Tissue paper brighter than a Christmas tree at night is spilling out the gift bag. Her youngest cries and reaches high, and her first grader would be in school if pinkeye wasn’t threatening to make a girl out of his eyelids.

I’m standing across the hall from her trying to empathize with how tiring it is to chaperone a field trip like her husband did yesterday. I would be tired, if I ever showed up on the right day. (See archives. Yeah, I did that.)
But what’s actually on my mind is that I’ve dropped the ball again. I have no bags, no gift cards, no bows or ribbons. No teacher presents. It is the last day before break at our preschool and my hands are empty.

I, am empty.

By the time I’m signing out in the little box marked Phone Number to Reach You, I’m angry. And I have a few good reasons why buying teachers anything at Christmas is insanity.

1. We are so ridiculously commercialized.
2. If it weren’t for me, my kid, and that check I write every month, you wouldn’t be a teacher. With an income.
3. YOU can thank ME for number 2.
4. I think I just feel guilty, and feel like I shouldn’t feel guilty, and I’ll get them something really nice at the end of the year which I never forget.
5. The point is, I am empty, not that teachers don’t deserve gifts. They deserve all manner of appreciation.

I pour out and run ragged in the name of fun. In the name of nostalgia. Even in the name of Jesus. And when I open my hands in a season that is all about giving, there’s nothing there.

But what if empty is good?

Legend tells of a man who was wealthy in every way. He had a woman by his side, countless employees, his health, lots of commodities, best friends and plenty of children with their own families. He lived, like a king.
Until his sons and daughters were kidnapped and his employees stabbed. Until a fire burned through his commodities. Until those kidnapped children were trapped and killed inside a crumbling building. Until his skin was so sore that he was in pain around the clock. Until his best friends told him it was all his fault.

What do you offer when you are void of everything? When the holidays aren’t jolly and you just want to crawl into a quiet cave and eat all Santa’s cookies yourself? When the New Year reminds you of the last one: arduous, lonely, unexpected?

“When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”

-Job 23: 10

My emptiness, is my gift.
What can I offer you this year? I don’t have it all together. I forget teacher gifts, sometimes deliberately. I carry loneliness on a weekly basis.
There are days my hair is greasy, I yell about jeans hanging lopsided on footboards, my marriage isn’t always a fairy tail, and that shopping list is just too long with a bank account a bit too short.
All this life, this difficult, desolate life is refining something precious.

“Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

-Matthew 2:11

What happened to the man in the story? He got it all back, twofold.