12/24/2023
Can I tell you a story behind this guitar?
I struggle through our winters. Cold and early darkness clashes with my want to be outdoors. Summer nights when the sun doesn’t say goodnight until after 9pm allows for this single girl to take evening walks, hikes, and paddles. Winter nights that start before 5pm introduce boredom that can sneak into loneliness and mild depression.
A few factors, including limited finances, prevent “vitamin D travel” this year. So along with trying to embrace hygge and contentment in these gray months, I decided to look into an indoor hobby. After a couple months of thought and research, and despite this tight budget, I was going to head out in the afternoon to purchase a guitar.
As I was getting ready to leave my home, tragedy entered the house of my nextdoor neighbor. After a flurry of emergency vehicles and first responders lining our little town street, my friend was left with loss and grief and sorrow and heartbreak. Perspective changes as you continue to breathe in life as you hug a weeping friend while standing only feet away from someone else who has left this breath behind.
A guitar. A thing. So insignificant. All my earlier complaints and concerns: vain and futile.
It was in this mental fog that I hours later drove to the music store… fully sensitive to and realizing that “normal” life will continue for me while not for my neighbor.
Shortly after pulling the desired guitar from the wall, while still debating its financial impact, a salesman arrived into this quiet, sectioned-off area carrying a box. He set it in front of me and told me that Santa already purchased it for me, and I was good to go.
I couldn’t make sense of it. Had I won a contest I hadn’t registered for? Was I misunderstanding what he was telling me? But tears of surprise and wonder filled my eyes upon seeing my name across a paid-in-full receipt taped to the box.
So I left the store and its grinning owner and guitar specialists with a guitar in my hands and tears on my cheeks.
It took a little sleuthing on my drive home to learn that my brother and sister-in-law were behind the unexpected gift.
So, y’all, I know there’s some lessons and thoughts that come out of this day. I’m still processing. Much will never make sense on this side of eternity. But I do know that life can be really, really hard. I also know that people can be wonderfully amazing. I’ve seen both today.
I also know that we have a loving God who WANTS us. He could have controlled us through His power and might, yet He came to us humbly and lowly as a manger king. He is with us in the painful and the celebration. We choose if we accept His love and see His presence. And then we are invited to spread and fill this love in the dark cracks we created.
Thank you, Austin Carpenter and Kristi Carpenter for filling in some cracks for me today.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. - Romans 12:15
“Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’” -Matthew 1:23
Merry Christmas ☮️ ❤️
