Your Dying Spouse 557 - Christmas Chiaroscuro {FMF}

I wrote the sonnet below as a comment on Steve Laube's brilliant blog post on the real meaning of Christmas, that in Christ is found the answer to our greatest longing.

Did Mary know Isaiah’s gist

and did her pure heart quail

to see each soft and perfect wrist

rent by an iron nail?

Or was she somehow shielded

from what must one day be?

Were the terrors gently fielded

by God as she took a knee?

I’d like to think He gave her

both peace and wisdom too;

her Christmas Night made sweeter

by what she must pass through.

It’s bittersweet chiaroscuro, this story

where the shadow gives the light its glory.

I think there's a bit of this on the cancer journey, too. I see a situation that deteriorates every day, with nights that are frankly brutal and days that are worse.

And yet...the enveloping quality of the darkness makes the lights in my life all the brighter. The love of my wife and my friends and my dogs, the small physical victories of fabricating a piece of faceless steel into something useful, and the glory of the stars shimmering in a frosty sky...

I took these for granted before.

I see them now not because I likely won't be around to see them for long, but because their intrinsic beauty and wonder is clearer now.

No longer is the light of my own ego isn't competing with the light of God's blessings.

Here's my very favourite Christmas carol, Better Days by the Goo Goo Dolls. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.