Christmas Letter 2012

By Curt Rivard

It’s lunchtime.  I’m sitting here at work, surrounded by aircraft flight manual pages, FrameMaker reference manuals, and my Close to Home calendar (to which I cling for perspective!).  I’m polishing off a Michelina’s Salisbury steak meal (rather like those TV dinners I enjoyed as a kid), and as long as I avoid eye contact with the nutritional label I’m fine.  And I’m chillin’ with my headphones on, listening to this epic song on Pandora (from Lord of the Rings), feeling pumped enough to light some mountaintop signal fires…

I’m also thinking about a recent family conversation (via e-mail) regarding the Myers-Briggs personality profile—that amazing tool that wondrously reduces every human on the planet to four capital letters.  It’s perfect for men since we’re really not terribly complicated.  Seriously, guys: what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear “Myers-Briggs”?  Yep, I knew it: gas engines.  Briggs-Stratton, Myers-Briggs, whatever.  But reducing the women in my life to four little letters?  Not a chance.  Even the English language suggests as much: the word “man” is 3 letters long, but “woman” is 5.  That makes women at least 67% more complicated than men.  But, if you’re like me, you thrive on examples—and 2012 is replete with them.

Let’s start with our 23 year old, Catherine.  As some of you know she’s a linguist (like a word “engineer”!) with Wycliffe Bible Translators in the tropical island nation of Papua New Guinea (a.k.a. “PNG”), just north of Australia.  Her mission: help make the Bible accessible to people in their “mother tongue”—in essence, the language spoken from childhood, the language that reaches the heart.   

Ultimately, though, her job is more about people than words—and with her warm, endearing personality she’s a natural.  Sometimes those relationships are more formal, such as when she’s teaching “ex-pats” (those from outside PNG) language and culture skills, or teaching “nationals” (those from within PNG) literacy methods or Bible study skills.  Sometimes those relationships are intensely personal, such as intimate times of prayer or discussion with national women, often extending late into the evening.  Sometimes those relationships are more casual, such as sharing a cup of tea, or a bowl of homemade ice cream—or a plate full of crocodile and rice!   Sometimes those relationships involve ex-pat children where she chokes back laughter at a young boy’s query about whether the toad he’s holding in his bare hands is poisonous, or other young boys’ attempts to fly their pet geckos in paper airplanes!  And sometimes those relationships are just a bit unexpected, such as when, during a village workshop, a local man loudly insisted that he was Catherine’s long lost husband!  

Her personality type comes as no surprise—RPCF: Relationship-oriented, PNG-captivated, Commitment-driven, and Fresh bread-motivated.  Catherine’s writing reflects all of these vibrant colors of the people, culture, and land of PNG—see for yourself at http://catherinepng.blogspot.com/.  And seriously, who can resist freshly baked bread?!

Catherine all dressed up for a PNG celebration!

Only six months after arrival Catherine transitioned from student to teacher!

Hannah, our 21 year old, is currently driving home from the other side of the country (near Orlando, Florida) where, this past fall, she interned at an equestrian (“horse”) school.  The girl keeps us off balance, redefining the phrase, “things to do, places to go.”  

After graduating from Northwestern College in May our free-spirit daughter jetted off to Israel and Europe with friends: from seeing historical sites come alive to re-enacting history for others, from singing “The Hills are Alive” on Austrian mountains to “swimming” in the Dead Sea, and from staying in charming hostels to those that parents shouldn’t know about.   

After 6 weeks she returned home, broke but happy, and continued working on her Cambria Horsemanship Empire (http://www.cambriahorsemanship.com/), started a 2nd company (Thousand Dollar Hour, http://www.thousanddollarhour.com/, including writing an e-book by the same name), and she teamed up with Minnesota College Funding Strategies to provide scholarship materials and consulting services to other poor students like herself.  And that was just her first day back!  You thought that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Frank Amazon, and Jackie Google had big dreams?  Pan fish, all of them.  

Her personality type?  That’d be EHAP: Entrepreneurial-oriented, Horse-captivated, Adventure-driven, and Peanut butter-motivated.  The peanut butter, you ask?  Yeah, Hannah is convinced that PB is the molecular bonding agent that holds all other food molecules together.  Oh, one more thing: I’ve recently noticed that Hannah WRITES. LIKE. THIS. FOR. EMPHASIS.  I’m still old school where sentences are supposed to have a subject and a verb, but whatever.  I saw her English-major sister write like that recently so it must be OK.

