Heath Lambert: It is Christmas week, a tradition that we’ve adopted here on the podcast that we are talking about Christmas traditions with various individuals. And this week, our guest on the podcast is Dr. David Powlison. David is the Executive Director of the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. He is a member of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, he has been a professor of biblical counseling, the author of numerous books, and he is a friend of mine.
Dr. David Powlison: That last part is by far and away the most significant aspect of a litany of things.
Heath Lambert: That’s why I saved it for the end, that’s right!
Dr. David Powlison: It’s like the Book of Revelation. The best happens at the end!
Heath Lambert: That’s right. We are so thankful that you’re with us. And as we are thinking about the Christmas season, as we’re thinking about celebrating Christmas this week with family and friends, we want to hear from you just about you and your life. So, you’re a person who’s influenced so many people. Talk to us about your family, wife, your kids.
Dr. David Powlison: Yes, so Nan and I have been married for 40 years as of the summer of 2017. So we are in our 40th year, so that Is hard to believe.
Heath Lambert: How did you guys meet?
Dr. David Powlison: The first time we talked, I don’t remember, she insists it happened, but I have no memory because I was asleep. I’d done a double shift at the hospital where I was working as a brand-new Christian. We had a mutual friend that said when Nana was in Boston, she had to look me up. I was a new Christian and so she dutifully gave me a call and according to her, the conversation went something like, “hello, is David Powlison there?”
“(Mumbles).” “Uh, is David Powlison there?” “(Mumbles).” “Hey, forget this guy!” I take it on the face, she’s an honorable woman, and she probably does not lie. She didn’t tell me that story until after we were married. So she didn’t forget me. We formally met when she was in a ministry to high school kids and did multimedia presentations. And she was showing some of her multimedia shows at a Christian Arts Festival and I was attending. We had mutual friends, and we said hello. And then the next year, I was down going to seminary at Westminster in Philadelphia and Nan, with this media multimedia ministry she had she was on the road a lot. So she came through a number of times we got to know each other, and you know, boy meets girl. One thing leads to another, and we got married.
Heath Lambert: You got married and we had kids three kids!
Dr. David Powlison: “We had three kids! This is a great picture of the fact that as Christians, we validate all aspects of human life, including genetics and temperament, including the impact of culture and upbringing and ultimately arising from the heart. The heart interacts with given equipment and given experience. And our kids, you can look at the first 10 minutes of their lives, and you can see things that, in seed form, point to their greatest strengths and the things they struggled with right from within the first 10 minutes. It’s quite remarkable. Our son is very self-contained; he just popped out calm, cool and collected with no fuss and no muss. Our first daughter popped out highly relational, immediately glomming onto mom, emotional, romantic, and attached. And our third child, our second daughter, popped out looking for how she could dominate the world. You know, same DNA, totally different and, you know, and you can see how each of those characteristics has a lovely strength, and then it brings certain characteristics that you struggle with. We loved the nuclear family years. Nan and I were privileged in God’s mercy, and both have had loving families and loving memories of being children. And it just made us actually approach parenting with the expectation that it would be good. And we loved being parents, and we still do. I mean, our baby now just turned 30 this past summer. She’s married, and she has a child of her own. We still feel the empty nest. You still feel a certain kind of ache that we so loved being with our kids and enjoying those nuclear family years before the kids start to fly away.
Heath Lambert: I remember when your daughter got married, second daughter, and the experience of you giving her away, and I asked you, what was that like? And you talked about my daughter, and you said, “Imagine your daughter. You were there when she took her first steps. You took her to school, you heard her first words, you walked with her through all these steps of life and then imagine taking that girl’s hand and giving her away to another man.” And I’ve just never had anybody put it—it’s joy, it’s a marriage, that’s the way it’s supposed to happen, but there’s a real loss there.
Dr. David Powlison: Yeah, and Hannah, too, she was the child that was both the most adventurous. She wanted to conquer the world and make the world all better and had grit and the good side of stubbornness, and she was also a homebody and most valued family traditions. And when her brother and sister grew up and left, she was the one that felt the ache of, you know, that our Christmas was not the same anymore. And I’ll never forget this pitiful moment for the first Christmas. The other two weren’t there. One of our traditions was that all the kids would wait up at the top of the stairs, and Nan and I would be setting the fire, getting the fire going, and making some breakfast. And then it would be kind of like the starting line, and they all stampede down the stairs. And she’s up there all by herself, and she starts to cry. I finished up breakfast, and the fire, and Nan sat up there with her. You know, there are just three of us and not five. You know, it’s okay, but it’s not the same. The nuclear family is busting up, and she felt that so keenly.
