The Box by the Trash

It started with goodbye.

The summer of 2015, I wanted more.

So I gave everything away.I began carrying our life to the curb one armful at a time.

Books first: devotionals marked with grocery lists, workbooks with half-finished math.

Then the skillet that always leaned to one side, the stack of green plates I had kept long after the set was gone.

Each trip felt righteous, like shedding the world.

I think I half expected a dove to descend on the driveway and tell me, well done, good and faithful servant.

I had prayed for “more of Jesus” until the words lost their flavor, like gum I couldn’t spit out.

But what I really wanted was less of me.

From the next room I heard my husband lifting boxes, carrying more on his shoulders than the weight of what we owned.

When I woke up that morning, he was already at the table, sorting bills and running numbers like a man keeping watch over the loaves and fishes.

His Bible was already packed, marked, worn, obedient.

His running shoes by the door.

His coffee cup rinsed and waiting.

His guitar wrapped in a towel.

My Bible was under a pile of unopened mail.

It had fewer miles on it than my husband, but excellent penmanship.

That morning I underlined surrender twice, as if that would settle it.

I carried on emptying the rooms as the curb turned into a kind of altar.

By the third load I found my wedding dress, creased and yellowing at the hem.

I didn’t linger.

I folded it once, then slid it into a black trash bag along with a chipped mug that said Be Still.

I told myself I was past needing that kind of sentiment.

The children came behind me, small and steady, hauling what they could manage: the tin of Legos, an old shoe, a basket of laundry I hadn’t folded yet.

They worked without complaint, like small ushers in a ceremony they didn’t understand.

“Where are you off to?” the neighbor asked.

“To where Jesus lives,” one of them answered, dragging a pillow twice their size.

“Good luck,” he said.

I smiled. “God will be with us.”

And the children nodded along as if He were waiting at the end of the driveway.

Finally I came to the Christmas box marked giveaway that smelled of garage and cinnamon dust.

Inside were winter things gone to sleep: silvered bulbs, a string of stubborn lights, an angel with one wing glued back together.

I carried it outside and set it beside the others.

The sun caught the angel’s porcelain face, and for a moment it almost looked like blessing.

I lingered a heartbeat longer and then set it down and whispered, “Emmanuel.”

I wanted it to sound like faith.

It sounded like goodbye.

I assumed faith would take us south, but it turned east instead, to the exact same place where its story began.

And when December twenty-fifth came.

The entire place went on as if it hadn’t.

Logically, I hadn’t expected Christmas to come, but still the quiet of it surprised me.

Morning buses zoomed through streets of limestone.

Shopkeepers arranged oranges in tidy rows.

The air smelled of coriander, shawarma smoke, and damp stone.

Everything carried on as usual.

Across the way, Bethlehem hovered nearby in the winter light, like a mirage, close enough to touch, but the city around me refused even to look that way.

It wasn’t indifference.

It was more of an intentional silence.

Now and then you would see some plastic garlands in the Christian quarter for the tourists, or maybe a painted tree in a hotel lobby.

From a distance you could almost believe.

But the moment the cameras turned away, the light went out of it.

It was Christmas for sale, not Christmas kept.

Even the believers seemed to draw back from it, as if celebration itself might mark them, as if the silence of the city had entered their throats too.

It wasn’t long before we also began to understand that kind of silence.

We learned what not to say, how not to offend, which songs to leave unsung.

One time in the Christian market, I wished a vendor “Merry Christmas.”

He lowered his eyes kindly, the way you do when someone mentions a name you’d rather not discuss.

“Good day,” he said, sliding the pita across the counter.

I quickly learned the difference between forgetting and refusal.

This place, the cradle of the story, had chosen silence.

The churches stood tall and still, but their bells sounded inward, as if to keep the memory from leaking out.

And so December came and went with just the hum of daily life pressing on, like a city that had decided to turn its face away from its own beginning.

At first, I liked it. Faith stripped of sentiment.

But after a while, it felt like exile: not from leaving, but from being surrounded by people who have learned how not to see.

A few years later, we flew home for Christmas.

That year had been lean.

My husband, gentle but disciplined, kept the budget close.

We had what we needed, but not more.

Even small gifts felt like luxuries we couldn’t justify.

When we left, the children were small.

Now they were mid-teens, quieter, more self-aware,

My sister met us at the door, and Christmas met us behind her.

Candles breathed light into every corner.

Ribbons looped the banister.

The smell of sugar and nutmeg lifted from the kitchen.

Her joy in it was unmistakable.

Every light, every bow, every wrapped box was her way of saying, You are loved. You are not forgotten.

Her children, still younger than mine, darted between the tree and the hallway, their laughter trailing ribbons behind them.

I saw her kneel to help them place gifts under the branches and heard her whispering about generosity and others.

