Post-Christmas post

I arrived back in Wichita last night, after a very quiet Christmas with my mother and a precious couple of hours yesterday spent with my children and their mother chasing Scruffy around Carrollton, Texas, and then eating lunch with them. Nothing like a few lungfuls of bedroom-community air running after a dog to work up an appetite, eh? During my time away, I was also fortunate enough to speak with my brother twice. He is bored but safe and well. His current job: watching Iraqi soldiers count uniforms in a warehouse. The Greater War on Terror is fought on many fronts.

None of us deserves the blessings--those things that really matter--that we receive, we know, but this season I have felt the truth of that especially acutely. Listening to Johnny Cash sing Kris Kristofferson's "Why Me, Lord?" on Christmas Day just, you know, drove the point home with all the subtlety of a pile driver. This Christmas, for me, it really was the thought that counted behind the gifts I received and, in particular, the people I received them from, much more so than the gifts themselves This Christmas wasn't especially jolly, but it wasn't what I would call "sad," either. It gave me much to ponder.

More soon.