- Not The Only One!
- 20 Dec 23
- Post # 110
- ” Not For Us All”
- Howdy,
- Thanks again for checking in. We are just mere days away from Christmas. There is just something so special about this holiday, especially if you have young children in your life. Kids, just seem to have this amazing wonderment about them and it often reflects in their eyes, and it’s a sparkle, that becomes a little less bright with age. Most of us are familiar with Christmas taking forever to show up and get us out of school, so that we can work on that all important wish list for Santa ☺️☺️. Now, on the otherside of that as adults, you realize every time you turn around and blink, it’s Christmas again. There is just something so humorous about paying off all of the Christmas debt, just in time to run it up once more ☺️☺️. I know that some of us are still experiencing hangover mode, from a couple of Holiday seasons with the dreaded social distancing , but I think for the most part, that is in the rear view mirror.
- Most of us have some special holiday memory, or meal, or something that we are hoping to craft into a new tradition, or just something that will stick in our hearts and minds for a lifetime. When I talk to a lot of people, about special memories, oddly enough it is in times of what we may think of as a difficult season. It may be when they were just starting out on there own, or in times of leanest, so whatever they did have was just that much more special. I have heard of tales of people who have had sick family members, and they knew that they were experiencing their last Christmas together. Yes, a sad picture, but they did everything possible to make it memorable, so that they would live on long after they were gone. Ironically, I’ve heard of the opposite being true as well, and that’s when everything looks picture perfect, lots of presents under the tree, everything decorated just so perfectly, yet something being off, such as a pending divorce. All in all the holidays are just full of joy, parties and food, and family, and perhaps a little of living in the excess. I almost feel if you don’t have some warm memory that involves your grandparents, then it sounds like the Grinch hijacked part of your childhood ☺️☺️.
- I want to say that for myself, online shopping has taken some of the fun out of it for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely grateful for Amazon, and yes the prime component as well ☺️☺️. There was a certain joy associated with fighting for parking spaces at the malls. There was the running into old friends who were home for the holidays. If you, just if you were lucky, you could see a good old fashioned fist fight over the last one of whatever the hot toy was that year☺️☺️. I know, I’m a little twisted. ☺️Grocery stores were packed, because we weren’t having them delivered, or having someone else bring them out to our car for us. I guess people still drive around and look at holiday lights displays and some of the more swanky neighborhoods just go all out. Still there is just something about all of the food surrounding Thanksgiving and Christmas. Cookies, pies, cakes, you just name it and you could feel the extra pounds coming by just inhaling the aroma ☺️☺️. So , the tree is up, and it’s just all so dazzling with the angel or star on top. The stockings are hung, house all decorated and you even remembered to get a little something for your mail carrier, so you are feeling pretty confident that things are going according to plans. It’s crunch time now and you have to figure out the seating arrangement for dinner, so that your weird uncle or aunt doesn’t share to many colorful stories with the kids☺️☺️. The kid table would be the perfect place for them, if there weren’t any kids there, ☺️you know it’s kind out of the way. ☺️. I think for some people this is the most stressful part of the holidays, dealing with family. We love them,….well we have to, they are family, but certain ones, and you know the ones I’m talking about. Well, let’s just say that you aren’t to upset if their flight gets delayed or even better canceled ☺️☺️. Again, just a little twisted. I know that it still happens, but have you guys experienced the carolers going around the neighborhoods like they are adult trick or treaters , singing one of your favorite Christmas carols, just in six different keys,☺️ I guess there were no auditions for that, you just had to be willing to walk around in the cold and make a joyful noise ☺️☺️. Whatever your thing is for the holidays I hope that you enjoy it to the max.
- Now, all of that stuff is the exterior, or should we just call it the gravy. We must not forget or miss the reason for the season, and that is all about the birth of a King. Christmas is and always will be about Jesus. In fact to remove the baby, the incarnate from the equation , there would be no Christmas. I know first hand how easy it can be to get caught up in all of the shopping, the gift giving, the parties, the food, the glitz, and holiday cheer, and completely miss what the holiday is all about in the first place. I’m not above the occasional cheap shot, so for all of my none spiritual readers, spiritual doubters and slightly confused,☺️ for all of my fans of separation of church and state , make no mistake about it, this is a religious holiday. I have yet to see the long line of people who are sayin ,nope!, I’m not a believer and I think that I shouldn’t get paid for this holiday and I want to work clean through the holiday because, I’m a firm, yes, extremely firm believer of separation of church and state. ☺️☺️Oh, and by the way, it’s a Christian holiday. I don’t mean to be brash, but I think that gets lost somewhere in the conversation on occasion. Christmas is a universal holiday and celebrated around the world . Other countries have other days that they celebrate for their independence, and Thanksgiving is exclusively an American thing , and the Chinese even have a different new year from most. Even the countries that it’s illegal to be Christian, there is still a stop and calm, over the greatest story ever told.
- So, Christmas cheer and Holiday sprinkles are just filling the atmosphere and all is right and as it should be, not so much !. HA ! HA!, that’s a far, very far cry from the truth!. I just mentioned the stress that is associated with the holidays and family. It’s not a great mystery, but this is a time of the year when the suicide rate has a tendency to spike. We are currently experiencing an epidemic of loneliness and more people feel more isolated than ever before in our history. We may have seen just one to many Hallmark movies and we believe that everyone in the world except us , is experiencing some magical holiday experience, and that their lives are full , and it’s just not complete without that special someone. If it’s not Hallmark, then it is all of the social media post, with the all so perfectly crafted tree, home decorated and enough baked goods to give Martha Stewart a run for her money ☺️☺️. Often these things can leave people feeling as if they just got kicked in the nuts, or my daughter’s favorite, punched in the throat ☺️☺️, no idea where she learns such things ☺️☺️.
