Seeking Peace

I'm sitting here typing this early in the morning, while it is still dark out. My lights in the house are out and the only lights on are the twinkling colored lights on our oversized Christmas tree.

It's my favorite thing of the Christmas season... lights.  I love lights on houses, lights on trees, colored lights, white lights, old fashioned lights, LED lights... even the houses that look like their toddlers put on their Christmas lights catch my attention, though my thoughts are slightly different when I look at those.

I absolutely love sitting in a dark room with a lit tree. There's something about it that brings me peace at a time of year that I struggle with the most.

I used to have one of those perfectly decorated, themed, beautiful trees. The tree was my favorite part of Christmas, so it had to be perfect.  This year, the tree is anything but...  and I still love it.

Okay, I don't exactly love it... yet... it's growing on me.

I let the kids do whatever they wanted with it this year... within reason. ;)  we didn't have a lot of ornaments, so we sat for a few hours (on and off) and made a paper chain. i didn't have Christmas colored paper, so instead, our chain is a beautiful mix of pinks, turquoises, oranges and a few other miscellaneous colors. At first, I hated it, simply because it wasn't 'Christmasy,' but it's growing on me.  The one dozen red and silver ornaments I did have, hang in a bunch on one side of the tree.  Randomly scattered is a half dozen of homemade kid ornaments they did in the past, which somehow survived the year in storage. And I can't forget the scattered lot of beanie babies perched on limbs, nesting near the center of the tree, or peering out from their hidden landscape of forest green.

Besides the lights, I do have my other favorite part up there: our family ornament. Every year since the year before Noah was born, we've gotten an ornament with our names and year written on it. It's very popular, but for me it's not the popularity I care about, it's the personalization.  This was us for that year. And every other year for the past seven years, our ornament has had a pregnant momma on there, announcing our newest blessing to come. This year is one of those years for a 'pregnant' ornament, but that tradition is broken.  No new baby coming our way next summer, like several are expecting to hear. (Although, the news became a 'cheap, easy gift' for grandparents that saved us money and shopping time...) ;)  It makes me sad, but it's okay.

Christmas is a very hard time of year for me and has been most of my life. Having kids has really changed that, because the focus became them and not me. As time goes on, old wounds continue to fade and the growing excitement of children allow me to not only tolerate this season, but to enjoy it. Although I still struggled slightly in the back of my mind, God allowed it to be covered and protected my heart.

This year, like always, I dreaded this season, but held on to the hope that once again my children and their joy would distract me. Things were going really well until one day last week and I was completely blindsided with hurt, pain, memories and torn open wounds.  I fell hard.

The thing that bothers me the most, isn't that it still bothers me (though that is very irritating and frustrating!). It's the fact that I don't think it's fair (ha) that it still bothers and affects me so deeply after I've dealt with it.  It was taken care of years ago, yet there are two separate times a year it still bothers me, with Christmas being the number one difficulty. My chest is heavy, my mind is distracted, my heart is aching, yet I'm at a loss as to what is really going on. Prayer and verses stay near because I know that's the first and most important thing.

I get the feeling there's something I'm supposed to learn that I've missed before and if I focus on my Father and keep my heart protected, He will teach me something amazing. I need to stop fearing and hating this season and instead listen and grow and use it for His glory.

And while I'm waiting, I'll continue to enjoy the peacefulness of the lights on the tree and the excited giggles of my littles waiting for Christmas morning...