Saturday, January 3, 2009

Truly Creating the Season

James and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on January 2 this year; he gave me a true gift of love on that day. Holidays always seem particularly hard for us since we are many miles from our loved ones; we missed them at Thanksgiving and Christmas and knew it was impossible to get them together for our anniversary. I was particularly missing my daughter Jamie, who I hadn't seen since September 2005 when she left for her first Peace Corps assignment. We knew she was leaving the States in January for a second, year-long assignment in Africa, so to surprise me James arranged to fly her in for a weekend before she left. This was the greatest gift he could have given me, but I realized something even bigger - the gift truly was the thought of trying to make this happen!! Even if Jamie had been unable to come, James had thought of me and tried. Loving another person enough to care what would make them happy is a gift in itself - perhaps the greatest one of all - even if you can't physically give the gift. The thought IS the gift. Thinking in love of another person is how we truly create the season.