How to Holiday

The thing about holiday's is that they happen.  There really is no getting away from them, they just happen and they keep happening.  So, the question that has to be asked is how to do them when you don't want too?

How do you lean into something that you just don't want to lean into?  How do you make these days that are supposed to be so great and enjoyable and full of all sorts of fun and all that bearable when all you want to do is blow up every Christmas tree, wreath and light display you see?

I've told my folks that there will be no tree this year, no lights, no outdoor decorations.  I'm not into it, can't be really and of course that was met with at the very least derision.  The sad part of it is last year I was starting to feel it again. I really was getting into it again; it had been a while and I was looking forward to decorating this year...now I am trying to figure out a way to keep all the windows and blinds and curtains closed so I don't have to see it or hear it.  

I'm avoiding Christmas music as much as possible, something that gets harder and harder as the clock ticks closer and closer to December 25th.  It's everywhere even on playlists that have no business having it.  

Add to this self-imposed boycott the fact that I can't really get totally away from Christmas because well of what I do and it makes for a tricky situation to say the least.  

Perhaps it's not all bad.  We always say that Christmas is more than all the stuff that it's become.  Trees and lights and presents and dinners and all that stuff are all fine and good but that's not Christmas, and while we give lip service to that sentiment the whole season, we still find ourselves running around to find that perfect gift, digging in the closet of misses that were given to us and wondering if we re-gift that set of glasses to Aunt Gertrude is it going to be okay because it's just possible that she's the one that gave us the glasses in the first place. 

  

All of that stuff gets so big and becomes Christmas even if we don't want it too.  To be honest it's easy to justify it when you have little kids.  The joy that you see with kids 11 and under when they come down the stairs is like a drug that you just want more and more of.  But take that away and suddenly the incentive to put up the tree and hang all the lights and find all the gifts just evaporates.

What's left then.  It's easy to just make December 25th another day.  I will be honest that's kind of what I want to do.  I don't want to go anywhere; I don't want dinner with family or gifts under the tree or any of that. The other option is to do what Mary did, which is what I personally want to attempt this year if I can get past the tears and heart ache that's been here for the last six months and promises to be here for the foreseeable future.  

This is what we should be doing more of this Christmas season.  Realizing what matters is not all this stuff.  What matters is what happened all those years ago.  

Maybe for me at least this year I can begin to get to that point.  I dunno.  It's highly probable that I'll be too caught up in my sadness and anger to really even want to think about all that Jesus did in coming to earth.  If I had to lay odds, I would say that's a sure thing, but even if this is all the extra thought, I give to what Christmas is supposed to be, it's a start down a path of reimagining what the Holidays are supposed to be.  A time to remember and think on and realize what God did for me even when I don't really like him. 

See you around the blog.

Milestones

 Six months ago seems like an eternity and at the same time seems like it was just yesterday. 

In our lives we usually celebrate milestones.  I have been pretty quiet lately here on the blog, mainly because, sometimes, just keeping my head above the water of life is all I can do.  It seems like there are days that I can move through things and it's all good and then there are the days that just slam into me making me want to shut the door and pull the blinds and rant and cry and yell at myself and God.  

Yesterday all the times that I would get frustrated about being asked over and over for something came into my mind and the guilt for ever getting even a bit exasperated was so very vivid in my mind and heart.  Today I just want to get on our bikes and ride to the park.  I want to grab the three girls and go have breakfast at a local diner, I want to drop Z off at youth group and take Josie to Steak and Shake and then to the mall or to the park or to a movie.  

I went into her room yesterday just stood there in the middle of all that was and cried.  It's been six months and yet it may as well have been six minutes.  Nothing in there has changed things are left just like they were on Sunday May 16th.  I never understood the meaning behind not changing things that were until I realized I can't change what is.  I'm still trying to figure out how we let them put the windows in the house without letting them in that room to move and touch things.  

I know that logically it doesn't make much sense.  I know the doors not going to bang open and she's not going to ever climb up in that converted bunk bed, and yet I can't change it, just in case I find a monkey's paw and suddenly things are what they are supposed to be. 

The thing that hits the hardest is that instead of getting to watch her move through the milestones of life we have to pick a gravestone, and while that is a milestone, it's the wrong one.  

Dave Matthew's has a song called Grave Digger:

Muriel Stonewall 1903 to 1954 she lost both of her babies in the second great war now you should never have to watch your only children lowered in the ground I mean you should never have to burry your own babies.  

Grave digger when you dig my grave would you make it shallow so that I can feel the rain. 

Little Mikey Carson 67 to 75 he rode his bike like the devil until the day he died. When he grows up he want's to be Mr. Vertical on the Flying Trapeze...

I have sung this song along with Dave for years.   It's playing now while I write this.  I never understood it, not like I do now.  

Of course the two verses that I've put up mean the most.  I relate to Muriel because Dave's right.  You shouldn't have to bury your own baby, and well Mikey because he was only a year younger than Josie and well also because he rode his bike.  I go to the place where she is and there are times I sit there and I'll sing this song, I've gotten to the chorus and I've laid down on the grass right next to her spot and i sing that chorus and I beg God to give her back but He doesn't so I pick up a rock from the dirt that's hugging my baby girl instead of me and I cry and cry and cry and go home and wash the rock off and cry and cry some more. 

Jesus says blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.  For me that verse means simply that it's a blessing to see the people that reach out to encourage or comfort, even when there is no real comfort to be felt.  That's the thing about that verse that I'm realizing it doesn't say blessed are those who mourn for they will feel comforted.  It says blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted...we are blessed in our sorrow by the people who come around us to hold us to lift us up to care for us to give us a shoulder to cry on, arms to hold us up when we just crumble because it's too much, prayers for us because we are so confused and mad at God that we can't seem to get anything more than "why God" out of our lips.  

Six months is a Milestone in death. I'm realizing that.  All of these things that were opportunities to be and do together, birthdays and holidays and vacations and the regular milestones of graduations and starts of school years, and learning to ride a bike or drive a car, all of those things that were times of being together are now big, monolithic, milestones that I wish were never erected in the first place. 

So here I sit six months to the day and all I want to do is shut the door to my room and pull the shades and tell the world that they can just go away and stop being because that's all that I want to do.

See you around the blog dear reader.