Last year, my sister 
and I reinstated Christmas presents. We love getting things for eachother and missed it once the grandkids overwhelmed the Meyer Christmas. It’s majorly fun to shop for Becki and this year I went about it in my usual way. Seeking out the funky and the hip. Hoping I’ll get her design eye just right. And, if I can get her to laugh, well, that’s high satisfaction for a little sister.
A few days after Christmas we had our sister gift exchange. Becki came over with a mysterious cardboard folder and I handed over my silly bargain gifts–including the piece d’resistance: a sign from Salvation Army written on a tree cutting and heavily laquered that said, “Ve grow too soon olte and too late shmarte.” And (yay!) it did make her laugh.
Then, Becki handed me her slim package. And it brought from me something altogether different. Tears. The good kind. The kind that come when a gift hits your heart dead-on. Aimed with nothing but love. She had commissioned a wood cut from Rick Beerhorst, an artist we both greatly admire. It was inked onto a vintage piece of sheet music. And it says, simply, “Put your hope in God Psalm 42”
Had I known that Becki’s gift to me would be so intensely meaningful, I would have struggled to match it somehow. Gone shopping for meaning and found myself wanting. I would have spoiled the purity of its intention. It was good to be surprised by it. Good to be struck by such an uncalculating arrow. Good to be able to let it hit me. And to cry. And to have my sister right there to clutch.
