I learned that little tidbit of information in my little town.  I wish I had a picture of Sister Anita instead!  However, I can still picture her in that church, kneeling in devout prayer at the school masses.  ((I noticed her, noticing me, when I was looking around trying to see if "the Guy!" was noticing me)).  She would catch my eye and I would catch my breathe, waiting for a look of condemnation, a sneer or glare.  But she would just bow her head again and continue to pray (probably for all of us, her students).  She set such a perfect example of Living faith. (( Secretly, I wished I could have her for confession...hahahaha!!!)) 

 I learned so much from her and the little pearls of Catholic faith that she threw out in between our English lessons.  

I am not perfect, I am only human.  I have taken the gift(s) that Christ has so openly given me, and threw them to the ground in anger and defeat and raw pain.  But all I have to do is step back into a church and see him there on the crucifix and then I know, He is the Gift Giver. He is God, and I am Only Human.  I am so very not perfect and He LOVES me anyways.  Thank God :)

Happy Gift Giving to each other.