Thanksgiving happened. This influx of December is lurking a week away. Holidays are hard for me and likely for you on many levels. Myself and people I love have lost friends and family to illness and disease, to accidents, to addictions, to suicide. We've grieved and lost in ways unrelated to our physical health: family estrangement, divorce, job insecurity, criticism where encouragement was needed, punishment where grace was needed, arm length where warm embrace was warranted. So much that was preventable, some that was fluke, and a few things that frankly were predictable, but undesirable.

Holidays are just mixed. This year in autumn, and continuing on through the end of the year, I decided I would send a "hug in a box" package once a month to different people I knew who have been working and striving hard to love, but are hurting and aching and feeling loss or criticism intimately. This box doesn't consist of much: some local chocolate, comfy socks, local tea, hot chocolate, specialized popcorn, and a handmade encouragement card from my etsy shop.

You see, I can't do much. I feel small and insignificant. My world is small. Not because I am unaware of travesty at large. Not because I am introverted and anxiety ridden. Not because I prefer to live in a bubble of seclusion, untarnished from the cold reality of life. And not because I don't care about mass exploitation, world hungry, the BLM movement, and the state of the US government. But quite the opposite.

I care about all those things. From a place that swells with emotion I have wept in light of many people suffering and struggling under the weight of economic destruction in which they have very little hope rising above. I have read and cried and wondered how in the world in 2016 we have come to such a dark place.

You see, my world is small because I have been learning to say yes to my cup of limitation. I have been lamenting the life I had hoped for. A life given to orphan care, of secured housing, of stable income and stable health.

I have been afraid; unsure of what the line was between resting and succumbing to my health limitations. So I'd push on. A force to me reckoned with. And then my stamina and energy would flat line. It could take me days or weeks or months to recover. But as I engage into my limitation, I am finding a world (a neighbor or doctor or friend or parishoner) in need intimate connection and encouragement; just the kind of resources I can give.

This year is a reminder, this holiday season is a reminder that this life, my life, is not how I thought it would be; not how it ought to be. No twenty-nine year old with hopes and dreams and spunk ought to be disabled, limited more often than not to a bed. Instead of a full time job, I have full time appointments and procedures. Instead of a late night of adventure I have a late night of nausea

But this is my cup of limitation. Maybe your cup of limitation isn't physical. Maybe it's emotional, maybe it's financial. Maybe you, too, want to do more and be more and give more than your limitations allow. You see, my "hug in a box" isn't much. It doesn't help world hunger or save the coral reef or stop the panda population from going extinct. It won't help aid the HIV and malaria epidemics and it won't help to prevent inner city youth from dropping out of high school. My giving won't show up in a newspaper nor will a building or ball park be named after me.

My gift is small. And small matters. In my lamenting, in my grieving I am being awakened to a side of joy I have never known. I am still hoping when I feel hopeless. I am choosing to not forget. I am choosing to remember in deed: to remember my physical therapist who is a refugee and recently lost her father; to remember those around me who perhaps their loss was not recent but feels big during the holidays. I am choosing to not forget my little circle of influence, the people I give all my first resources too. I am living this ordinary, mundane faithfulness.

The world can be cold and cruel. But I do not have to be. We can choose something different. We can choose to bear light and hope and grace in the darkness. I believe that greater things are still to come. Perhaps not in laws or regulations, in government or miraculous healing. Perhaps greater things are still to come through small words and actions of love and kindness, through gentleness and hospitality.Choosing to love may take the life right out of you. Oh but what a force it creates when we engage our small, quiet life. The cup you drink may be different than mine, but friend there is much life that can flow from your cup. And maybe you, too, will discover the beauty in ordinary faithfulness.