On her childhood playground she watches the other children play. An impenetrable wall separates her from them, but she doesn’t know why. In her eyes they are one huddled organism, an exoskeleton with its armored back against her.

I have struggled with modern Christmas. If I don’t watch it, I turn into the Grinch, cynical at all the commercialism and stressing obligations. But my frustration with the neon light replacing the true Light only turns my own heart dark.

In retrospect, it was impatience and discontentment mixed with illusions of an easy income that drove us into the business that became our nightmare. Then a young pastor of a fragile church plant and new father, my man sought the solution to our struggle for sufficient time and money for both, in what appeared to have worked for others.