Reflecting on priorities at Christmas

Priorities.

Seven Christmases ago I didn't have them sorted correctly.

This author was trying to get home to see his father before the latter died of oral cancer.

There was a tight window of time to get to Pennsylvania and back.

At the time, I was under part-time episcopal appointment to preach Sunday mornings, and I also had a regular Monday-to-Friday secular job.

My greatest regret is that I simply didn't take time off.

I drove to St. Louis on a snowy Friday morning and sat at Lambert Airport for six hours before the plane left for Chicago.

The weather was getting quite bad, and conditions were notably worse where I was headed.

After arriving at O'Hare Airport, to my alarm, all the flights east had either been canceled or postponed.

Every single one.

After repeated inquiries and more hours spent waiting at the gate, no one could say when the next flight out to Pittsburgh would be scheduled.

There was a plane ready to fly west, though, back to St. Louis.

I did a mental calculation and figured it would be best to try again on a more favorable weekend.

I called my parents and said I was heading home, that I couldn't get there.

Both were understanding.

Two months later, my mother called while I was grocery shopping in Jackson.

"If you want to see him again, you'd better get here," she said.

Not wanting to chance a plane flight again, I got in the car and drove 11 hours to western Pennsylvania.

I got there in time, but Dad was unconscious by then, deep into agonal breathing, the final step before transition.

The hospice nurse was kind and told me my father was trapped between two worlds, this one and the next, and that I should talk to him.

He'd hear me, she said.

I did talk. My first words were an apology.

My father died the next night, never having awakened.

Serenity Prayer

Reinhold Niebuhr and I have exactly one thing in common: we went to the same seminary 80 years apart, Eden Theological in St. Louis.

The eminent theologian wrote the Serenity Prayer, which I call to mind each time my aborted trip home at Christmas 2013 is recalled.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.

Priorities

No matter how I rationalize it, no matter the effort my mother has made to make me feel OK about the situation, the truth is I put fealty to my employment over my dad on that lamented Christmas.

Of course, it could not have been known that Dad would decline so rapidly.

It could not have been foreseen, as I sat in the waiting area at O'Hare, that my choice to go home meant we'd never speak again face-to-face.

Blue Christmas

There are people who struggle with loss, with adversity, with pain, with heartbreak and disappointment at this season of the year.

Of course, all of the aforementioned is exacerbated by COVID, which has made Christmas 2020 the strangest holiday season of any of our lifetimes.

There are also those who struggle with missed opportunities, as I do.

Going forward

I left pastoral ministry a while ago and enjoy my role today as a reporter for this newspaper, with a concentration on government and politics.

I've been known to cover Southeast women's basketball too.

In part to honor my dad, whom I failed seven years ago, and don't try to talk me out of that assessment, reader -- I continue to teach religion part-time at Southeast Missouri State.

My dad, a computer programmer by profession, was a part-time Bible teacher for most of his adult life.

The Scriptures were my father's driving passion.

On his tombstone are the words: "Bible Teacher."

Consequently, every time I teach undergraduates about the Bible, subconsciously my father is being honored.

It feels to me as if I'm keeping Dad alive in some way, the father I put lower on my priority list on a much-lamented Christmastime weekend.

Examine your priorities, reader.

Don't do as I did.

Merry Christmas!