Silver Packages

I read a story to my children every holiday season about a Christmas train that passes through a small, poor Appalachian town with a tall, rich gentleman tossing silver packages to clamoring children. The train comes just the day before Christmas Eve and the packages those children catch are often the only gifts there are to open Christmas morning. The story follows one young boy who hopes and dreams each year that he will tear the silver paper and find a doctor’s kit. It is all he wants. It is a good and noble desire. But each year he opens the wrapping to find a small toy and thick socks or warm mittens after months of suffering cold feet or chapped hands. He is thankful, but oh, how he longs for that doctor’s kit. The man never seems to understand, never does toss a package with the gift the boy most wants.

As I read the story to my brood this year I struggled through tears as I heard a quiet voice through the pages tell my heart that I too am receiving packages I do not want. This is the third Christmas my only desire in the world was left unfulfilled. This is the third time the Christmas tree was home only to gifts I was frankly quite uninterested in. The packages with my name on them were a child who identifies as transgender, another containing immense grief, yet another filled with shattered dreams. These were not on my Christmas list. My list contains good things, even honorable ones. I want what any parent would want. But, for reasons I may never understand, these gifts were not for me. Not this year. I was given things that will make me more of who I am meant to be. I was given, not what I want, but what I need to become what I was made for. I choose to trust the man who knows more and sees more and has only my best interest at heart. I may disagree strongly from my view next to the train track and I will keep asking wholeheartedly for what I want, but I pray I will also accept the packages I’ve been given and trust that they are in fact, gifts.