Monthly Archives: December 2016

Merry Christmas, Jennie

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It’s your 3rd Christmas in heaven. And as Mark Schultz sings, “It’s a different kind of Christmas this year.” I think every Christmas will be different from now on. There will always be the questions, the wanderings, in our hearts even if we don’t say them. I struggle to put words to all that’s swirling in my heart. But I want to do as Toby Mac sings, “Let’s open up our hearts to embrace this moment, for Christmas this year.” An open heart will allow me to experience, not only the joy, peace and excitement of the season, but also the pain and sadness of missing your smiling face and life as it used to be.

We’ve done most of our normal Christmas traditions. True some were seriously modified, like we only baked two kinds of cookies instead of the usual eight to ten we used to do. And one of our new traditions the past three years was to wrap 24 Christmas story books and starting December 1 we unwrap one book each day and read the story. The story the other day really touched my heart and I cried as I read the story. It was titled Josie’s Gift by Kathleen Long Bostrom. It was the story of a young girl’s first Christmas after the death of her father. She was remembering the different things her father said and did. One of his saying over Christmas was, “Christmas is not about what we want; it’s about what we have.” But she was wanting more than she had; she wanted her father to be back, for life to be like it used to be. Christmas wasn’t about what she had; it was all about what was missing this year. And I can so well identify with her feelings.

 But I’ve been really pondering her dad’s saying: Christmas is not about what we want but about what we have. What do I have this Christmas?

~ Pain and tiredness true but then we enjoyed baking those cookies together;

We stayed home and painted pictures,

Made a gingerbread nativity.

~ We miss Jennie but we talked about her and Christmas in heaven and “Does it snow in heaven?” and many other questions about heaven. There was laughter and tears.

~ Peace – a deep down in my heart peace that I will be okay in this storm because my Father loves me passionately and is for me not against me and I can trust Him.

~ Hope – My Father has promised me heaven and I think since there’s a piece of me in heaven that’s what makes me long for heaven so badly some days. I never realized you could miss something you never had but I do.

And yet the more I ponder that saying; I think it’s actually wrong. Christmas is all about what we want, although not in the childish way her dad was thinking. But most of us are still very child-like in thinking if only I can get what I want: that money raise, that new car, a bigger house or well you fill in the blank, and then I can make life work, then life will be better. Most of don’t want to open our hearts and look deeply enough into them to really understand what it is we really want. The truth is I do want more than I have this Christmas. I want heaven. We all do. And what we all want is only possible because of Christmas. Because that is when God became one of us to make it possible for us to live with Him in a perfect world, forever. The following song is one of my favorites this Christmas season sung by Stars Go Dim. The phrase “Our God knows our deepest need, And comes to bring us back to him” speaks to me of how deeply and passionately God loves me and Christmas shows far He was willing to go to bring me back to Him.

Suffering

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I know I wrote how God is enough here but sometimes it almost seems that well maybe He isn’t. The past weeks I’ve been going through the posts and updates that were put on Caring Bridge in the days following our accident. I had never read through them before. I’m still not done going through them. It’s hard and rather difficult. It brings back some very painful moments and memories. I’m not sure how we survived. God was very much carrying us. I remember thinking back then, “I can’t wait till this pain is gone, till I’m back to my normal self”. But guess what- I’m still living with pain and I’ve totally lost “my normal self”. True the intensity of the physical pain is nowhere near what it had been. Yet the emotional/mental pain seems to be just as bad as it was and since I no longer have the physical pain to distract me; it makes some days difficult. It’s that ongoing, nagging, irritating physical pain along with the emotional pain- -make some of my days rather pain filled which almost drive me crazy. Will it never end? Suffering and pain, especially long-term, drive us to desperation. In my pain, I become desperate, wanting something, anything to ease the pain, to stop or take away the pain. In my desperation, where do I go? Do I turn to my Father or do I allow bitterness to grow? Do I allow myself to struggle with God allowing pain and suffering? Or do I try to Christianize it? Do I just want to get out of my suffering or do I try to see Jesus through, even in my suffering? We may never understand the reason we suffer, the reason we go through some of this pain.  But could it be one way God is pursuing us? True it seems like God’s got it all wrong; how can suffering and pain draw us to Him? But remember how desperate we become in pain and we need to remember God is in the pain with us. Yes, suffering and pain at times blocks our ability to see God but that doesn’t mean He isn’t there. And it seems that an all-powerful God wouldn’t allow such horrible stuff to happen to us, especially those who are doing their best to live for Him. But there is more to my suffering, than just the story of my suffering; it is part of God’s larger story. In our suffering and pain it is so easy to become so focused on me and my story and forget we aren’t the center piece. God is. Even though He is the Author of the story, He is also the Hero in the story. God the Father planned a way to restore us to Himself, for us to have an intimate relationship with Him through having His Son come to this earth. And why did Jesus come to this earth? To show us how to love and to suffer. Jesus, because of His passionate love for us, suffered the ultimate suffering and it wasn’t even for His benefit. He suffered for me- to bridge that chasm between God and me. Larry Crabb says in one of the Grief Share videos, “You can always trust the Man who died for you.” And that just gripped my heart deeply. Even though I do not begin to understand why God allowed painful things to happen to me, I also realize those things were never His desire, His dream for me. But can I trust Him to make beauty out of it? Can I allow myself to rest in the fact that someday He will make all things new? Can I be okay with the never-ending longing for something more and realize that I’m longing for heaven? And not try to make heaven here, but to be willing to keep an open heart and hand as I journey through this life. And to realize, I was made for a totally different world that the one I am currently living in. As Charles Spurgeon wrote, “Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else.” And even though I have lots of questions and I don’t understand what God is doing; yes I still believe God IS enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l3CEMWCxSk