Thursday, December 16, 2010

Just a spoonful of sugar

A fun event for ESL learners over the last few years has been a cookie decorating party at Christmas. Most of these internationals come from Asia or the Middle East and did not grow up with ovens. Thus, they do not know how to bake and Christmas cookies, that essential of American Christmas, are a mystery to them.

We gather at our house on a mid-December evening and turn the kitchen into total chaos. Each of the ESL teachers brings plain cookies and decorating stuff, and the families all gather around the big center island and decorate the cookies to take home. Last night we had 12 adults and 8 children ranging from 10 down to 3. You can imagine the amount of colored sugar and icing that hit the floor!

The kids last about 30 minutes and then spin off to the Lego in the family room or the games in the living/dining room, bouncing back in turns to do another cookie or two. There is much consumption. The husbands, brought along to enjoy the fun, last about as long as the kids. Most are engineers, and they drift off to the dining room for a little more adult conversation. This leaves the women in the kitchen and conversation – the whole goal of the class – ranges far and wide.

Yesterday one of the Chinese women had a minor car accident on the icy roads. A Middle Eastern woman is on her third winter in Michigan and three of the Chinese women listen intently as she describes how to drive on ice and not slide into the ditch. Fascinating to hear this described by someone who has learned winter driving on the fast track. Lots of new vocabulary!

Cooking practices always surface in the conversation, and a lot of parenting discussions. Two of the ESL teachers are moms of younger kids and great mentors to these women struggling to survive, keep house, speak English, and raise children in a totally new world.

The children are a delightful mix of cultures, blond heads alongside dark ones. English is no problem for them, nor is social interaction. They are the next generation of new Americans, and cookies are to be consumed – no matter who made them or decorated them.

By the time the evening ends, I am quite ready for it to end. But as each family walks out the door bearing freshly decorated cookies of their own design, chatting merrily with each other in somewhat fractured English but English none the less, the value of the event takes root. This is not about sugar on the floor or icing on the cupboards – it’s about community.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Push back the darkness

It is December, the darkest month of the year. And the most celebrated. I wake in darkness and start the day. The afternoon is dark before it is over, and we settled into darkness long before supper. We light candles and put up twinkle lights and push back the darkness.

We celebrate the birth of the Savior with joy, but always in the corners of our hearts lingers sadness at those who are not with us this Christmas. Even in the delight of the coming of Light, we know that He came to a dark world, and we know why.

We know why because we live in it.

Yesterday the Dreamer and I stood in line at a funeral to speak to a young couple who lost their stillborn daughter last week. Entering the church I was transported back decades to a simple funeral at a barrio church in the Philippines. I can still clearly see the grieving mother, veiled, throwing dirt on the little coffin.

Yesterday’s mother is American born, but she is also Filipino, and the obligatory funeral black was worn by all her family and friends.

Beside us in line was a friend who lost his daughter just two years ago this month, a young mom snatched with sudden cancer. “It never gets easier, does it?” he said. “I will never be the same.” Then he looked at the Dreamer and said, “You know.” The same words the grandmother of the little one who didn’t live had said a few minutes before. “You know.”

Yes, we know. The Dreamer knows especially. On the way she handed me a book written by a mom who carried a child she knew would not live. Delivered and buried a child who survived just a few short hours. Poignant, powerful book. She readily admits that she does not have answers. She shares her struggle and grief. And she believes that God also shares our struggle and grief.

When Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, Mary and Martha were also weeping. But theirs was the wail of loss, while his was the weeping of pain for the hurt hearts of his dear friends. He knew in a few minutes he would call Lazarus out of the grave, but he also knew Lazarus would die again and there would again be pain and tears.

This week another little one, another grand of mine, will have doctors open her heart to repair what is not what it should be. I enter the week with deep fear because I know that what is considered routine is never routine when it is your own child. I enter the week with trust because, without speaking flippantly, I know that God understands our fear, her heart, and holds the hands of the doctors.

This is a dark world. Not just in December, though somehow at Christmas all the darkness comes rushing back to haunt us and whispers fear into the deep recesses of our hearts. Yet it was into this world that God sent Light, and the darkness did, and still does not comprehend it.

In this dark month, I choose to stand in the light.