Christmas and I aren't friends...

It all started the year of the divorce. 

I had moved in with my mother just a handful of weeks before, I was seeing Jason but we weren't really "allowed" to be together yet... I was having a lot of trouble with Dakota, trying to figure out what to do about him and his issues. I was in a total fog, really. Things were so unclear. It was was year that I realized how difficult divorce can make the holidays on a very personal level. It was so fresh, too, and everything was so painful, as much as I tried to suppress it. 

With my parents being divorced and having long since established new lives of their own, before I ever married, I flip flopped years with them... one year, one parent gets Thanksgiving, and the next year the other parent. One year, Christmas with one parent, and the next year, Christmas with the other. You get the picture. Time is heavily divided. If you have a life or a family of your own, well, until you are old, you don't really get that time alone. At least the schedule between them was predictable and we usually had a memorable time. 

Then add a divorce of your own to the mix. With a kid involved. It adds yet a whole 'nother dimension to the  dividing of time. Not only are you dividing time between YOUR parents, but now your kid has to divide his time between his. Not so fun. Not so fun at all, especially at Christmas. 

That year was crap. Normally, I would get kinda into Christmas and stuff. That year, not so much. That year,  I couldn't wait for the holidays to be over. And then the next year, the same thing. The next year was even more awkward, with my ex coming over Christmas morning to my apartment to see Dakota... just lots of weirdness and awkwardness to try to make everyone happy, including doing something totally out of the question before just to keep my son with me. That year, Jason and I weren't doing so well, and I was supposed to fly to Chicago to meet his family up there. Last minute, I decided not to go. It was just a terrible feeling to think we were ending things on this note. I remember sitting at my Dad's Christmas night, feeling such disgust and hatred for the disruption to my life Christmas had brought and wishing it would all be over. 

Each year since then I just began to DREAD making plans for Christmas, and loathe Christmas itself. Just the thought of it and all the people to please will make me nauseous. The first sounds of Christmas music, decorations, ads on TV ... bring on a sort of panic that doesn't shake loose until December 26th or so. And the truth is, the last few years, things have been fine - last year, of course, was a big wash... we had just barely moved into the condo by Christmas Eve so I didn't HAVE to think about the holidays... I was too busy thinking about getting moved. Which was very convenient. And we did have a wonderful year the year we went to Chicago for Christmas. SUCH a wonderful time. (Photos are of our trip to Chicago that year). But THIS year... this year crept up on me and I became so aware of these feelings again... realizing that the season was here, and I was going to have to spend the next six weeks wishing it was over, trying to navigate plan-making, trying not to feel. Turning my head and forgetting this is even happening.

I've been trying not to feel anything at all. 

I took some precautionary steps this week to try to stave off the impending anxiety... I got the Christmas Eve/Christmas Day/Boxing Day plans nailed down with my sister and our 'rents... I worked into the calendar something meaningful with my Mom to get a real tree this year. I made plans with my mother in law to help her with her trees too. It's all pretty much planned. So I shouldn't have to worry about that... but I still have this lingering "Bah Humbug" about all of it... turning away from anything Christmas related without thinking... being negative and detached. Not wanting to look at any new ornaments or lights...

And then I walked into Hobby Lobby the other day. 

Oh my gosh.

You know, they have a lot of fun stuff, but they have even more Christmas crap than you could ever imagine. I decided/forced myself to walk down some of the aisles and look at ornaments... kinda trying to get excited about it... thinking about my kids, knowing they'd want me to have fun with them. I found some cute dinosaur ornaments and got an idea for a kids tree in the playroom... and then I walked around to the nativity scene aisle. And it hit me. And it hit me pretty dang hard. 

The reason we celebrate Christmas never had anything to do with me. It's not about you, Brooke. It has everything to do with Jesus. 

Jesus... who is the only figurehead of any religion to have come down to man instead of requiring man to ascend to him - become Emmanuel (God with us)... came through an unmarried virgin, such a scandalous entrance, with a betrothed who stopped short of submitting her to the consequences of the law she was purported to have violated; from Nazareth (the people there were despised by both Romans and Jews), working class, yet confounding the wise men of his day, accepting and loving the prostitute, the homosexual, the tax collector, touching the leper, defying the religious order of the day to demonstrate this immense love, bearing God's wrath for the sake of anyone who would take him at his word. Jesus... my love, my heart, fully God, fully man, restrained himself to the body and function of a newborn baby, born in a dirty stable, and whisked away by his young parents with his life in pursuit. Jesus. Christmas is about Jesus. 

And something in my spirit was so stirred by this realization. All of a sudden, I am walking through Hobby Lobby and I am choking back tears. Suddenly, I begin to realize that it's okay to allow myself to feel all the anxious feelings and actually allow Jesus in to heal all the hurts of the last several years, perceived or actually having occurred... And when I say this, I am not talking about some mantra or exercise to let Jesus have my feelings... I am talking about sensing and feeling and experiencing such a burning in my heart, in my chest, where it's almost like I can feel the Spirit moving inside me, and I feel completely alive and warm and safe, in the most vulnerable state. It's hard to describe, but it's like nothing else. There is joy and peace in it. And he was doing all this stirring in the Hobby Lobby! I stopped and texted my husband and my mother in law to tell them what I felt was happening. I knew in that moment that God was working. He had provided a safety net for me to be able to allow myself to feel excited about Christmas again... to focus my heart and my thoughts on what this season is actually about when I feel anxious or when old emotions from the past begin to surface. And the solution was so simple - take my eyes off of myself and look at him. Sounds like Jesus. 

So next weekend, it begins. My little family, my Mom and step-dad and I are going to to a tree farm to pick up our first live tree in many years. I am hankering now to get it up, decorate it with the kids, and do some fun Christmas ornament making crafts with them. It's gonna be great. And somehow I feel confident in saying that this year. 

I really hope so.