God created them for watching. They stand alert, unmoving, waiting. Their eyes look straight into mine. Direct. Searching. Their ears, high and open, tilting, rotating toward the slightest sound. Their noses are dark and round, twice the size of their almond eyes, hiding their mouths underneath.

They are interrupting my sunrise watch, these deer who silently arrive each morning, quietly waiting to see if I am friend or foe. This morning there are fourteen of them; bucks with their awkward antlers, does who lag slightly behind, and the fawns who stay mostly hidden in the taller grasses.

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Friday morning, I awoke in Tucson. In the 1970s themed hotel where we were staying, I had played Linda Ronstadt's album Hasten Down the Wind on the record player and sang along to,

“By the rivers of Babylon

Where we sat down

And there we wept

When we remembered Zion

For the wicked carry us away

Captivity require from us a song

How can we sing King Alpha's song in a strange land?

So let the words of our mouth

And the meditations of our hearts

Be acceptable in thy sight

Over I”

Or at least that is the way I remembered the lyrics…

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The morning after night number two in the desert. The sun shines hot against my face and my shoulder and the side of my leg. The dog snaps at flies that buzz her. The prairie grasses balance glowing feather tops shimmering in the smallest breeze. Purple mountains rim the horizon line. The blue of the sky is the deepest, most intense color I have ever seen in the vast heavens over my head. It is morning.

It is the night that makes me nervous. I want to sit under the darkening canopy as the moon becomes visible in the southern sky and the first stars appear. It will be a while before the sky is blue-black enough to play backdrop for the starry host. I have seen the thousands of lights spread across the heavens. But by then the cold has descended and I don't tarry – seeking instead the warmth of my blanket.

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She was still there, the woman and her dog in the rain. I had seen her an hour before as we turned right off the frontage road on our way to the family-owned restaurant here in Amarillo. The rain clouds had hovered across the skyline as we drove into town, blue and heavy with misty sheets of rainfall in the distance. We had loaded our belongings into the Quonset barn with polished concrete floors, Pottery Barn furnishings, and the homemade brownies welcoming us under their glass dome and then climbed back into the car in search of dinner as the rain started. It was our fourth city in seven days. We had explored Memphis and Eureka Springs and Oklahoma City on this journey to see some of America.

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This summer I had the privilege of watching a pair of nuthatches sing their calls back and forth to each other, taking turns to fly in and then out again of the blue and green woven basket that held sand buckets and shovels and their babies. At first, they were cautious and noticeably hesitant for I had invaded their space.

Weeks before, I had started lifting out of the basket the big yellow dump truck when I realized there was a pine needle-colored nest with bird eggs somewhere halfway down. Oh no. I backed away; sure that I had destroyed some momma's happy home. Jeff told me a couple of days later he had seen a nuthatch fly into my writing shed. Open-air, tin-roofed, rafters high, it overlooks the sandbox where Barrett and Mikah build sandcastles and dig for treasure. The perfect place to raise a bird family. I kept my fingers crossed.

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Yesterday I had a twenty-minute sweet and exciting conversation with a woman who could be a friend one day. She doesn’t fit into my usual circle of women who look like me. When I first saw her a week ago, I selfishly prayed, “Lord, no, no, no… I don’t want to go there!”

You see, during this year of fear and pestilence, God has had me treading water in mighty waves of silence. I thought he had me on a sure path in one direction, but He has been preparing my mind and my heart to swim in unfamiliar waters to a different shore.

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We have some rules in place in our family; always slip folding money into the red pot of the bell-ringers at Christmas, always buy cookies from the Girl Scouts who show up at your door, and whenever possible, stop to buy lemonade at neighborhood children’s stands. This week, as Maybelle and I took a morning walk, there were three siblings with a table set up, open for business. “Oh no,” I thought as I approached, “I don’t have a single dollar on me!”

"What are y'all selling?" I asked, thinking I could return with cash. The middle child, a girl, held up a new blue kitchen sponge. "We have a sponge for 3 dollars." I decided I didn't need a sponge at the moment. The youngest volunteered, "We have lemonade and tea. Do you want a sample?" as he held up a large blue Solo cup. By now I have noticed the table; instead of the rather traditional pitcher of lemonade or small disposable dixie cups, these entrepreneurs, in addition to the aforementioned sponge, have small red bottles lined up in rows on their folding table.

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It all started with Jeff’s Aunt Joyce wanting us to look for a grave.

She is the remaining voice on that older generation – the only one who has not passed on – the youngest sister of Jeff's mother. Our family historian. I think every family must have one. In my daddy's family, it was Mary Jane Tanner Jenkins, his older sister, and then the keeper of all Tanner history became my cousin Perry.

Anyway, Joyce wanted us to take a little trip down the road to Oakland Cemetery to find the grave of a distant relative, Benjamin Thrower, father of Choice Thrower, who sadly died in the West Point Battle a week after the war had already been declared over. Those little details give you a pretty good idea of a conversation with sweet Aunt Joyce.

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“Is that my playground?” my sweet 3-year-old grandson asks, pointing to the image of an abandoned sliding board on my phone. I am keeping him distracted as we wait for the next round of examinations and intrusive scopes during our two-hour doctor visit. “Oh no, my dear boy, that most certainly is not your playground.” Perhaps I am reading too much Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The sliding board he is looking at is steep and high and long; a flat plane of metal with an inch or two of metal border between the rider and the ground. The steps that climb to the top are even steeper and even more fraught with the thrill of danger. I am reminded of my 4-year-old self, tumbling off the top of a much less dangerous slide, coming away with many tears and a broken arm to show for it.

