boundless optimism

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I told my daughter yesterday, and was met with this response:  “But that’s where my hopes are supposed to be!”

If you’re looking for a little holiday spirit, come feast at the Colvin household.  My daughter has a glut of enthusiasm and it is spreading.  Even her Grinch-y aunt got into the spirit through holiday emails between them.  You can’t help but love Christmas when you are near Carina.

 How can I continue to cultivate that thrill and joy that Carina has for the birth of Jesus?  Because for her, the thrill is so much more about giving than receiving.  She has worked hard to save money to give to the orphanage that her cousin came from as a special Christmas present, and didn’t think she would make her goal until she received Christmas money from her grandparents.   Her first response at receiving that money was to enthusiastically tell me that she could now give her goal of $365 to Sadzi’s orphanage.

Carina optimistically proposed that she would give a dollar for each day of the year to her cousin’s orphanage, even though she had no way of earning money and only an allowance of $12 a month.  She made this proposal in the fall after I had read Crazy Love by Francis Chan, and challenged the family to do more, stretch themselves.

Since then, she has pinched pennies, saved every dollar given to her, pocketed away birthday money, worked for her father, and even made bets (dubious money-making, I know) with her father, which she has won.  She has given up several purchases that she really wanted, to give to this cause instead.

Now, her brother has saved nearly double that amount without batting an eye, but he has a fairly successful business building and repairing computers while Carina’s talents are as yet somewhat unmarketable.  So I find her sacrifices so much more poignant.  She wants a ten dollar book, but has waited two months, hoping to get it for Christmas instead, putting the money in her orphanage fund.

She believes that God will provide, and He did.  He made a way for her to make her goal.  And that book she really wants?  It’s under the tree.  God cares about twelve-year-old girls and their hopes and wishes.  He cares about thirty-nine year-old mothers who want their baby girls to succeed without intervening.  He cares about all of us enough to put his son in the middle of our mess, with boundless optimism.

God sees in you and me what we don’t see.  He sees that special gift that will take us over our goal, he sees the potential that we have no idea lies within us.  And he drops those gifts at the most surprising times, just like he did over two thousand years ago.

Merry Christmas.