Well all, I know it is past Christmas, but I wanted to share something that I wrote for Christmas this year. Some of you have already read this, but others of you haven’t. It’s long..but in my opinion it is well worth the read.
Greetings from the Pacific Northwest.
Brooke and I are dying to know how you all are doing. And at the same time, I dislike the tedious process of “catching up” and the recounting of time gone by into an itinerary of events. The Christmas letter genre helps, I suppose, but there is usually such a Thomas Kincaid-ian romantic glow to the way stories are told in late December that it’s not always easy to see what is really going on. Sure, it’s fun to share about how the good things have progressed throughout the year. But it’s hard to tell about the dreams that were shattered or the hopes that were lost. We all tell half-stories at best, it seems. We all struggle with the complexity of life and find it hard to hold onto all that makes us who we are. Our minds and hearts forget scenes, forget narrative, and yet, for some reason, we recall the song that was playing when we got our first kiss, or where we sat in second grade, or how many quarts are in a gallon. We search in vain to express a year in words as we all gather around our computers in mid to late December. When all is said and done, when the stamps are stuck and envelopes are licked we breathe a sigh of relief and say silently, “phew, another year in the books.” Three to five days later the mailman delivers the letters and the envelopes are un-licked, the paper is unfolded, and the words are read. Smiles, tears, and laughter quickly invade us as the mystery of the letter is made known. We all respond differently, don’t we? There are always those letters that we dread getting, and there are always those letters that we urgently rip open only to read each word slower than the previous. This is the beauty of the written letter, is it not? This is why we, year after year, continue the tradition – for there is beauty in connection, and beauty in relationship. Without further adieu, I am proud to announce the first official Brooke and Joel VandenBrink Christmas card. Read on, but read slowly, let the stories come to life as they leap from the page, and let the words stir your heart. If you aren’t already you may want to sit, for in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Treebeard character “You must understand young hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.”
It was the dawn of a new year…
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