Heath Lambert: Sure. So, it is Christmas, Christmas traditions. What are some traditions—you and Nan were both believers in your marriage. You raised your children to be Christians. What are some ways that you celebrated Christmas and tried to make this time of year meaningful in your home?
Dr. David Powlison: Yeah. You know, there were a number of variants, in that there are a number of years where we’d go visit family. And there was always a piece that was Christ-centered. There’d be, you know, going to a candlelight service on Christmas Eve, but it wasn’t as woven into the fabric when we’d be visiting with more extended family. In that case, probably the place where the significance of Christmas as a believer, probably more came out in Advent, in having Christmas carols, we could sing around an Advent wreath on the Sundays leading up to Christmas. But Christmas itself would have not been—when we were visiting on someone else’s turf—would have not been the same. On the times when we had our own Christmas—nothing earth-shaking, you know. We read the Christmas story, prayed, and sang “Joy to the World.” Our approach to presents was one that I’m very pleased with. We weren’t super materialistic. Every present got individual attention. So it wasn’t the mad rush under the tree and ripping presents open. So, one person would open one present. And one of the things that everyone did is people took turns, in a sense, being the ones to go pick a present from under the tree and bring it to someone else in the family. So, you actually are doing the thinking about somebody else and bringing the present. They open it, they engage it, and they appreciated it. It actually created a certain problem, eventually, because our son, who loved to read, would start reading his book right there under the tree. So Christmas Day would actually be done from a present standpoint, but he’d have five or six other gifts still waiting because he was just immersed in a book, and I actually think that was lovely.
Heath Lambert: I’ve got a son like that too.
Dr. David Powlison: You know, it just said, I’m not here to, you know, have a materialistic frenzy, and I’ll just look at this book.
Heath Lambert: So what is a favorite memory from when your kids were young at Christmas time?
Dr. David Powlison: I think the whole package kind of comes together, you know, in terms of the music, the fragrances, the candlelight, and the building of excitement. You’re thinking about other people. You’re buying gifts; there’s kind of this trickling in under the tree from mysterious places Nan would hide them, you know, more appearing. And then, just the way the day itself was, it just had a lovely rhythm of the day. It was quiet, it was familial, and it was thoughtful. It fits with values, just as we’re not a loud, noisy, active, or tumultuous family. You know, we’re more of a quiet family, and it was a quiet day in a really good in a really good way. We’d always take a walk, you know, afterward.
Heath Lambert: In Pennsylvania?
Dr. David Powlison: In Pennsylvania, it might be cold, might be not so cold. It might be, you know, 50 degrees and rainy. But you know what? One very specific memory is our first dog. And there was a book, The Indian in the Cupboard, that was very popular, and it is a little toy Indian that becomes real when you put it in the cupboard. And we had a lot of treasure hunts in our family. And for the big present, we had a treasure hunt. And so the kids went around the whole house, finding clues and going to the next site and finding another clue. And then the final clue is on the sideboard and it was a little toy dog, and it said, “open the front door, and I will become real.” And I had slipped out halfway through the treasure hunt and gone to get the dog that we picked out. And so they come and open the door, and there’s dad with our dog arriving at the front door. That was one of those great moments of family life. And in fact, it was one of those misty, rainy, warmish, type Christmases. And we actually named our dog Misty Christmas.
Heath Lambert: Oh really?
Dr. David Powlison: Misty was her name, but her full name is Misty Christmas.
Heath Lambert: That’s wonderful. And now your kids are out of the house.
Dr. David Powlison: Now they’re scattered. Yep. Hawaii, Croatia, and Florida.
Heath Lambert: Hawaii, Croatia, and Florida! And so now, what does Christmas look like?
Dr. David Powlison: A veil of tears!
(All laughing).
Dr. David Powlison: You know, it’s not quite that bad. We’ve actually had a couple of times where around Christmas, we had family reunions. So, either up in New England or out in Hawaii, where I grew up. So, we’ve had some very memorable family reunions. In fact, one of them, it was probably the most memorable, miserable Christmas we ever spent. It was about maybe five years ago or so. Everybody got sick. There was pneumonia, bronchitis, the flu, and literally, we are all in a cabin up in the woods in Vermont. It’s beautiful out, there’s snow, and you know the fire was roaring, and we were all sitting around the fire huddled under blankets and sweatshirts, feeling too miserable to want to do anything for Christmas, taking an ER run for the granddaughter. I mean, it was just one of those sad, pathetic moments of human life. Oh dear, but yes, we’ve had family reunions; those have been really sweet. This Christmas, for the first time, one of our children is hosting Christmas. So our daughter Gwyneth and her family just bought their first house last year down in Florida. So we’ll be going down for Christmas with them. So we’re looking forward to what, you know, Gwen’s particular approach will be. She’s a very hospitable and creative young lady.
