Hold

 This season… Christmas, life, all the things really, has caught me saying one phrase… “hold it” or “hold still” or “hold on.”


(I wrote a portion of this little piece while I was on hold…)


“Hold still, Calla, or the dentist can’t clean your teeth.”

“Hold your own backpack, Emmy.”

“Hold it! Hold that smile for the picture in your concert outfits! Hold it for three more seconds!”

“Hold on a minute!! We absolutely can’t get the paint out yet! *as the macaroni boils over and my mom is calling me - probably about coupons for things I don’t buy - and a baby screams from the other room with her fingers pinched in a drawer she just figured out how to open*


Hold.


A funny word that keeps reoccurring in my life. A recurrent theme- a motif - I would have told you and taught you in a sophomore English class if you had met me 9 or so years ago. 


Hold.


As goes with every Christmas (and most of my days all year long really), I spend much of my days thinking of Mary. The older I get the more I cling to her. And the older I get, the more the story of her saying yes to the Lord becomes richer and more meaningful and more unbelievable (in the best way). 



Mary was the first - I’m guessing - to hold our Lord and Savior as a little innocent baby. And Mary - in many inferences and depictions - held Jesus’ body after He was taken from the cross. I imagine all the times that she held Jesus flashed before her eyes as she held Him weeping. 



Holding Him in a manger alongside sheep with the dark night outside. Holding Him so close, so tight. I imagine the times she held Him as a toddler - after a tumble or to hold Him and bring him in close to praise Him for a job well done as a teenager. The delight to see Him home after a long journey as a young man. The embrace of Jesus had to be utterly amazing. For your son and savior to hold you…




Hold.


Hold those close to you this holiday season. Physically if you are able to. If not, then certainly hold them in your heart. And keep them there. 


I’m going to hold on to these days. 

Hold little hands, hold babies as they fall asleep, hold my arms around my parents’ neck a little longer when I say thanks after we open gifts we don’t need or deserve, hold my husband’s hand in the van… even on the short trips. Because, after all, this whole thing we call life is indeed a short trip.



Hold on to hope.

Hold on to love.

Hold on to goodness.


And, above all, find a little time to reflect that just as you hold Jesus in your heart, He holds you all of your days. 


Hold on. Christ, born to save you and me, is coming. Just hold on.



Merry Christmas,

Samantha 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Good Bad Things

Image
  60 years ago today, on August 1, 1964, the course of history changed. Evans Dunlap, one of the two brothers who owned, managed, and worked the Dunlap & Co empire, was killed alongside his wife in a car accident. They were headed for Michigan when a drunk driver slammed into their vehicle. Evans and Isabel, both in their 40s, were killed instantly and left behind four children ages 12 to 20. And everything that could have been, was no more. Dunlap & Co was a business that America needed, and a business that has never since come about. Imagine Sears - where you could order a two story 1,900 square foot home. But add the layer of you could customize many more aspects and a crew would come and build it. And build it well and build it fast. And imagine it’s the 1950s. That was the vision and path Dunlap & Co was on. Land leveling and clearing, foundations, lumber, finish work, contractors, to tacking the letters on the mailbox… They. Did. It. All. But then… in a blink of a...
Read more

But the greatest is…

Image
 ​As I begin to mentally and physically wrap up my year at Dunlaps, I like to take time to reflect, as I always do.  And you’d think I’d be all thoughts and feels about it regarding our 150th year.  And I am. But I’m… not. It's been a year, my friends. A long, not easy, muddled, exhausting year. Stiffed money, scammed majorly, mistreated at times by people who refuse to take ownership of their own actions. It is crazy easy for me to find the hard this year.  I always do this to myself. It’s probably why I continue to grow more and more pessimistic as time marches on, which I hate. I always play a situation up. I have high expectations and a vision for something and it falls not just some short, but so much short of what I thought it would be that I’m thoroughly disappointed.   I've been struggling a lot with understanding systems and schools of thought.  Questioning every move I make. Trying to see why there would be an option 2 and 3 and 4 in th...
Read more

A Thousand Days...

Image
Today, March 28th, 2023, we celebrate our one thousandth day at Dunlaps.  What a journey it has been... We have learned so much about our community, the lumber market, products of all types - from tapcons to strike plates to stain to underlayment and everything in between. We've learned about what it means to maintain a business and what it takes to grow a business. And how nearly impossible those tasks can be. I've learned about a global pandemic can do to shipping and the price of raw materials. Sadly, I've learned that big businesses have found ways to create shortages to overinflate prices and hurt little guys and small town America. But on the other side, I've learned how important our dinky hardware store can be and how needed we are.  There have been so many memories and moments jammed into those thousand days. I think about some of our first moments -- they were such a blur and so scary. I think about how tight money has been at times and sing that one Oak Ridge...
Read more