As I stood and watched her I thought, This too, is faith.

And immediately I hoped God hadn’t noticed how much I wanted her life in that moment.

My children stood a little apart, trying to match their cousins’ excitement, caught between wanting and pretending not to.

They smiled at the right times, and when no one was looking, one caught the other’s eye.

They exchanged a small, knowing glance, the kind that holds more than it says.

Then my sister pulled out from under the Christmas tree five beautiful gifts, one for each of us, and set them on the counter.

My husband met my eyes across the room, offering a quiet smile that said, We’ve done what we could.

I stood there smiling and happy, but inside I felt like I was performing gratitude like a Christmas play.

I had no choice but to reach into my bag and give her what I had carried across the world: a small snow globe from Jerusalem, bought half in haste, half in price.

Inside it, a tiny city turned under white that never melts.

It looked more impressive once I peeled the price tag off in the airport bathroom.

My husband’s hand rested lightly at my back, a quiet assurance that steadied me as I held it out.

Still I knew that if I had asked, he would have run out the back door and swiped a credit card to shield me from the shame of a cheap gift.

But my sister touched the globe tenderly with both hands.

“It’s perfect,” she said, calling the children over to see it.

Still, when the room fell quiet for a breath, I felt the small, sharp truth settle in me, that I had nothing.

And worse, that my children, standing nearby, were already past the age of easily believing that what you have in your heart is enough.

I smiled, helped pour cider, and admired how her house glowed with the spirit of giving.

Her faith and mine circled around each other like candles in the same flame, each burning differently, each trying in its own way to say Emmanuel…God with us.

Later, while she rinsed dishes, a light glimmered on a gold necklace on the counter.

I asked about it.

“That one’s a mess,” she said, frowning.

“It’s been tangled forever. No one’s been able to fix it, but it’s too precious to throw away.”

The chain lay in a dish in a knotted-up ball, the kind that happens when a thing has been carried too long in a coat pocket, shifted from place to place, seemingly forgotten but not forsaken.

“Let me try,” I said.

So while she rinsed dishes, I stood at the edge of the sink, working each loop with my fingers, pulling, then giving, turning it over, then gently warming it in my hands again.

It wasn’t just a necklace anymore.

It was the only way I could say thank you, and I’m sorry I have nothing to give you.

I worked at the knots like they were moral failings.

If I could just free one loop, maybe I’d finally be called faithful with little.

When the last knot slipped free, a strange relief came over me, the joy of having something to give.

She turned, and I fastened the clasp around her neck.

That, to me, looked like redemption.

The next morning was Christmas.

Matt was already reading his Bible like it was any other day.

My teenagers were performing their favorite kind of tradition: sleeping in.

The house was still.

Frost covered the windows, but the chill inside had already settled in me.

I stepped beneath the shower.

Warmth gathered on my shoulders and ran down my arms.

Water filled the room with its own kind of silence, steady, unjudging, endless.

For once, I didn’t try to make meaning of it.

I just let it fall, the way mercy does when you stop trying to deserve it.

Steam blurred the mirror; the world disappeared.

The night before drifted through me: my sister’s laughter, the gold chain resting against her skin, the look my children shared by the tree.

And the memories of when they were little and we still had Christmas but left it by the trash.

Back then, I thought their obedience was faith.

But I was starting to see that maybe something greater than faith…maybe it was love holding its breath, so that I could breathe…

For a long time I stood there, and the ache of all those years loosened in the heat: the hard decisions to keep holding on, the miles we carried faith like luggage, the quiet cost of believing it would all mean something in the end.

And then, not in words, but in a stillness deep and low, something like invitation:

Lay it down.

So I did.

I gathered what I still held, the little bit of trust, the ache of what hadn’t come true, the silence where answers used to be, and I offered it.

Not upward.

Not outward.

Just open-handed, like frankincense laid at the manger.

Not because it was worthy.

Because it was all that I had left to give.

When I returned, January had already settled in.

The days were short, the cold air pressed against skin and stone alike.

I walked the old route toward the market.

Buses still zoomed through narrow streets.

Vendors still called over piles of citrus and herbs.

It felt both holy and weary, as if the land itself were an old gold chain, knotted by centuries of reaching, links rubbed thin from all the pulling and trying, still catching light in the smallest places.

I understood that He still keeps what others might discard, because He does not throw away what’s knotted.

He keeps it close, until love can loosen it again.

Still precious.

Still waiting to be made new.

I arrived at Christ Church and pushed open the heavy oak door and heard the hinge give a soft cry.

I stood there for a moment and watched the dust flutter around the stained glass windows.

I no longer needed to be there as one who came to insert faith into the silence, only to stand inside it as one who still believes.

There on the communion table was the braided bread and a small silver cup.

Across the mantle, in Hebrew letters:

Emmanuel.

---