It's not about me.

Every year for the past dozen years or so, we've had a sort of tradition in my family that you might as well call The Last Present tradition. It really started one year when my step mom got my dad a Learn to Paint kit complete with canvas and oil paint. The following Christmas as we just finished opening all of our presents, my dad said that he had one last present for my step mom to open. She opened the present and started to laugh. My dad had done his own interpretation of a beloved family icon - a paint by numbers Horse's Head that he'd painted as a kid in summer camp. The family joke had been going on for years that whenever my step mom took a painting down for cleaning or dusting or something, she would come back and find the space filled with this (hideous) paint by number's horse's head. Anyway, long story short, my dad had achieved the perfect mix of surprise and delight.

The following year he enlisted my aid in suprising her with a hand made doll house. The year after that it was my sister's turn to "surprise" everyone with the news of her engagement. And so on and so forth... Every year for years now, we've had that surprise moment at the end of Christmas.

This year I wanted to surprise everyone with the news that I had finally finished my novel. Not a great surprise, mind you, but a surprise nonetheless. I've been keeping the fact of my impending completion underwraps for months while I struggled through one of the most brutal scheduling periods of my life. I purposefully made it more difficult by adding the completion of the novel as a goal on top of everything else. My thought was to surprise everyone and feel their delight at the completion of this task. But as I approached the actual completion, I began to feel awkward about doing the surprise thing.

On the one hand, I knew it wasn't that big a deal. I've completed five different drafts of this thing - that it was the final one was noteworthy, but sort of like celebrating the completion of ROCKY after viewing Rocky VI. So I thought that making a big deal out of it would only serve to pump up my ego. Yes, it was a hard slog. Yes, I'm happy to be done with it (and good riddance ;) But I don't know that it was necessarily newsworthy, much less surprise worthy.

On the other hand, I had this notion in the back of my mind that Christmas shouldn't be about the biggest or the best gift. Its a notion that's been building in my mind for some time now. Christmas should be about Jesus and family and celebrating the idea that God cares for us. I actually began to look forward to a nice low key Christmas where I could put the enjoyment of others ahead of my own enjoyment.

The greatest gift I received this Christmas season was the completion of the book, not because of impending riches and untold wealth, but because I realized that there is a time to write about life and a time to absorb life. And for the first time in a long time, I am ready to absorb life. God has given me this wonderful gift and it has truly colored my new vision in ways that you can not imagine.

There's a line in the book that describes the main character as having a "psychic burr" that drives him to do the things that he does. I finally excersised my own psychic burr. And now I'm ready to simply enjoy the wonderful world that God gave me free of charge.