I awoke early this Christmas Eve morning, for some reason unable to sleep past 5:00am. How unlike me! But after starting some chicken for our traditional Christmas Eve meal of enchiladas, then showering, then walking to the local coffee shop for my earned freebie, I sat down on the couch—still not quite six o’clock—to read my Mom’s last Advent devotional of the year, followed by Glimpses.

My treasured gift this year—received unwrapped in a Priority Mail® envelope, and so opened the day it was received—is a fifty-page collection of “memories, impressions, disappointments, joys” from her life. In these pages (I’m only halfway through), I am finding names I’ve heard over the years that go with faces I’ve never seen, or seen only on rare occasions in my childhood; I’ve read of the grandfather I never knew, who died ten years before I was born (I think I would have loved him); I got a peak as if through curtains at the pain and fear my mom endured when my brother was diagnosed with cancer.

And so, in the quiet of this dawning Christmas Eve day, I am enjoying the time with family, a family I have too little known. It is a special treat, for the frequent moves we made while I was growing up took us away from the people I am sitting with now. And although the voices are mute and the faces dim, there is plenty of space in our living room this morning.

Merry Christmas, Modzel and Paul (Pahl) families. I’m so glad you could all be here this morning.