Christmas 2021

It doesn't feel like Christmas.  Not Christmas with joy anyway. Not the normal Christmas feelings...light and exciting and filled with joy. There are fleeting moments of that...and that's gotten us through.  I scheduled very cool Christmas-y things all throughout the month in preparation for these feelings for us this year.  And I did that even before 'the announcement' (and the way it was done) happened at the beginning of the month.  I did that before the fallout that's happened since then all around us.  

So there have been glimpses of joy.  But even in those activities, there is still a profound sadness about the reality we live in.  PROFOUND sadness.  An ache that just doesn't leave.  

A few of you have sent gifts to us this season, knowing that this was the case.  You know who you are.  I'm so emotional, tears flowing, just thinking of your kindness.  Thank you!  ❤️  Truly...thank you for spending extra time you didn't have to send us a package of Christmas joy this year.  Kindness gets us through.

We're in a season of grieving, just plain and simple.  We don't have any decorations up...not even our beloved Santa painting made it up this year.  Because this is our 20th move, and because we went from a huge house with a couple of storage sheds to a tiny apartment, we did our best, but we're still purging and working our way through boxes here...no room for a tree or any semblance of normal yet.  

You've seen from my posts the past couple of days (on FB) glimpses of the kinds of things we're up against, constantly, in real time.  All we can do right now is fall on our knees...in grief, in stillness, in waiting, in, well, not necessarily hope, but a feeling that SURELY THE HELL HAS TO END SOON, SURELY IT WILL GET BETTER.  How can it not?!  

'Deconstruction' has gotten a lot of attention these days.  The word, what people think it means, etc.  

We watch a lot of Survivor.  What do they have to build first thing at the beginning of each season?  A shelter.  Sometimes a storm comes and their shelter gets damaged.  Sometimes, even, they are only left with the foundation.  They have to figure out what went wrong, what parts were useful and good, and what to keep to use to build again.  

That is deconstruction, folks.  That's all it is.  People make it hard.  It's so very simple.  That's it!  What is hard to understand about that?  

Some people who deconstruct find that they don't even believe in the foundation anymore.  They don't want anything to do with that shelter or the rebuilding of it...they just don't think it's for them.  Most still stand on that foundation.  And that foundation, turns out, is truly what matters.  

It really is why we celebrate Christmas after all.  

It doesn't feel like Christmas.  But, the original Christmas didn't 'feel' like Christmas either.  

18 years ago, I was extremely big and pregnant.  My baby had been due on the 21st.  Christmas rolled around and I was still big and pregnant.  I never related to Mary more.  As we heard the Christmas story that year in church, in gatherings...I felt every bit of heaviness she must have felt.  I empathized with her then, and do now even more, having to travel far from all she'd ever known, and being scared and alone.  She knew that what she was doing was right, was part of a bigger plan...what she was doing would break cycles and bring Life.  

I fall on my knees this Christmas hoping and believing for the same things.  As I feel this profound sadness, and as me and my girls are alone...I believe in the breaking of cycles, and Life.  I believe that Life will come for us, and for all who come after us.  

It doesn't feel like Christmas.  But, then again...maybe this is the closest to the original Christmas that we've ever been.