:the one where Virginia, Santa & Jesus intersect:

she asked to watch a movie while the babies napped. we snuggled close under the brown blanket that can always be found thrown over the back of our couch. we chose Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus for viewing pleasure. i fully intended to sneak in a little shut-eye while she took in the show, but i couldn't. i was captivated.

instantly displeased with charlotte, the wealthy little girl that lacked love and projected this lacking on to the other children with cruelty. she is the one that crushed Virginia's spirit when she wrote a letter to the editor asking if there was a santa.

yet the man, homeless and begging in a dirty old santa suit, only asking for a penny, receiving none. he was the hero. he was the one that said the words that are still ringing in my mind. the words, i wrote down in blue ink on scrap paper with rain clouds drawn by my snuggle buddy.

"believing in santa isn't something you prove,
it's something you do"

i often struggle with god's involvement in our lives. like when a woman i know, carried her baby nearly to term only to lose it, deliver and never know it's warmth. or when i watched that documentary on sex slavery and saw innocence stolen from some as young as three years old. and that time our friend was in a car accident, i laid in the floor in a pool of my own tears begging god to spare his sixteen year old life and he didn't. these things trouble me.

then there are times where he is so present i am certain of his involvement. like when baby girl was in the NICU and our family and friends gathered round and never left us. nurses sang hymns, unknowingly lifting my weary spirit. or as people rescue babies left and right from a predestined life of sex slavery through adoption.i see him in a friend who carpools my child because the babies are sick. and that fourteen year old boy that was told he had lymphoma, flew to St. Judes childrens hospital to be told it was merely and infection, not cancer. that church family that swoons over baby girl and holds me tight as wounds heal. i see him in friendships and surprise parties planned. i see him in home studies and first sentences read. i see him in mothers uniting to grow up givers of self and lovers of all. i see him in babies announced with dancing and tears around the camptire.

i see him, in action and in deed.
i see him beyond absolutes and doxologies and ideologies.
i see him in the doing.

let us do.


*linking up with carissa for miscellany monday