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<\/a><\/p>\nFor two weeks now I\u2019ve had this package sitting on my desk. It arrived shortly before my birthday, along with a card. \u201cHave a Kleenex nearby,\u201d came the warning inside the card.<\/p>\n
The gift is from The Redhead.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not at all surprised to have received a gift from the Redhead after her passing. That\u2019s just the sort of person she is \u2014 even in death, thinking of others first.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not good like that. \u00a0After I spoke at\u00a0The Redhead\u2019s\u00a0funeral one older gent came up to me and said that he\u2019d been thinking what a terribly selfish life he had been leading \u2014 until I spoke. Then he realized that if God\u00a0could save me,\u00a0well, then there was hope for him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I suppose if I can\u2019t be good, at least I can be inspiring, heh?<\/p>\n
I look at this box everyday and think about opening it but just haven\u2019t been able to bring myself to do it. I\u2019m reminded of a conversation I had with a young war widow in Texas. She told me that when she heard a knock at her front door and saw two uniformed men waiting, she ran out the back door of her home and crouched down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI figured as long as I didn\u2019t hear the news then it couldn\u2019t be true,\u201d she said. Her tears\u00a0gushed\u00a0like a spigot left unattended.<\/p>\n
The things we do to survive.<\/p>\n
The lies we tell ourselves.<\/p>\n
The truths we run from.<\/p>\n
The joys we miss in the pursuit of happiness.<\/p>\n
I know there is something wonderful inside this box. This box contains something that I will cherish. It will hold some secret shared between The Redhead and me. I\u2019m sure the minute I open this gift, I\u2019ll recall some conversation we had, a moment of hilarity perhaps. But mostly this box serves as a reminder that the greatest gift she gave me was the gift of herself.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t need a book to teach her how to live with purpose. Kingdom Living was her lifestyle long before it became a buzz word\u00a0among Jesus-Hipsters.\u00a0 She could say a hundred things with a roll of her sparkle-eyes. Jesus-Hipsters made her roll her eyes a lot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I made her roll her eyes a lot, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sometimes she did more than roll her eyes. Sometimes she would call me out on my foolish ways.\u00a0Sometimes she just walked away praying for me.<\/p>\n
I thought of all that while reading L\u2019Engle\u2019s Irrational Season <\/em>this morning. L\u2019Engle tells a story about a community of believers she belonged to once:<\/p>\n\u201cIt wasn\u2019t until our full-time days at Crosswicks had been behind us for a number of years that I looked back with the blessing of memory. I saw that for nearly a decade I had experienced the kind of love described in the Acts of the Apostles, despite all our human flaws. The early Christians quarreled, and so did we. Once Hank got so mad at me during choir practice that he threw a hymnal at me. One wife came into the store one day at noon looking a bit dazed and said, \u201cI just broke a plate over Stephen\u2019s head.\u201d But despite it all, we were there for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t a box big enough\u00a0to hold\u00a0the gift of companionship and the blessing of memory. The Redhead\u00a0taught me that a\u00a0grateful heart is the only thing sturdy enough to\u00a0protect such precious\u00a0gifts.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For two weeks now I\u2019ve had this package sitting on my desk. It arrived shortly before my birthday, along with a card. \u201cHave a Kleenex nearby,\u201d came the warning inside the card. The gift is from The Redhead. I\u2019m not at all surprised to have received a gift from the Redhead after her passing. That\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[344,683,1032,1081,1710,1729],"class_list":["post-595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-community","tag-grateful","tag-madeleine-lengle","tag-memory","tag-thanksgiving","tag-the-redhead"],"yoast_head":"\n
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