- I’m not encouraging anyone to curb their excitement for the holidays, but we should be both careful and sensitive. How would you feel if your joy was the thing that pushed someone over the edge into making a dire decision.? Sometimes it is just straight up hard to share in other people’s happiness. We are all human beings, so it’s hard not to run the comparison game in our heads. We just never know at any given time what someone else is walking through. There are times when the holiday season, brings up painful memories. Death is part of life, but it just seems to be extra cruel at what is supposed to be a joyful time of the year. Many people have stories of loss around this time of the year, and it’s a painful reminder of having an empty chair at the table. Life is compiled of various seasons of life and the word of God tells us that there is a time for each one of those seasons in our lives. We laugh, but sometimes we find ourselves in a season of mourning and it just happens to fall around the holidays. It doesn’t make you a looser just because you don’t have going on in your life, what other’s have going on in their’s. We walk through corridors and sometimes they are filled with shadows. And yes!, sometimes those things snowball on us and seem to come as an unrelenting torrent of misery.
- It was just a little over two weeks ago that I told you the story of me loosing someone who I thought of as a bonus mom. This was followed up by a phone call from one of my oldest friends in the world. She was told by her doctor to get her affairs in order and she was given six to nine months to live, talk about a dagger to the heart. We actually go all the way back to first grade together. She became my first girlfriend, we were thirteen and fourteen, our birthdays separated by a few months. We have always had a special relationship and if I’m being honest about it, she probably always put way more into it , than I did. My mom, never liked her, and use to make constant reference to her being from the wrong side of the tracks ☺️☺️. Her family moved to New York and shortly after that to the west coast. She has been in California for almost half of a century. We both got married and raised families, but we have always been the people that we could share anything with, and for the most part free of judgment ☺️☺️. We had a spat or two, one that got pretty serious, but we were able to recover. She had a bout with Cancer, we weren’t speaking at the time and then God tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me that some years earlier that I had loss someone else very special to me, and they left the planet and our last words together were not kind. I just want to say, if you have any of those relationships out there, that are unresolved or hanging by a thread , like the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s☺️, just say that you are sorry, and patch it up, before it’s to late. Many times we will hold a grudge and never even remember what it was about, happens a lot in families…sadly!. She always considered the east coast home, and would often make trips out this way, and sometimes for business. I was the very first call that she made, and she was trying to muster up the strength to tell her four kids. If I had to characterize our relationship, we were always one another’s biggest cheer leaders , and unconditional love, with the most amazing support. It’s both sad and ironic that we were both married to people that we couldn’t say that about. Needless to say that I’m going to be planning a trip to California soon. There are no guarantees in life, so we never know what is coming around the corner for us, but if it is her , who leaves first, she will be sorely missed and not just by me, but kids and grandkids, and all whom lives she has touched.
- As if that wasn’t enough, two days later another friend who has been waiting for a kidney transplant, has decided to give up the fight and decided to enter into hospice. I mean I get it!, when it is all said and done, it’s about quality of life. We have only known one another a couple of years, but she has done a deep dive in the friendship pool. I have never met someone In my life who has been so full of life and just living it out everyday through the prism of pain. She said that she can’t take one more medical procedure and the awfully draining dialysis. She has other health issues as well they are just ganging up on her. She is another one who will be drastically missed. She has an absolutely wicked sense of humor, often says that she can’t be trusted with sharp objects☺️☺️. I’m not trying to make it about me, but the one’s left behind, are the one’s who mourn. I feel as if God is pruning my life back, and thus far I’ve done a pretty good job of that myself ☺️☺️. I’m a person who never learned how to do casual, so my friends are real genuine people who I have been vulnerable with and they have with me. What most people call friends, I would refer to as an acquaintance. I keep a closely knit circle and it’s not something that I approach casually. I find it hard to trust people and to find trust worthy people, but when I do, they earn the designation of friend.
- Still, it’s Christmas and it brings a certain joy and weight with it. We are charged with to go tell it on the mountain, that Christ , the Savior of the world is born. Emanuel, God is with us, and what an incredible gift and mystery that is. I hope that not a single one of you miss the miracle of Christmas. We should be completely captivated by the Extraordinary thing that God has done and is continuing to do in a very ordinary way. He sent His Son , a King, pure royalty to embody flesh and bones. He sent His Son to a pair of teenager parents and his crib was a feeding trough. The announcement of His birth was proclaimed to the least in society…Shepherds. He was not born in a palace, not to rich nobility, not to people who had servants and attendants, but to the lowly, the ordinary. God didn’t want us to think that He was out of reach to us, so He came to the least of us, to prove His love and availability to us. God came and gave so that we could be healed and forgiven. The miracle of Christmas is that God came to humanity and chose to redeem His creation from the powers of hell. He’s not done yet! ,
- The greatest gift that was ever given, was the Son. God wants You to know Him and to enter into a personal relationship with Himself and that is both the gift and the miracle. If you are struggling this holiday season with loneliness, brokenness and the disappointments that sometimes comes with life, know that God is here for you and He is both available and attainable. Today, you will do life and you can do that with God or without God, the choice is yours, but we all encounter things that only God can handle. Faith is not about containment, but it’s about possibilities. Faith is skin on skin closeness, affinity, relationship. In order to get there sometimes our certainties need to be shattered. Our formulas for life interrupted, and our questions unanswered. That is the place in the depths of relationship, that we not encounter a list of religious cliches , but a person, and that person is Jesus- the Christ. If you are a ” Not For f Us All”, just know that You are not alone this holiday season. Depression is for real ,and it needs to be taken seriously.
- Suicide prevention # 988- suicide, or just text #988
- Till Next Time ✌️Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
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