One recent morning, as I was out for a walk, I realized how different everything in my life looks and I will admit I have had a hard time finding "my Christmas spirit" this year. There have been so many changes this past year and Christmas is one of them. This year it will look very different than those in recent years. Not only are we in a new home, but instead of a houseful of family it will just be two of us. I believe we have both been mourning that fact just a bit, and I have found myself strolling down memory lane.
There is the fall my brother had a blood infection that the doctors could not figure out. He needed to have transfusions a couple times a week, with an hour drive each way. I cannot imagine how scared my parents were of potentially losing this very sick little boy. After an area wide fast, we received a miracle of healing that even the stumped the doctors. I am sure Christmas looked different for my parents that year.
Or the year we lost everything in the Teton Dam Flood. After months of being homeless we were living in a HUD singlewide trailer. Any time it got below freezing the inside walls would ice up (and in Southeastern Idaho that happens a lot) We were constantly sick. It was less than a pleasurable experience, especially for my mom. I am sure that Christmas that year did not look anything like my parents pictured.
After years of infertility, I had finally gotten pregnant only to find out just days before Christmas at a routine ultrasound that I might lose the baby and was placed on immediate bed rest. That Christmas looked different.
The year that we lost my Dad, who's birthday happens to be on Christmas, rocked all of our worlds, and Christmas looks much different now.
My thoughts turn to Mary and Joseph, I am sure they did not picture Mary going into labor in Bethlehem, scrambling to find a place to deliver and being told there were no rooms over and over. Mary probably never pictured having the baby in a stable, where she would lay him in a manager. Fact is even that first Christmas looked different than planned, but it was miraculous and perfect. It didn't matter what it all looked like what mattered is that it was full of love and centered around the birth of Jesus.
Truth is our lives change, things happen that are out of our control, but what we learn from that first Christmas is that just because it doesn't look like we think it should does not mean that it won't be perfect. As long as we keep the key element in focus, the true meaning of the season, the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ, Christmas will be perfect, no matter what it looks like because love will fill our hearts and souls. I realize that is the key and how my parents got through those tough times, because as kids we saw nothing but magic each Christmas.
Now looking back even though those Christmases looked
different, each one had its own miracles; my brother's miraculous healing,
feeling the first kicks on Christmas day of that baby that they thought I would lose and that Christmas in the trailer we were all healthy with no snow fall that day.
Since my Dad passed away, each Christmas I still picture him sitting by the fireplace like he always did, making sure to build a big enough fire to roast us all, smiling and laughing as we opened gifts. Those memories are miraculous and perhaps what has kept me going this season. If I were to go to him about my Christmas woes this year, he would tell me "different is good, to suck it up". Then would turn and lead by his quiet example of making sure Christmas no matter how it looks for me or anyone else, was built around Jesus, family and love.
XOXO
Tiffanee
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