Christmas

Everyone is reporting on their Christmases, so I guess I should too. :)

We had a quiet Christmas, a good one, but quiet.  We did end up going shopping and buying a small gift for everyone.  I got wool socks.  You'd have to know me to know how absolutely delighted I was with them.

I made all the traditional food - in small quantities.  We had a nice day.  Except that my oldest two got sick.  A teen who will not eat Christmas dinner is sick.  We did go visit a friend in the evening for a quiet time of playing games, but nothing else.

Two days later, my daughter and I are sick.  My son just came out of his bedroom to show me that he has bumps on the back of his tongue and was worried about them.  I asked him to check my tongue, and sure enough, matching bumps.  So I suspect he will be down tomorrow. Sigh.

But, it isn't that bad to be sick together.  We are together, and we are at peace.  It just means taking turns taking care of each other.

We do miss family this year.  It seems odd to make the traditional family dishes, but have no family.  Some things have happened in my family that means we will never have my whole family gathered at one place ever again.  My youngest brother has made some choices making that impossible.  Christmases are hard for me because of this.  It is a horrible situation, one that can not be fixed, and there is a deep sadness in it.

So late Christmas night, after I had been a good mom and given my kids good memories, I lay in bed wrapped up in my husband's arms and cried.  The choices that my brother has made are so terrible that we can not even miss him because it blows our minds what he did.  But, once I had a brother, and now I do not.  There is a deep, quiet sadness in that.


I am thankful for my immediate family this year, for the peace, the love, the joy in being whole.  My heart hurts for two other families who do not have this.... whose father still is missing.  I am thankful for friends who are like family that we can drop in to their house on Christmas day and not be guests.  I am thankful for a Christmas story that includes more than we look at on Christmas day...

.... a mother not able to provide what she wanted to provide for a baby...
.... parents who were mocked and scorned for a pregnancy and chose to carry that unfair shame...
.... a family displaced because of government decisions that would not bend even in the face of their difficult timing...
.... the news coming to the stinky, despised ones first - as if God delighted in telling them before others...
.... a family becoming refugees, fleeing in the night for their lives...
.....this young family living as foreigners in a land that was not welcoming to them or their beliefs.  Separated from their family and friends...
.... God's quiet acknowledgment that Rachel wept for her children and refused to be comforted.  Grieving people are awkward at Christmas.  People want them to "get over it some" so they don't ruin other people's happy mood.  Yet how do you forget and go on?  The first Christmas story contains the story of real grief that refused to be comforted.  Even my tears - for my daughter, for my brother - they all have a part in the Christmas story.  Grief is written in it, real grief. (It just doesn't make it into the carols or happy Christmas cards!)

In fact, Christmas was a mess.  A mess of messed up plans, hardship, difficulty, hurts, pain, betrayal, and in the middle of all that, the Hope that came into the world.

We have that Hope.  It is precious to us.  Life this year is precious to us.  Even with its tears.