my Christmas message

Katie and I are lighting the advent wreath and I am speaking to the church on the topic of "Perfect Moments," and this is roughly what I plan to say, a mental rehearsal, so to speak.

There is this simple little sentence in the middle of the chapter of Luke that we just read: "And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart." It is rather surprising to me, because this could not have been an easy day for Mary. She is nine months pregnant, which isn't especially comfortable, and been riding a donkey all day, which isn't comfortable under the best of circumstances. She is in a town that likely as not she had never seen before, with none of the women in her family who would normally help with the delivery of a baby. And to top it off, she doesn't even get a bed but a smelly barn. I have always accepted the Catholic tradition that Jesus didn't have any brothers or sisters, not from any theological perspective but just from common sense: having been through a day like this, what woman would ever let a man touch her again? And yet, in the middle of this very trying day, she has this perfect moment, and she kept it and reflected on it in her heart.

I have an embroidery that hangs in our living room that Becky made for our wedding. It says, "Today we dedicate that we will walk together, live together, listen, learn together, and that our uppermost thought will be to be together." I think it is natural after the death of someone close to us, that we question every decision we ever made, and that embroidery has been a challenge to me in the time since Becky died. I have questioned all of the little decision - the times I was out playing cards or tennis with the guys. But I have also questioned how together we were as she battled cancer. We could not be together under the surgeon's knife; I did not have the bags of chemo pumped into my arms; I could not share the horrific fear that she would not get to see her little girl grow up the way she wanted.

And yet it is in the middle of the battle against cancer that came the perfect moment that sustains me even now. It was in February 2004, the day after she received what ended up being her last chemo treatment. She went in to teach her classes that morning, and I brought her lunch. The day after chemo was always the worst, and the only thing she could keep down on those days was a grilled chicken sandwich from Wendy's, no honey mustard. And as I brought her lunch, she looked weaker than she ever had or ever would. Her shoulders were slumped, and her eyes were glazed, and she looked so frail and tired. I closed the door behind me because I didn't want her students or fellow professors to see how bad she looked.

About halfway through our lunch, there was a knock at the door. I went to get it, and it was one of her students with questions about her homework. And as I closed the door again and turned, a whole new woman was sitting behind Becky's desk. Her shoulders were erect again and her eyes bright, and she smiled and spent ten or fifteen minutes answering her questions, teaching, doing exactly what she loved to do. Eventually the student left, and I closed the door, and turned around to see the weak version had returned.

You see, Becky always had an extra reserve of strength, and she used it for her students, and especially for Katie, but my perfect moment is that she never had to use it with me. We were never separated by choice but only ever by circumstance. That is true even now. That moment has allowed me to put aside all of those questions and helped me to understand that I was not just the husband she had, I was the husband she needed and the husband she wanted and the husband she loved. I have eleven years of memories with Becky, the best and the worst memories of my life and everything in between - that is what marriage is - but the one that I relfect on in my heart more than any other is this one, and it has sustained me through the deepest places of my grief.