Hannah in Israel, driving her chariot into a Roman coliseum. In her dreams.

  

Hannah and Maia, posing for a photo shoot.  They’re good for each other!

Jill, my lovely and dearest wife (clarification: my only wife!), is a writing instructor for the U of MN engineering co-op program.  Our family has come to lean on Jill like she’s a “Help Desk”—you know, the folks you call for help when something goes psycho on your computer and you have no clue how to fix it.  Jill (and moms in general, I suspect) are really good at providing driving directions, recipe substitutions, medical assistance, clothing ideas, weather forecasts, relationship counseling, price checks, reality checks, and $$ checks—the more zeros the better.  Basically she’s The Doctor, sans sonic screwdriver (but she does use a smart phone, tablet, and laptop)!  

 Her personality type?  Definitely ITMC: Investigation-oriented, Techno-captivated, Maternally-driven, and Chocolate-motivated.  Our family knows that Jill is drawn to technology like road construction to asphalt roads.  Smart and fearless, she puzzles out her family’s numerous queries and taps into vast internet resources with the skill of a deep cover CIA operative. 

 In fact, she’s the one who discovered a great deal on a 7-day cruise in the Western Caribbean that single-handedly became our 10^th, 15^th, 20^th, and 25^th anniversary vacations.  OK, so we got a little behind, we were busy with kids and stuff.  You know what I mean.  As for chocolate, what can I say?  Chocolate is a universal value.  And should the Mars Curiosity Rover dig up signs of life on that red planet you can be sure that a dusty Snicker’s wrapper would hardly raise an eyebrow.  

Jill and I share a chocolate malt during our cruise!

 Finally, there’s me.  I’m ACCC: Aviation-oriented, Climbing-captivated, Curiosity-driven, and Cheese-motivated.  I’m a tech writer at Worthington Aviation.  I love aviation.  In fact, I’ve personally abandoned the Gregorian calendar in favor of the Oshkoshian calendar so that all world events could revolve around the annual AirVenture show in Oshkosh, WI.   

When I’m not dreaming of flying I’m pursuing a hobby that many of us did naturally as kids (that is, when our parents weren’t looking): rock climbing.  I love climbing almost as much as I love aviation.  I’ve bought gear, joined a climbing gym, and enjoy “hanging around” with new friends after work.  Of course, most of those friends are my kids’ ages, and that often leads to interesting conversations, like when one of my climbing partners said to me, “It’s so great to see, ahh, older, folks climbing…”  

As for the curiosity part, well, I ask lots of questions, especially of Jill—deep, probing questions, like “Huh?” and “What are you talking about?”  It just confirms that women really ARE complicated, and 27 years of marriage hasn’t seemed to diminish that fact.  I never tire of trying to figure her out, though—she’s worth it!  Finally, there’s cheese.  God created cheese on the First Day.  It’s seriously important to life, like DNA.  That’s why cheese forms the base of a brand new food pyramid I’m promoting: cheese, chips, and chocolate.  It’s not just that everything tastes better with cheese, it is better.

So there it is, the Rivard family.  What’s it all mean?  Well, among other things, it means that the Rivards have once again strayed (maybe “bushwhacked” is more accurate) from the well-worn path of the American Christmas letter.  And it also means that our lives can’t be easily reduced to 4 letter personality profiles.  Perhaps the same is true of Christmas.  It’s way too easy to reduce the celebration of our Savior’s birth to a cute little baby lying in a straw filled manger.  But, as our Pastor has been reminding us lately, “Where is the baby now?”  Jesus has left the manger, folks.  He grew up, lived a sinless life of obedience and love (and laughter, I’m sure), gave His life to satisfy a debt each of us owed, and three days later came back to life.  And where is the baby now?  Sitting at God’s right hand, some day—maybe soon—to return in power.  So can we do better than the 4 letters that make up BABY?  In fact, can any 4 letters help us better understand His place in our lives?  Maybe, if those letters are KING. 

“On His robe and on His thigh He has this name written: King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16).