Navigating the holidays this year

I love Christmas. I love everything about it. Beginning November 1^st, I want to watch all of the Christmas movies and have all of the Christmasy feels. When I was a child, my Mom made Christmas special every year. It was the biggest holiday in our home. We put up the Christmas tree together with the same ornaments every year. I would so carefully separate everyone’s presents into piles to make unwrapping on Christmas Day fast and easy. And, of course, count them to make sure my brother did not have more presents than me. Ha! We left cookies and milk for Santa Claus. I even remember one year, my parents took us outside to show us reindeer tracks. On Christmas morning, my brother and I would wake up obnoxiously early to go see all the presents Santa brought to us. Santa would kindly put our gifts into the piles I so diligently created. After we woke up our parents, we would destroy the wrapping paper and gift boxes to see our wish lists come to life. Christmas day was the best!  

Christmas 2012 was as wondrous as when I was a child. Not that the years before were sub-par, but that particular year was special. My Mom had been sick for three months but was feeling better. Honestly, you would not have known she was even sick. It seemed that she had random stomach issues that were on the mend. She had lost weight and had a younger, energetic spirit. She just felt normal for the first time in months and she was enjoying every bit of it. We celebrated as a family with such joy and happiness. All the while not knowing that cancer was invading and killing her body.

The holidays can be hard. Traveling, cooking, cleaning, shopping, entertaining, balancing and refereeing the many personalities in one room. It can be a lot. And especially if you have experienced a loss. I know. I have been there. I am there. The first Thanksgiving and Christmas after my Mom’s death were really hard for me to navigate. The grief was still so raw. How do we celebrate and do all the things we did with her, without her? 

I can approach the holidays with bitterness, resentment, and sadness. I can mope, and groan, and begrudgingly be present but not. I can miss out on the beautiful gift of family and memories because I allow my grief to consume me instead of taking charge of it. Or I can approach the holidays with gratitude, love, and hope. I can choose to be thankful even when I may not feel it. I can choose to BE. ALL. THERE. because next year, someone may not be. I can be OK with not having it all together because I cannot bear the thought of not being together. I can enjoy and be glad and receive every moment as grace. Because those moments pass so quickly and I want to receive them as they really are, gifts.

Friends, let us pray this verse as we enter the holiday season: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:13). Let us strive to count it all joy and to truly, emphatically believe that God is good, He is for us, and that we are desperately loved. Let us overflow with hope this year.