By Lisa Huddleston

My favorite gifts of 2016!

It’s been said that every day is a gift. And I do believe that’s true. But did you ever get a gift that didn’t fit or that you simply didn’t want? You’re sitting in the family circle around the tree and the youngest cousin is handing out the presents and you’re watching each present being opened and the receivers are smiling and thanking the givers and all you can think is, “Why the heck did I get this?” Of course, you paste on a smile and say thank you like all the others in the circle do, but inside you hurt a little. How can your own people not know you any better than to give you this? Do they really see you this way?

And then, of course, you wonder how many of your specially chosen gifts have been received with the same internal consternation. Did everyone like the gifts you gave them? Did they feel as though you did or did not know them? Ugh.

Gift-giving is hard. Gift-receiving can be even harder.

The past few weeks have been full of difficult days. Yes, they have been gifts, and I have received them, and there have been many I would have returned had they come with a receipt, but that’s not the way life works. We get the days chosen for us, and we learn to live with them. We find a place on a shelf or a table where they kind of work into the décor, and we manage to squeeze them into the tableaux of our lives.

Yesterday was a hard one to find an appropriate place for, but it will come to me eventually, and someday it will look just right on that shelf. Just not today.

This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it [even if we can’t be glad with it]. (Psalm 118:24)