Worth a Second Look

I’m from Illinois, I told someone recently.

The blank stare in response told the usual story.

“Is that over near Chicago?” my listener asked, and then shrugged and changed the subject.

My former home is one of what coast-dwellers call the flyover states, considered too dull to be worth a glance down en route from exciting place to exciting place.

Central Illinois, where I did much of my growing up, is eternal roads past farm after farm. No lakes for summer play, not much snow to speak of to make winter fun.

At a glance, there’s not much special about the midwest heartland.

You have to look closer to see what’s really there.

Green, deeper and prettier than any you can imagine. A sea of September-soybean green eases the heart like no medicine ever could.

You could have a small child stand on your shoulders and they still might not be able to see up over majestic corn stalk tops.

After harvest comes horizon, 360 degrees of it. The land gives birth to the sun each morning and lays it to bed each night, colors and clouds glowing glorious as you gaze, breathless.

Prairie dogs pop up like whack-a-moles on the roadside, and the state fair smells of horses and funnel cakes on your way to the life-sized butter cow.

Cicadas scream on a hot summer night as you lie in bed, sheets flung aside in the heat, the once-cool washcloth for patting your face and neck now dry and warm against your hand.

Muted by deep distance, a thunderstorm in miniature rips the skies miles away as you lean on the front porch railing, heart fluttering, feeling its electric nearness through the dark sky.

The people are quiet, self-effacing, hands calloused and often missing fingers that got stuck in the combine. The boys wear ball caps and go off to college and come back to take over their dad’s farm. The girls are strong and smart and look like their mothers.

Dull? Lifeless? Flyover?

Ain’t hardly. 

My pretty homeland is so much more than what you see on the surface.

The Land of Lincoln, Illinois licenses plates say.

The man whose profile was enlarged and carved onto a mountain, miniaturized and stamped onto a penny — the president who guided the country through its greatest divide and waged war against slavery, whose 110th birthday will be celebrated by the country without much of a fuss this Wednesday — was a Midwest farm boy.

Growing up in Illinois, you learn about Lincoln. On class field trips you visit New Salem, a recreation of the village where “Honest Abe” ran the general store and delivered mail and ran after customers who had forgotten their change.

You learn about the lanky young man with an axe who split logs on his dad’s farm in rolled-up shirtsleeves and suspenders, the merry storyteller who charmed everyone he knew with his dry wit and who read everything he could get his hands on.

Just an ordinary, nothing-special guy.

Not much of a leader, that Abraham Lincoln.

People, and places, can be so much more than they seem at first glance.

***

The young man they all knew, the polite teenager who helped out with His dad’s carpenter business and went out fishing with His friends, the one who, when he turned 30, started acting strange and talking about fishing for men — He didn’t look like much, probably.

He was plenty, though, that pleasant young man. Plenty much to free slaves and heal divisions, enough to lead the biggest revolution in the history of the world against the powers of death and the devil.

Not much to look at, in a robe and sandals … and yet, He looked at me — this dull, flyover, can’t-get-it-right mess of a person whose reproachful glance I see in the mirror each morning — and saw something worth living for.

Someone worth dying for.

“The Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart,” God told the prophet Samuel. 

Not as I see myself does my Maker see me. Past the layers of pride and self-aggrandizing, past the deeper layers of inward-turned reproach and failure, He looks closer and sees what’s really there — His child. His person, worth a second glance purely because He loves her.

I shan’t ever be a leader of the country, can’t save the world with lightning at my fingertips. At a glance, there’s not much special about me.

But, in my Father’s eyes, I’m more than nothing. I’m His, and I’m loved.

And that’s enough.

Tree Lights

Yes, yes, I know … it’s January.

But, the thing is, I’m not quite done with Christmas.

At our house, holidays are haphazard. Following the flow of a busy month, the Christmas birthday celebration is a little different each year, without much room for tradition.

The one piece of the day to which we cling, though, is our gift opening.

No mad scramble in our home, shredded wrapping paper flying every which-of-a-way as young and old descend on their presents at once in a feeding frenzy.

No, sir. Not for us. 

In our house, the opening of gifts takes hours.

Extended family is far away, so it’s just the five of us. Fortified with snacks and swaddled in comfy blankets and warm socks, we open one gift at a time, chatting and telling stories and ribbing each other and getting up for cheese and crackers before moving on to the next gift, in no hurry and enjoying every minute of the so-rare, slow-moving family time.

Somewhere in the middle — and I won’t say we take bets on when it will happen, but I won’t say we don’t — there’s a laid-back pause while my husband takes his annual gift-opening nap.

No worries, we’re in no hurry.

This year, as we were wrapping up the unwrapping session, I heaved a contented sigh, shook my legs out, and got up to bag up the wads of red and white paper that had been chucked across the room into a pile near my chair.

Figuring my people would be getting restless and ready to roam, I asked when they wanted to regather for supper.

They didn’t stir. The three offspring — two teens and a barely-20-something — gazed at me, at each other, and shrugged.

They didn’t want to leave.

They’d do a puzzle, they decided. In short order, the coffee table was cleared and puzzle pieces were being sorted, gentle conversation centering around where to pile the edge pieces and if anyone had found a corner, yet.

My husband, feet propped on a footstool, examined a freshly-opened gift, in no hurry to be up and doing.

Supper could wait. The rest of the day could wait. I sunk back into a chair, grabbed a blanket, and soaked in the peace of the moment.

I didn’t want to leave, either.

In the bustle of a busy season, we hadn’t gotten around to bringing home a tree until only a few days before Christmas. The poor thing never got much in the way of decoration. Three strands of lights and one ornament was as far as we got, a lone purple dinosaur the only trinket to swing from its boughs.

All through the busy, treeless days of November and December, I yearned for that first, delicious moment of quiet, all the house dark, curled on the couch in a room lit only by the lights of the tree.

When the tree lights are on and the sun is turned off, there is only warm glow. Only peace, gentleness. The rest of the room, the house, the world, fades into sepia-tone, and you’re in a place that’s safe, where all is good, where there is nothing but the quiet, comforting light.

In the glow of tree lights, you can’t see the messes you know you should clean up. You can’t see the postal carrier’s newest shipment of bills on the table, or the dishes in the sink.

You can’t see — when your eyes are dazzled by those little lights amid the beguiling green spaces — the worry, the angst, the hovering cloud of failure and bog of disappointment that are out there, just outside the windowpane.

In the lights of the Christmas tree, there is only Christmas. Only peace on earth and a baby’s cry and people being nice to each other. Only the click of puzzle pieces and a warm blanket and contentedness.

I don’t want to leave.

Dearest Jesus, meek and mild, I don’t want to step away from Your manger. Out there, it’s wild, and there are wolves. I want to cling to the season of giving, where people are kind and not cruel, where lights are dim and I can’t see all that needs fixing, all the hurts I ought to help heal.

Ah, but that baby grew. 

He stepped into the darkness and brought it light, threw the aching hearts of the world onto His back and hung from a tree so even the most wretched, writhing under the weight of failure and sorrow, can close their eyes and lay their head on His shoulder and breathe quiet breaths, forgiven and loved, despite the darkness.

Christmas has to stay in December, and I must move on, lights on, eyes open, off the couch and back into the world. There are battles to be fought, wrongs to be righted, messes to clean. Joy to give to a world that needs it — desperately.

Next December, though, I’ll be back, curled in the light of a tree, letting the rest of the world fade away, the only sound the peaceful, I’ll-never-leave-you breathing of a baby in a manger.