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Sometimes there is a recurring prayer that comes and nestles deep into my brain and snuggles firmly into my heart and soul. A prayer etched with the words of God. This past summer there were prayer instructions from God’s Word that showed up each morning, no matter where I turned in my English Standard Version. Mainly, God kept me in the battle songs of Psalms, where light fights darkness. Here we are in January and as I open His Word today, this same thought is here in Isaiah:

And I will lead the blind

in a way that they do not know,

in paths that they have not known

I will guide them.

I will turn the darkness before them into light,

the rough places into level ground.

These are the things I do,

and I do not forsake them. Isaiah 42:16

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Two of our gospel writers tell of the birth of Jesus. Matthew, our tax collector, tells the story from Joseph’s point of view in a “just the facts, ma'am" style that answers the Jewish concerns. Right up front, he must address this whole problem of Mary turning up pregnant before her wedding day. Apparently, it was starting to become public knowledge. Not a good thing. And Joseph has no doubt that the child is certainly not his.

Joseph is faithful to the Law of Moses, which gives him the right to have Mary stoned to death for her immorality and her betrayal. A woman – a young girl – ‘pledged to be married’ wasn’t what we modern folk think of as ‘engaged’. In ancient Israel in the eyes of the law and the community, she was for all intents and purposes already ‘married’ to Joseph. So this whole problem of Mary being pregnant was something he couldn’t ignore.

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We know this story so well, we don’t even hear it anymore. Slow down. Take Mary out of royal robes and remove the crown from her head and the perfection from her reputation. It is about to be smashed to the ground and into the mud anyway.

Mary is just a young girl. She is not quite – almost, but not quite, old enough to be married. Or she already would be. She is still living in her father's house. She is 'pledged to be married' to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. She is in agreement with this. But it hasn't happened yet. When it does happen, the whole village will know about it. It will be a big celebration with vows and singing and dancing and feasting and a set-aside time of honeymoon and seclusion between her and her new husband. But all of that is in the future. It has not happened yet.

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When Dante wrote his terrifying poem The Divine Comedy in 1320, he placed an inscription over the gates leading into hell, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." The soundtrack playing in the background was the terrifying screams of those who were condemned in this never-ending burning inferno.

We modern folk have abandoned not hope, but the whole idea of hell or a pathway to destruction. I am betting you that most people, if they think about what comes after this life on earth, believe all dogs go to heaven. Wherever that is. Whatever that is. Or worse, they believe there is nothing other than this life here on planet earth.

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The tinsel and lights are appearing on lawns and in windows in my dark world. Trees are tied hostage on car rooftops, soon to be released in some hopeful home. Songs of good cheer sprinkle the airwaves. Wasn’t it March just last week? Is it December already? In this season of fear and separation will we celebrate the birth of a God-Man some of us call the Christ, the Messiah? Will we really think of the time God came to town as Immanuel, ‘God with Us’?

Come with me for just a moment to the words of a man named John. He wrote the story of a man named Jesus, but he didn't start with a star-filled night or a young girl birthing her son under the open skies of Bethlehem. Instead, he mimicked the words of Genesis; "In the beginning…" and spoke his name as something as holy as God's own Word with a capital W. His words bounce with joy from life to light filling darkness…

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When my nephew Joey was three or four, we were traveling to the beach for the week with my parents. He and I sat in the back seat together and he leaned in close to me. “Do you smell that?” he asked me. When I replied no, he leaned in closer, putting his little nose close to mine – almost touching. He sniffed the air, asking again, “That – do you smell that?” It tickled me that he thought if my nose was close to his nose, I would be able to smell what he was smelling.

That memory is closely connected to another memory that took place many years later. It was late. Sunday night. The room was dark. My sister Kathy had been waiting for death to come to rescue her from this life of suffering. Cancer was consuming her from the inside and her hope and patience were long gone. She was tied to her hospice bed with tubes delivering release from the constant pain. I was on the reclining chair pulled up as close as possible to her bed. If only I could I would have climbed into her bed with her and placed my own eyes next to her deep brown ones. I was holding onto the same conviction that four-year-old Joey had believed – if I could get close enough, I would be able to see what she was seeing through her eyes.

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We have a worktable at the back of our family room. It is cleaned off only a couple of times a year, layered with a tablecloth and candles and china when we have family over for dinner that numbers beyond 12. Otherwise, that table is always filled with tools and the remnants or beginnings of projects.

Pictures are framed, guitars are rewired, cushions are recovered, presents are wrapped, props for film are created. There are toolboxes and crates and drawers filled with paint and glue, hammers and screwdrivers, and stapleguns. A sewing machine is close by on a shelf. This is part of our everyday life; repairing what is broken; taking what was old or discarded and making it new.

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You just don’t know how quickly the time passes. They tell you, those older folks – but when you are in it, the days of diapers and complete dependency seem like they will last forever. I remember feeling like I was drowning in responsibility and exhaustion. I remember daydreaming of what two weeks of nothing to do could possibly feel like. Heaven, I imagined.

I loved my two children to death, but wow… juggling being the best mother ever and carrying a full load of high expectations at work and remodeling our house while living in it and having absolutely no family living anywhere nearby was – a lot.

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Do not think the journey will be easy. It will not. I wish someone would have told me before I started out on this path. Oh, wait a minute – they did. God’s word is filled with forewarning. Enter at your own risk. Do not take up the plow and turn to look back. Take up your cross and follow me. Those were the passages I didn’t like so it was pretty easy to ignore them, to skip over them and race ahead to the happier stuff.

A few weeks ago when I was teaching the family stories of Genesis, a woman asked about the story of God instructing Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. She shared that her father couldn’t get past this horrible story; he couldn’t trust a God who would ask such a thing. I agreed and tried to explain how God was teaching Abraham and a world to come of the great sacrifice He would make when His own son would be sacrificed on the cross for us. I knew my answer brought no relief from the horror of the request.

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