When Christmas Looks Different

I notice it more this year than I have in the past. So many people plodding through such big hurt, and it seems like most of them dread the coming holidays because something isn't the same as it was last year.

It's hard. It really is. I've been there before. The Christmas after my nephew died, and we didn't have the baby to buy presents for. The Christmas after my grandma died, and our extended family Christmas just simply ceased. The Christmases when my sister doesn't get to come home. The Christmas after my relationship (before Ryan) ended and I didn't have someone beside me to share any part of the holiday.

The grief is real and hard, and I don't want to take it away from anyone feeling it this year. But I do want to submit to you something that the Lord has brought to my mind as I think through our own different-kind-of-Christmas this year.

They're all different.

I love traditions as much as the next person. Truthfully, I probably love them MORE than the next five people standing next to me (combined). But have we gotten so intertwined with our traditions that we fail to appreciate the unique beauty and soul-impact that comes with each Christmas? Even the hard Christmases?

Our first Christmas came twenty-three days after our wedding. We'd gotten married, taken a honeymoon, driven eleven hundred miles home, resumed double commuting, and somehow in all of that, we had to find time to buy gifts and decorate our house and begin traditions of our own. Being the consummate over-decorator that I am, I had no idea how I would get all seven trees up and perfected in the time I had.

I lamented this at work one day, and my co-worker Amy carefully and hesitantly suggested that rather than getting out ALL my tubs of decorations, I only get out maybe...say...five. I think she feared for her life with this offering, and with good reason. I would have trembled saying it to someone like me, too. But you know what? That's exactly what we did. We turned it into a game. I sent Ryan into the attic to retrieve five tubs, because I knew he wouldn't know what was in any of them. (I did.) Whatever he brought out was what we had to work with. We would assemble an entire Christmas from our five hodge-podge tubs.

That Christmas didn't look like the years before, but I learned two things from it. First, it made a beautiful memory I've never forgotten. The tubs Ryan "happened" to get contained my blue and gold Christmas bulbs. The blue was the same color we used in our wedding and the matte gold bulbs looked like sand...like our beach! That first tree was a perfect continuation of our wedding celebration, and I've never forgotten it. Secondly, just because we had a dialed-down Christmas that year didn't mean every year for the rest of decorating forever was doomed. It was just that one year.

The next year, we didn't get to take our big Christmas shopping trip, because on the only free day we had for shopping, Indiana was smacked with snow and ice. We had to stay local and cut it short, but we had a blast together. And the year after that, we went back to the big shopping day.

And so it has gone. One year we couldn't get to a Christmas tree farm in time and had to switch up our live tree purchase to the grocery store parking lot. And don't you know I took pictures all the way down that line of netted trees and we got a selfie with the store sign. Oh yes. We'll find a Christmas tree farm at the supermarket if we have to!

One year we missed an entire Christmas celebration because we were in the emergency room with Ryan's cranky gallbladder. And when we went to another one a few days later, he couldn't eat anything except the can of chicken noodle soup I brought along so he could have something.

Christmas looks different for us this year. This will be the first time we gather with Ryan's step-family and his grandpa won't be there. (He passed away right after New Year's Day.) Ryan's mom plans to be part of the family Christmas, but her health is still fragile and I know she won't be able to enjoy it in the same way she always has.

My heart feels the sadness of these changes, but I still look forward to Christmas this year. It won't look the same, but none of them ever do. There's always something a little different.

But it's always a reminder of the hope and joy we have in remembering that Jesus was born and because of that, we can have the opportunity to enjoy a relationship with Him and look forward to forever with Him.

If you're hurting this Christmas, I'm sending a blog-hug to you right now. I'm not minimizing your grief in any way. But I also hope you can know that there is hope for this Christmas to still be meaningful. It can still make an impact on your memories and on your soul, if you let it.

I believe it was about ten years ago now that I had a heart-heavy Christmas that led me to write (for myself) a study on how Jesus arrived in the lives of so many people who lived in His day. Two years later, that study made its published debut, and I'm still learning from the lessons each year when I re-read the books. If I hadn't had the hard Christmas, I never would have done the study. I never would have drawn near in that way. I let the hurt make an impact on my soul, and God transformed it into something beautiful.

I know He can do the same for you. Christmas might look different, but then again, they always do.

Much love to you!