Yule Blog Christmas 2022

Sending out this Yuletide blog as the calendar turns from 2022 to 2023.  It’s been an eventful year at the Fultz home here in Parker, CO.  Many memories and reflections. 

Passings & Homegoings

To begin, I guess we’re somewhat surprised that Christmas has come at all this year.  For the Fultz family, Santa Claus passed away on March 26 of 2022.  As most of you know, dad – Mike Fultz – was pretty much the exact representation of Santa.  He and mom spent many of their retirement years traveling around the country while dad served as a “Natural Santa.”  He listened to tens of thousands of kids (of all ages) recite their Christmas list.  The best stories always came from kids that wanted daddy to come home, for mommy to be cured of cancer or a brother to get out of jail. 

In the final hours of his life we (dad and I – well mostly me) figured that heaven was getting full of kids & that God was looking for help in spreading some joy, just like he always had in our family.  So we had to release him into God’s grander purpose.  In our family we can attest that Santa is real.  We miss him every day.  Kinda getting a lump of coal this year, but now he’s in a place, and we await the day when everything sad becomes untrue.  (See below).

Another difficult passing.  Maria, our niece (age 23) – Joe & Christina’s daughter – lost her life in an auto accident in November.  The loss of a child is unimaginably difficult.  If you think of it, please pray for my brother, sister-in-law and extended families.  Words, understanding and closure are hard to come by. 

Cars

I don’t know about you, but I have a love/hate relationship with our family autos (mainly hate). We lost two of them in the space of 6 weeks this year.  Spent much of April and May chasing around for used cars at ridiculously bloated prices.  Hopefully we’ve found a Toyota Rav-4 and a Nissan Maxima that can carry us through Aubrey’s college years. 

There is a lemons/lemonade story that came out of the car trials.  As Aubrey and I were making a trip home from Kansas after dad’s passing, the old Toyota Camry (225K miles) blew an engine at Vona, Coloardo.  While waiting a couple hours for the tow truck to haul us away, we logged onto a college scholarship site.  Via a very sketchy connection, we competed an application for a $8,000 nursing scholarship.  Found out a few days later that she received the scholarship.  So, there was that….

Bios

Weston (21).  Wes works at Whole Foods in Highlands Ranch and enjoys his job there. 

In September, he finally got to go to Ireland with dad (me).  This was supposed to be a high-school graduation trip in 2020, but Covid happened.  Spent a week doing Blarney Castle, the Cliffs of Moher, the Guinness brewery, Trinity College and all the rest.  I can highly recommend him as a navigator through the bicycle path sized roads in Ireland. Here, we’re walking along the sea cliffs near Ballycotton.

Apparently, everyone in Ireland can sing.  If you can’t sing, just go to Ireland.  Through some sort of Lucky Charms magic, you’ll probably become one of the famed Irish tenors.  Or Bono.  Everywhere, the pubs are filled with music. Despite its history (or perhaps because of it), Ireland is a joyful little island that’s determined to make your heart happy through music. 

Aubrey (18).  Completed training as a CNA, finished high school, froze to death at her graduation ceremony in May (2 hours of snow, sleet, freezing rain), thawed out in time to start at Regis University this fall in nursing school.  The perfect school for her – singing in the choir, is on the cheer team, etc. She makes it home many weekends since the campus is only 45 minutes away. Here she is walking into her dorm room (and new future) for the first time in August.

Lisa.  Works as an Executive Director at a Goddard early Learning Center about 20 minutes from home.  She is completely in her area of passion and is working to grow and improve the lives of kids every day.  Her defacto motto is “It’s a good day to teach tiny humans!” Here she is with Aubrey at a company Christmas party.

 

Jerry.  Wrapped up a graduate certificate at the University of Denver in November.  (Wait!  How old am I?  What am I doing in school?).  I’m joining a company (announcement in coming days) that’s fostering the growth of faith-based, impact driven businesses via equity crowdfunding. We’ll be working with enterprises across various sectors seeking to pursue profit and social impact – primarily from Christian investors, entrepreneurs and business owners.

What’s Sad Becomes Untrue (this is a little preachy…no apologies).

In the 1930’s, J.R.R. Tolkein invented the word eucatastrophe.  Literally it means “the good catastrophe” or “the good destruction.”  It refers to a sudden and favorable resolution of events in a story; a happy ending.

In his book “On Fairy Stories, Tolkein writes:

The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation.

In writing on the implications of this, others have summarized Tolkein’s position like this:

The birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ mean that – one day – everything that is sad will become untrue.

If Tolkein is right, all the pain of this life becomes transformed and repurposed into meaning.  It becomes untrue.  It is deconstructed.  It is redeemed. I don’t know how – God does.  But this is the hope we dare to live with.  It’s what motivates us to lean into the pain of life and find light.  And to understand that we can endure the messiness of this world in anticipation of a “good destruction.” 

I hope you have had a stellar year.  For all of us, may all that has been sad and painful become untrue as we realize there is Someone much larger in our working to unwind and remake the trials we find here.

“It seems then,’ said Tirian, “…that the stable seen from without and the stable seen from within are two different places.” 

“Yes, said Lord Digory.  Its inside is bigger than its outside.”

“Yes, said Queen Lucy.  In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was larger than our whole world.”  C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle. The Chronicles of Narnia

Merry Christmas

Jerry