I recently drove past my boyhood home on Lake Road just southeast of North Berne, and was encouraged to see the current owner steadily working to restore its faded glory. More than one hundred annual cycles of frozen winds and baking sun have taken their toll… but there it stood, proudly atop its own hill.
As a youngster, I thought to myself, “I can’t believe we have our very own hill!”
You see, our hill provided V8-like power to coasting bicycles in the summer and jet propulsion to Flexible Flyer sleds in the winter. I was proud we lived on “our very own hilltop” (it didn’t take much to impress me then). That positivity is part of an accumulative attitude of appreciation my parents instilled in each of their four sons.
We seldom focused on what we didn’t have but instead highlighted, in the most positive sense, those things we did have—like the fact we had our own hill!
On the positive side of the ledger, hilltop living provided inspiring, picturesque vistas in all directions—a feature about which first-time visitors often remarked. On the other hand, being a hill-dweller offered its own set of challenges.
Bicycling provided the instant thrill of freewheeling downhill, eyes watering, wind improving my crew cut. But the physics of hilltop living promised an equal reaction: “Whatever down the hill coasts; must up the hill peddle.”
When winter’s snow came, the barren meadow below was shaped in such a way it convinced the whipping winds to drop their snowy load directly onto our driveway. Dad often remarked that it was perfectly designed to assure any sizable snowfall resulted in the burial of our entire driveway, including the station wagon.
For Dad, winter snow meant snow tires and chains. Can you, like me, close your eyes and hear the rhythmic clatter of tire chains on frozen snow? For me, it’s a comforting memory, but for Dad it must have been a nightmare.
There was no getting around it; tire chains were the only way he could escape our hill and make it to the dairy. His frustration had to be amplified knowing that upon arriving at the dairy even heavier tire chains awaited to be wrestled onto the dual wheels of his Divco milk truck.
Marvin was a world class procrastinator who could scramble excuses with the acuity of an NFL quarterback salvaging a broken pass play. He would hold onto the hope that the most recent weather report would prove untrue, even as billowing snow painted our pea-green station wagon winter-white.
As his adoring son, I just assumed this last minute difficulty was unfairly thrust upon him. I pressed my nose against the frosted kitchen window and pleaded with God to somehow cause the icy clump of chains to magically cooperate with Dad’s frozen fingers. As the snow blew sideways, I marveled how he braved the elements, lying prostrate on the ground while painfully manipulating those cursed tire-chains.
It wasn’t until I left home to attend college that I fully realized we were never a wealthy family—not in dollars and cents anyway. As a kid, I was sure we were wealthy. The truth is, my parents were stuck somewhere between poverty and promise. They worked hard every day to make ends meet and like many people today, found themselves caught clinging to loose “ends” like Stretch Armstrong; one arm going north, the other south.
Good times are often referred to as mountaintop experiences. I gotta tell you, my childhood was a mountain top experience not because we lived on a hilltop but because, as idyllic as it may seem, I was taught to be grateful.
As we experience the holiday season, my Christmas wish for you is that you might allow a sense of gratitude to overtake you. Gratitude best displays itself in our lives when we are thankful for what we already have. There’s a worship tune I enjoy that says, “Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the Holy One…for He has given us His Son.”
A common term for gratitude in the Bible is thankfulness. Paul wrote the believers at Thessalonica reminding them to,
“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” I Thessalonians 5:18
Read Ron’s column, Simple Faith, each Saturday on the Faith Page (page 3) of the Lancaster Eagle Gazette, or visit www.lancastereaglegazette.com.