Yesterday, I ran a few errands, then did some final decorating— stringing the Christmas cards we received from friends so I could hang them across the doors. After all, if we’re blessed to receive these greetings of love, shouldn’t we somehow acknowledge them? Too often, I forget what really matters, caught up in the secular Christmas that, it seems, most people “celebrate.”

silent night, holy night

It was murky when I opened my eyes at 4:14 this morning on the day before Christmas. I lay there for a few minutes, then looked at the clock again; yep, it was not time to be awake! I had two choices: get moving or go back to bed and lie there, choosing not to get up until the sun decided to rise too. This may sound like a straightforward decision. It would be easy for many people to go back to sleep, but not for me.

The wind whistled outside the windows where the temperature was only 2°, so I got up, made my tea, and sat at my desk writing with a pen propelled by all that was going on in my mind, not even reading the words I committed to paper. It’s still dark. Right now, everything is still. Everything is calm.

all is calm, all is bright

I’m aware that the world is dark during these holidays for some people. This time of year, many folks feel “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 became a reliving of hurt and abandonment, unfulfilled dreams, and a storybook tale that never happened.

round yon virgin, mother and child

How often do we live in a mindless-consumption, less-than-aware world? Christmas often becomes about Santa Claus and spending, decorating, and cramming in every possible “experience.” It is too often not about peace, love, or 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 the reason for the season 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 recognize 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, if we don’t 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. We can only be spirit energy in human bodies with three-pound brains. We cannot be all.

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

radiant beams from Thy holy face

The cacophony of noise settles down—now merely a background cadence to life being lived out and breathed into. I become 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 up again and put it away until next year.

Jesus Lord, at Thy birth

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

May your day be blessed,
With Love,
Kay