Yesterday, I went to an appointment, then did some online shopping, caught up in the secular Christmas that it seems most people “celebrate.” I, possibly like others, sometimes forget what really matters.

silent night, holy night

It’s a cold December—but not yet officially winter—morning. I take off my glasses and write with a pen propelled by all that’s going on in my mind, not even reading the words I commit to paper. It’s already 7:08, but it’s still dark. Right now, everything is still. Everything is calm.

all is calm, all is bright

I’m aware that when holidays come around, the world becomes a dark place for some people. This time of year has many folks feeling “less than” instead of “joy-full.” Long-ago pains come back to haunt those who’ve never experienced a “Hallmark movie” sort of Christmas season. Jettisoned into another time, the holidays becoming a reliving of hurt and abandonment, of unfulfilled dreams, of a storybook tale that never happened.

round yon virgin, mother and child

How often do we live in a mindless-consumption, less-than-aware, excessive kind of world? Christmas becomes about Santa Claus and spending and decorating and cramming in every possible “experience.” It often is not about peace and love and hope for a new world. We take on, put up with, and smile through instead of being in.

holy infant so tender and mild

There’s a dichotomy between what the reason for the season is and the commercialization it often becomes. As the spirit moves in me, I’m aware of the surroundings—the trappings of life—being pushed away. I get that my self-sufficiency is simply a guise. In truth, I am operating on God’s time.

sleep in heavenly peace

If we don’t stop and recognize, list, define, acknowledge, appreciate, and then be thankful for all we do have, it will be very challenging to…

sleep in heavenly peace

We cannot be more than we are. We cannot be perfect or all-knowing, or superhuman.

silent night, holy night

Sometimes we’re like a string of Christmas lights that are a tangled up, chaotic mess because we rushed to put them away at the end of the last season. We’re unable to see the individual bulbs of brightness. So, when we try to pull the string of lights apart, some of the bulbs go out, or break.

Son of God, love’s pure light

I know that I just need to sit and be, but I fight it. I push back against that inner voice because “there’s so much more to do.”

radiant beams from Thy holy face

But, as the cacophony of noise settles down,
it becomes merely the background cadence to
the sound of life being lived out,
and breathed into,
as I’m wrapped in a cloak of newly-minted awareness.

with the dawn of redeeming grace

And I am profoundly moved, knowing that
as we rush, we are speeding through life.
We are racing to the end of Christmas.
Then, we pack it all up again and put it away until next year.

Jesus Lord, at Thy birth

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So, I will stop and send this off to you,
readers who I know and don’t know,
people who are fellow watchers and wanderers
and welcomers and possibility believers,
with my thanks for sharing this journey, of humanness, with me.

May your day be blessed,
Kay

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