One year I was getting the Christmas decorations out, and at the bottom of one box I found a gift bag. I could feel from the weight that there was something in it.
I looked inside, and realized it was the gift my Aunt Mary had given me the previous Christmas. A big red holiday candle. I then remembered that I’d left it in its gift bag with her card so I could use the candle the next holiday season.
Finding the gift stirred up a lot of emotion. Mary had passed away that Fall. Suddenly. It had hit me really hard.
So I decided to put the gift under the tree to remember her by, and pretend she just dropped by to give it to me. Throughout that Christmas season, every time I looked at the tree, I smiled when I saw the gift.
But there was a dark cloud hanging over Christmas that year. Since Mary’s death, mortality had been weighing on my mind. I hadn’t been raised in the family church (much to Mary’s dismay), so I grew up feeling that I was “spiritual,” but I was not religious. I didn’t believe in a higher power. But I wanted to, desperately. I considered, “Well, what would it hurt to just decide to believe, in spite of myself? It isn’t logical to believe, but it would be such a comfort.” But I couldn’t make it stick.
That Christmas morning, I got up early and sat for a while by the tree to have some quiet time. There were piles of gifts strewn around, but I’d carefully kept Mary’s gift center stage. Suddenly, my eyes were drawn to the design of her gift bag. I’d never noticed that woven into the pattern was one big word:
BELIEVE.
