12-10-24

Christmas is upon us! Tis the Season my friends…..and Jesus is the reason for the

season, let’s say that right up front…..but the gift giving and the gatherings, those

are a part of it as well……those are moments that too often overshadow the real

reason but I don’t believe that they offend God as long as we keep our real focus

on Him…..but as a kid Christmas was magical…..it was a time when you got gifts!

When you would wake up on a certain morning, with no school, and a lighted

Christmas tree and there would be things wrapped in paper and laid out around

the tree….it was epic!....I know for a fact that one year I heard reindeer on the

roof….I was sure of it…..one of my favorite things was putting together the wish

list….my Granny and Grandaddy, on my Dad’s side, lived a very simple life on a

steelworkers pension in old west Birmingham….every year Granny had the Sears

& Roebuck Christmas Wish Catalog…..it came out in early Fall and the Grandkids

were supposed to pore through it and pick 2-3 things that we would like and we

were supposed to circle it, put our names by it, and then dog ear the pages…..we

had no idea that Granny and Grandaddy didn’t have much money…..one of those

circled and marked wish list selections always showed up…..it was special……

……at our house these days Christmas is certainly a special day but it has almost

grown into a season…..we celebrate the birth of Jesus on that special day we call

Christmas, but our family is a bit spread out….our son and daughter-in-law and

our perfect Grandkids come into town from out of state the day after Christmas,

….. both of our kids are now married so we have to recognize that we are sharing

time with the in-laws as well…..like I said, it’s a whole season now……Charlene and

I wound up having a quiet Christmas Eve together last year and decided to open

presents from one another by ourselves so that we could focus on everyone else

later…..I was pretty excited about my shopping efforts…..at least I was until she

opened some of them…..when you’ve celebrated 37 Christmases together you get

to where you can read the signs…..the slightly raised eyebrows….the slower than

usual removal from the package….the effort not to wrinkle or muss the packaging

since it may just be going back in the box it came in…..

Now sometimes I nail it…..but all that those slim margins of shopping victory do is

just serve to give me a false sense of confidence for future shopping…..I’m

generally pretty good at it but when I get it wrong I get it really wrong…..so

somewhere along the way Charlene and I worked out a pretty good

system…..every year she not only sends me her “list”, but she also sends them to

me in an email complete with links to where they can be found, along with sizes

and colors…..it’s a huge boost and serves to almost guarantee that she’s going to

get something that she actually wants……I just click on the links, sort the items

into my cart, give some anonymous retailer my credit card information and the

perfect gifts magically appear for me to wrap and place under the tree like I’ve

really done something….. but of course there was that one year…..that year when

unbeknownst to me I did not notice that something was amiss until my daughter

and my wife began to unwrap identical presents….right down to the colors and

sizes……that’s odd, surely not, what could this be? What Christmas grinchery is

this? ……well, it turns out that I did not realize that Charlene had given me her list

on the same page on which she had compiled my daughters list……and me being

the awful man-shopper that I am, well, I just ordered everything on my daughters

……..list for my wife……Awesome!

So yes, now I verify, and even double verify, that the list does indeed appear to be

for the lovely Charlene before I click the “buy now” button…..but if you’ve

listened to me enough you might have figured out that I’m a bit on the

headstrong side…..I like to know that I’ve contributed in some meaningful way to

my wife’s Christmas joy….and that my friends is what we at the Williams house

lovingly call “freelancing”……yeah! That moment when I stray from the good list

and take a chance that some other thing that I have a notion about might be a

good one…..maybe this is the year where one of the things that I freelanced into

the gift pile is THE one…..that present of presents that brings the look to her face

that I’ve seen, oh I don’t know, maybe a couple of times during our 38 years of

marriage…..a mix of wonder, surprise and delight….a bit of awe that I could think

for myself and buy something that she didn’t even know she wanted……because I

am an awesome husband and a prolific shopper and I can freelance shop like

nobody’s business!.....last year was no different……Charlene’s sure-thing list was

complete and so began the freelancing…..I was delighted to find that the favorite

online store where she loves nearly everything they sell had a new way of

coaching husbands like me……after making one of the can’t-miss purchases I

noticed that at the bottom of the page it said something like, “because you

bought that one you’ll love this one” followed by actual suggestions of other

things that my wife of 37 years would be sure to love!......clothes, shoes,

accessories……it was a revelation…..I could freelance without really freelancing…..I

could safely purchase a few extra items and be the hero of Christmas as she sat

back in awe of the man she loved who could buy as if it were the sweet little

woman doing the shopping herself…….so….yeah, about that……the shoes were

kind of nice but they were the wrong size…..the pants almost got a snicker as she

looked at me like she had opened someone else’s gift…..and the blouse, well,

she’s a southern lady so she almost said “bless your heart” but she held

back…..But I will say this…..I can wrap presents like no other man I know! And yes,

I kept all the receipts…..I’ve learned a little something over the last 38

Christmases and keeping the receipts is top priority…….

Ok, maybe this will be a weird take…..but it occurred to me in the aftermath of my

freelancing what a blessing it is that I can be a bad shopper…..I know, it sounds

weird right….but its true ……it is an absolute blessing to know that I live in a

nation where the choices that are out there for gift giving are so prolific, so

abundant, that there are probably more chances to get it wrong than there are to

get it right……Think about that……we live in a place where the average Wal-Mart

carries more daily stock than whole sections of some countries……you can go to

one place and buy everything from Apples, baked goods and cowboy hats to

xylophones, yogurt and Zinfandel wine in a box…..it’s true…..you spend one day in

some foreign countries and you quickly come to know that America is a land

flowing with milk and honey…..so much so that we often take it for granted…..so

yes, there is an abundance of choices when it comes to gift giving……

But then there’s the personal side……Charlene and I are not rich…..but I am aware

that we are blessed indeed…..so much so that I can be a bad shopper…..last year

after she opened my freelanced gifts…..as I sulked a bit because I thought sure

that I had gotten it right…..that the fact that I don’t feel compressed and weighed

down is why I could be a bad shopper…..when we were newlyweds I didn’t have

the luxury of being a bad shopper…..we were poor as church mice and every dime

counted…..you didn’t take a chance on getting it wrong…..you paid careful

attention to sizes, and you called the mother-in-law to ask for advice, and you

thought twice before any freelancing…..for so many of our married Christmases

we were not in a position for Phil to do anything but a perfect job at gift giving,

where we worked on a strict budget, putting aside money in envelopes to make

sure we didn’t overspend, focusing on the kids first and making sure they had no

clue that times were tight……was I just a better steward then? Maybe…..but I also

recognize that the stewardship of the past has yielded the blessing of grown kids

who never went without, and a table that always had food on it, and a

gratefulness now that is far deeper, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world…….

So yes, I’m not always a great shopper…….in reflection, I’ll work to tighten that up

a bit…..but somehow or other I also take that to mean that I am very very

blessed…… sometimes bad shopping is a sign of big blessing……

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way