A Simple Christmas (23 page)

But a couple of days before Christmas, it all hit me—in so many ways, my life was better than I could have ever imagined it. In my frazzled condition, I had forgotten that Christmas wasn't a time for me to become an irritable and impatient tyrant because I was stressed out and so many things were going wrong. It was the one time of the year that I needed to stop my motors and listen to the quiet and reassuring voice of God reminding me that, no matter how crazy life got, I would always have the original Christmas gift—His love, salvation, and hope.

I paused to reflect on that first Christmas and what it all meant. God had wanted to send us a message, and He could've done it by shouting from the mountaintops or sending a flood or a burning bush our way. He could've had a party or a press conference or a parade. But He didn't. He sent a baby. A baby who would carry God's whole message in His very essence. A baby who cried and had to learn how to walk and talk and who had to grow up the way all of us do—one year at a time. There would come a time in that infant's life when throngs of thousands would line the streets to either cheer Him with shouts of “Hosanna!” or jeer Him with shouts of “Crucify him!” People would surround Him just to ask for a prayer or the chance to touch His garments. He would go on to change the world and the lives of millions forever. But He started as a baby.

God could have sent His son into this world fully grown and ready to start performing miracles. But it was the years of patient preparation that made the last part of the journey not only tolerable but in fact rewarding. Over the years, surely there were times when the young carpenter in Nazareth must have prayed, “Father, the world's a mess. Don't you think it's time I go forth and start my ministry?” At times, I'm sure He felt frustrated when the answer from above was, “No, I need you to make some more chairs. Maybe another table.” Jesus, who knew that His real purpose on earth was to bring people to God by preaching great sermons, performing amazing miracles, recruiting disciples, and eventually giving his life on a Roman cross, was stuck building furniture for the first thirty years of his life. Seems like an awful waste of talent! But God knew that the preparation was more important than the presentation, and on that day just before Christmas in 1996, I began to realize that all spiritual pilgrimages are marathons, not sprints.

I have run four marathons, so I know what it's like not only to run one but also to train for one. Before I decided to train for my first one, I would never have deemed it possible that I could endure
watching
a marathon, let alone running one. For my first marathon, I trained for eight months. It was grueling and tedious work, but when the time came to actually run the marathon, I discovered that the hard part wasn't running that actual 26.2 miles in one stretch; it was preparing for it. In the end, my hard work had paid off.

Jesus didn't show up on earth running at full speed. He showed up as a helpless infant who had to be carried, fed, and held by someone else, just like every other baby. It took Him thirty years of preparation and virtual silence and solitude before He ever preached His first sermon or performed a miracle. But that waiting and training and patience prepared Him for the last three years of His life, during which He carried out God's mission on earth and received the greatest reward—and gave us the greatest gift—imaginable.

I started thinking about the amazing journey I had already had. I thought back through the many Christmases I had as a kid, when I would patiently wait all year for the big day and when it finally came, I would be thrilled just to get one gift I really wanted (even though I had looked at dozens of things in the Sears catalog). The only Christmas stress I had to endure was hurrying to rewrap the packages that my sister and I had broken into. I thought about trekking through the woods with my dad to find a little tree at my uncle's farm that we could chop down and bring home to decorate.

But here in 2006, things were a lot more stressful. But I realized that I needed to stop thinking about how much I was stressed and start thinking about how much I was
blessed
. I had married my high-school sweetheart and was still married to her after thirty-two years, a battle with cancer, and the birth of three kids, none of whom we were supposed to have. I was the governor of my state, even though my dad had always told me that I might never even
meet
a governor. I was in the process of trying to figure out what to do with all the stuff I had accumulated over the years, even though just a few decades earlier I had been able to fit everything I owned into the backseat of a car. My wife and I were in the process of moving again, but this time we were moving into a nice, large house of our own instead of the duplex we had lived in when we were first married. Janet was recovering from knee surgery, but she was alive—thirty-one years longer than we thought possible. I was trying to make a tough decision about my next career move, but that move might be a step toward becoming the next president of the United States.

Life might not seem so simple, but it was good! Very good. And I realized it was good because the slow and steady ramp I had climbed to get to where I was had given me perspective on what an amazing journey it had been.

Christmas started taking on its true meaning again. I decided that all the things that stressed me were really the unimportant things. The important thing at Christmas was the simple truth that God loves us. He loves us when we have nothing and loves us when we have a lot. This is a better gift than anything your family, your friends, or even Santa can bring you.

Over the next fifteen months, I would experience the ride of my life in my campaign for president. It was a tough and grueling process, but reporters often commented that I seemed to be enjoying it, and I was even dubbed the Happy Warrior by some columnists who noticed that I didn't appear to be overwhelmed by the pressures and rigors of the campaign.

I would always remind them that I considered myself the luckiest man in America. I knew where I came from, and yet here I was, running for president—where else but in this country could that be possible?

I think the Christmas of 2006 was a transformational event for me—after years of getting busier and taking on more responsibility than ever, I was able to recapture the original spirit of Christmas and was reminded that a great Christmas isn't the expensive one or the elaborate one. It's the simple one. The one in which we are reminded that God continues to choose to speak to us through the simple things that no amount of money can buy. It's what He tried to teach us. And if we listen, He's still saying it now. You might not hear it in the noise of a Christmas party or see it in the stunning, bright lights of Times Square, but you might just hear it slightly above the sounds of cows and sheep in a little grotto in Bethlehem. A baby cries. God is speaking. It's a simple message. But it's a saving message. So this year, I hope you have a warm Christmas, I hope you have a joyful Christmas, but most of all I hope you have a simple Christmas.

Acknowledgments

Adrian Zackheim of Portfolio and Sentinel imprints contacted me about doing a Christmas book. When a Jewish publisher says he's interested in a politician's doing a book about Christmas, you just gotta listen!

Like my previous (and hopefully future projects) with Portfolio and Sentinel, this has been a sheer delight. The entire publishing team, and especially project coordinator and editor Brooke Carey, have been rugged taskmasters to keep me on their ridiculously tight deadlines, but they did it with a spirit that makes me want to sing “Joy to the World” in July. Okay, maybe it wasn't
that
lovely, but they really are not only the very best in professionalism, but also truly fun to work with. Their suggestions to make the book better were always helpful, yet they never attempted to change my thoughts or my words. After you read it, maybe you will have wished they had!

Frank Breeden and Duane Ward of Premiere Authors are the best I know in not only handling all the logistics of getting me lined up with the publisher, but also in putting together the best promotional plan possible to make it a worthy endeavor for the author, the publisher, the bookstores, and outlets.

The Sentinel and Premiere publicity teams—Will Weisser, Allison McLean, Christy D'Agostini, Laura Clark, Josh Smallbone, and Joel Smallbone—really helped promote this book. Three weeks on a bus is a long time, but they made it as comfortable and as smooth as possible. And the bus crew at Premiere who outfitted the bus with a little studio so I could do my radio commentaries for the ABC Radio Network while on the road.

And most of all for the most important person in the entire process,
you
the reader. I hope you enjoy the book. If you have half the fun reading it as I did remembering and reliving the stories behind it, then it will have been a great success.

And it just seems appropriate to say, “Merry Christmas!”