December 13
Antalya, Turkey
I love finding the perfect gift. My sister is really good at it. So mostly I envy her finds. Mine are more sentimental and require work. And I don’t stop with the present. I don’t think that the gift is complete until the bow has been tied and the card attached. But I have found that life doesn’t really enjoy giving those kinds of presents. Life is rarely wrapped. And if it is, there certainly isn’t a bow or a card. And the lack of effort in presentation may leave one to wonder about the lack of care, even love really put into the gift. How do I even know it is for me? There is no card or sweet little bow that reminds life that I am the recipient. Instead, gifts of life come more in the form of lessons. And lessons generally can’t be tied up neatly.
I wish they could be. I think I fought all of last month for these lessons to be. And they just weren’t. One after the other, unwrapped. Untied. No card. I felt like I should have some sort of happy ending. Some sort of closure. Instead, I got more questions than answers. And it is those questions that leave the gift unwrapped.
The next couple of blogs will be about the gifts that were left unwrapped and untied from Israel. I only wrote one blog during my time in Israel because it was the only thing I could tie up. I knew He loved me and He showed it in a tangible way that day. Mostly everything else, was a mess. No bow or ribbon, to speak of.
But really, doesn’t the wrapping just go in the trash? Isn’t it discarded and thrown away? Maybe the wrapping isn’t that important anyway. Maybe is just hides what is really inside. The real gift. The one that can’t be wrapped or contained by a bow.
