HOW CHRISTMAS FELT

We're just a bit past Christmas and creeping into the New Year.  What day is it?  Who am I?  What am I supposed to be doing?  I've wondered all of these things recently.  Because we didn't travel this year, it "seems" like we have more time on winter break, but we are also still recovering from Christmas.



I love the joy that surrounds Christmas.  This year, I spent a lot of time thinking about how thankful I am that Jesus came to Earth for us all once, and how much I am looking forward to when he will come back.  There are a lot of broken things here, and Christmas this year managed to highlight the good and some bad.

As can be the case, being with lots of family sometimes feels like a minefield.  There are traps around every corner, and it takes a lot of emotional reserve to walk through it unscathed.  We avoided any major explosions, but only by the skin of our teeth and a heck of a lot of grit.  There is obligation and love all mixed together with years of baggage and most people really wanting it to work as well as possible.  I'm so thankful for the work that we all did.

There were moments where I was not sure how things were going to go.  We were teetering on the edge, and thankfully, nothing fully blew us over the cliff.  However, it is stressful to walk on the edge of the cliff, even if you don't fall.

There were also moments of magic.  The Christmas surprises revealed.  The cousin fun.  The food.  The Christmas clothes and matching jammies.  The candlelight service that the pastor blessedly kept to a brisk 30 minutes which felt like a Christmas miracle in our row of squirmy children.  The familiar music.

The truth is that even as I look back on the good and the hard and write a rather cathartic post about it all, I am thankful.  I am thankful that each member of the family loves each other and wants what is best for the others.  This does not mean that opinions or beliefs align, but we are holding out hope for all of us to become the healthiest versions of ourselves.  The pain from the past and the present is certainly a part of it all and carried inside everyone, and the more that I learn about trauma, the more I understand how much it defines each person.  Even so, there was laughter in the midst of it all and fun to be had.

And in God's goodness, he saw fit to add complexity, richness and joy by adding an entirely new family that we also got to celebrate with.  There is trauma abounding in this group, and there often are not easy answers.  This year has brought pain and sadness with certain realities.  But, any time I am tempted to become anxious about the paths we might have to go down, God reminds me of his faithfulness.  Often this takes the form of spending time together and seeing the beauty of what he's put in front of us all.  We get to do it.  And we get to do it with each other.

So, Christmas felt complicated.  Probably yours did too.  The longer I live, the more I realize that's the way of things.  There is almost never all good or all bad: it's usually all mixed up together.  It's a lot to hold inside and walk through.  It does make me long for heaven where it will finally, at long last, be all good.  I guess the very best result of Christmas is that I am thankful for the good gift of time with precious family and also still feeling that we all need our Savior to restore our hearts and minds in ways that we cannot.  My weary soul does indeed rejoice.