My thoughts about it all during last Christmas…. #reblog

I love this time of year- Christmas is hands down my favorite holiday. The entire season pulses with joy, memories, traditions, excitement, and anticipation.

Yet as many of you know these last few months in the Douglas family have been far from any of those things. I’ve traded joy for sorrow. We’ve walked hurriedly past traditions in order to make it to doctors appointments and hospital visits. Memories of what was and what will never be again seem to greet me with each new day and I’ve found my excitement grow dim and mute under the weight of our current situation. I long for happier days and past Christmas’s when the weight of life seemed lighter.

Yet God has seen fit to call us down these roads for a bit, yes even at Christmastime- and so we trudge along. Uneven in our steps, exceedingly uncomfortable in this position God has placed us in. Not unlike Mary I would imagine. Due at any second, early labor pains reminding her she’s STILL pregnant, longing for the ability to take a deep breath again and move more freely. Yes, like a woman in the last days of pregnancy, I am super ill at ease with my current situation.

My days look and feel so differently than what I’d prefer. Yet I’ve been so starkly reminded of why we celebrate around this time of year… or rather Who… We celebrate because of the great hope Christ brought with His birth. For the days when I don’t ‘feel’ the Christmas spirit like I’d like to, or I don’t get around to making sure our Christmas traditions were completed, or maybe I simply have a pity party about the amount of loss there’s been in recent months- the Father gently reminds me with the reality of the reason this elusive ‘Christmas spirit’ exists- Jesus. Plain and simple.

The grand plan of salvation and eternal redemption came to be with us. Emmanuel. The reality of this time in history and space astounds me and brings me to my knees in awe and wonder. And I fall to the ground in reverence for being so short-sighted and selfish in my here-and-now.

How I feel or don’t feel can’t have any impact on the gravity of what I’m celebrating. I can worship alongside the shepherds and angels, the cattle and that little donkey at the Christ child here to save my sins- regardless of having the ‘Christmas spirit’ or not.

Because in truth I believe IN the Christmas Spirit. I have Him living inside me. The Christmas Spirit is alive and well everyday from now until eternity.

So for those who have had a hard year, for those missing loved ones or grieving losses; I get it. November and December can be so hard to conjure up our own holiday spirit sometimes. And yet the hard work has already been done for us and all we have to do is look back 2000 years in thanksgiving for the babe in the manger- the literal spirit of Christmas- who, despite what our circumstances look like- points us to another tomorrow, an eternity in heaven, and a hope for the future. Be of good cheer dear friends!

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16