What Everyone Wants for Christmas

They’re not that different from us, I whisper to my middle child, the girl on my lap whose ponytail’s tickling my nose.

But she’s not so sure, so I introduce her to Lena, who likes arts and crafts and makes her own jewelry, and Ruth, who loves her cat and can’t wait for Christmas.

The band starts to play, and Santa’s on the drums, and soon everyone is on their feet. But my girl, she sits close to me, she lets the candy cane slowly melt in her mouth before she moves. She’s still wearing her coat.

But I feel at home here, surrounded by people like this, people who just want to be loved. And maybe it’s because my mom spent so much time taking care of the Lenas and the Ruths of the world, and people like Stanley, who hopes the New York Giants win today, and Juan, whose greatest joy in life is being an uncle.

Or maybe it’s because I just want to be loved, too.

But I understand my daughter’s hesitation. I understand her fear. It was just a couple months ago when we sat together at the dentist’s office, when a woman in the waiting room became extremely agitated and began shouting nonsense and obsenities and pumping her fist at the sky. No one in the room spoke, and everyone tried not to stare while her caretaker tried to calm the woman down.

It was then, too, that I pulled my youngest daughter on my lap and whispered our common ground, “I don’t think she likes coming to the dentist either.” 

But after the appointment, she asked me about the akward encounter, why the woman acted that way and why God made her the way He did.

And I explained, “When some people are born,when they’re still inside their mommies’ bellies, their brains sometimes get hurt. And when they grow up, they sometimes have trouble doing everyday things.”

“Like going to the dentist?” she wondered.

“Yes, like going to the dentist,” I answered.

“But why was she so upset?”

“She was probably nervous,” I said, “and it probably frustrated her that no one understood her or her feelings.”

My daughter didn’t ask any more questions and she seemed satisfied with that answer, but for weeks I looked for more tangible ways to teach her. Then a friend told me about a Christmas party her church was hosting at a nearby group home, and they were looking for some help. So I signed us up.

So here we are, at the party, and it’s time to make a craft. My oldest daughter volunteers to help a woman whose hands won’t stop trembling. And soon others need help assembling their foam gingerbread houses, too. So my girl, Lilla, and I, we peel back stickers and find red doors and attach snowy chimneys, and we walk around the tables praising their work.

“Can I take this home and put it on my dresser?” Billy looks up at me hopeful, and I tell him that’d be the perfect place, and Lilla nods shyly in agreement.

Then Kim, whose birthday is tomorrow and she hasn’t stopped smiling, asks me for a cup of coffee, and when I go to the counter to get it, Lilla asks if she can take it to her.

I hand the steaming styrofoam cup to my daughter and kiss her forehead, telling her to be careful, the coffee is hot. And for the next twenty minutes she’s pouring lemonade and delivering coffee and plating cookies and pretzels and chips, and she’s never looked more like her daddy than she does right now, doing what they both do best: helping people.

The band’s playing again, and I look around the room. My oldest and her best friend are dancing barefoot in the back of the church, but I don’t see the turquoise coat anywhere, the one Lilla’s been wearing all afternoon.

But there, in the front row, I see a ponytail, her coat hanging on the back of the chair, her feet swinging under her seat. She’s surrounded by enthusiastic air guitarists dancing happy, and she’s sitting among them with a plate full of barbeque chips, and anyone who knows her knows that’s when she’s happiest, too.

And I know Christmas is still two weeks away, but already I’ve seen Emmanual come. God is with us. He’s here in this church, in the faces of the people we’ve met, with their missing teeth and disheveled clothes and broken brains. He is here.

And when my girls and I, when we reach out to help them, to help Him, He moves into our hearts and blesses us all. We are wrapped together in love.

And I can’t think of a better gift to give my daughters this Christmas than that.

“What you did to the least of these, you have done to me…” (Mt 25:40)