Why keep a date book from 1989? A quirky mystery … a personal eccentricity … that lately was revealed during a deep dive into a set of cluttered “junk drawers” at our place.
It’s (apparently) not due to neurosis, a generalized hoarding instinct, because no other daily “work diaries” survived from the years before I learned to commit client appointments to a digital calendar.
So why keep this one? Why 1989?
The engagements I recorded seemed routine enough. All garden-variety stuff, I suppose, except for the one scratched-through on March 13: “San Antonio – Trial date”. And the subsequent one inscribed for May 1: “Trial date – reset – San Antonio.” Like a bad dream, the traumatic memory rose unbidden: the week I’d spent in a Bexar County courtroom, defending myself from a lawsuit over the sale of our home there some five years earlier.
A bad dream, and a most unpleasant sensation – the helplessness you feel as teams of lawyers quibble and accuse, thrusting documents into evidence: hastily-signed deeds and declarations and contracts, any one of which might end up spelling your personal financial ruin.
This is the memory that came flooding back as I paged through my 1989 date book: An emotionally taxing four-and-a-half days languishing in the courtroom, before the trial ended with a whimper – a settlement agreed to (pretty much without my input) during a recess for lunch.
I doubt that I could have articulated it then, but I suppose I kept this wirebound artifact as a reminder of my close encounter with powerlessness. Judge, jury, attorneys – all of them led me down paths I did not want to follow in 1989. The date book provided a reminder, too, of the gratitude I felt for our deliverance: my precious little family did not experience the bankruptcy I feared.
Was this God’s hand at work in our lives? I probably wouldn’t have said so then. I was much-less-acquainted with divine providence as a 32-year-old than I am today. And so, what a gift – what a much wider perspective – I find I’ve been given in the pages of my ancient date book!
In marking the feast of the Holy Family this Christmastide, I can now see the example of Joseph, a man who did not shrink in fear from bad dreams or unpleasant circumstances.
Rather, this Joseph – a much holier man than I – learned to see his encounters with ruthless power as a chance to draw closer to God, to trust in the Holy One’s long-standing promise of salvation.
Joseph is changed by his encounter with Jesus, I notice. He loosens his grip on his plans for the coming days … and gives them over, wholeheartedly, to the Christ child.
And so I wonder, how might my own encounters with Jesus today be inviting me to respond – particularly in those parts of my life where I’d prefer to rule?
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 